Текст книги "Bad Girls Don't Die"

Автор книги: Katie Alender

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

“Listen. My grandmother might be home. If you say even a single word about this to her, I’ll be grounded until college.”

“All right,” I said, instantly certain that I would somehow slip up and ruin everything. Hi, nice to meet you! Your granddaughter and I are just going to mess with the Dark Side for a while. I love those flowers, are they violets? “She doesn’t believe in…it?”

“That’s the problem,” Megan said. “She does believe. Very much. So she tries to keep me away from it.” “But she knows you’re interested, right?” “Yeah.”

“How did you start believing in the first place?” Interest in the paranormal wasn’t really the “in” thing at Surrey High. It’s not the kind of thing you’d chat about during lunch.

Megan turned down the radio. “Do you believe in angels?”

Uh.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “Does anyone?”

“Um, yeah, a lot of people do. And once you believe in good things, it’s not that hard to believe in…bad things.”

“So you believe in angels?”

“Yeah.” She shrugged. “I mean, not the harps and feathers kind. But I know something happens to good people when they die.” Her cheery tone thinned. “People like my mom.”

I was desperate to turn the conversation away from Megan’s mother, so I said, “How long have you lived with your grandmother?”

Which, as a changing-the-subject tactic, was a complete failure. It was just another way of calling attention to the fact that Megan’s mom was dead. Way to go, Alexis.

“Since I was two years old.” She glanced at me. “It’s okay, I can talk about her. My dad was never even in the picture. Somewhere out there is a man who has no idea he has a daughter. Although, from what Grandma says about him…he probably has more than one.”

And I thought my dad was absentee.

“I don’t even remember my mom,” she said. “Not really. Every once in a while I feel like I do, but then I think it’s probably just a Sesame Street flashback.”

“Do you have aunts and uncles?” I asked.

“Nope,” Megan said, shaking her head slowly. “Just me and Grandma.”

“I didn’t even know that,” I said, trying to figure out how you could be in school with someone for so long and not know such a huge thing about them.

“Well, it’s not like you ever tried to get to know me.”

Ouch. The sting of truth.

“So, bottom line. If she suspects that I’m trying to have anything to do with ghosts or spirits, she’ll ship me off to boarding school and I’ll end up in a convent.”

“If she’s so strict about it, why are you doing it?”

“I’m sorry, Alexis,” she said. “I didn’t realize you were the only person on the planet allowed to think for yourself.” Then she shrugged again and cocked her head to one side. “Besides that your little sister seems to be fixated on me? I have my reasons.”

18

We rode in silence until we reached a large beige house with lots of clean white trim. Megan pulled into the driveway next to an enormous silver BMW.

“She’s home…” Megan said, staring at the front door the way a gladiator might watch the gate the lions come running out of. “You’ll have to distract her while I get some things from my room.”

Inside, Megan led me down a hallway that spilled out into a huge, sunny living room. To our left was a spacious kitchen, where a woman in her sixties stood at the counter, leafing through a pile of mail.

“Megan,” the woman said, looking up at us in surprise. “What are you doing home? Don’t you have practice?” Her gaze lingered on my hair, but she didn’t say anything.

“Yes,” Megan said, which wasn’t technically a lie. “Just changing and grabbing a few things for the float. Grandma, this is Alexis. Alexis, this is my grandmother, Mrs. Wiley.”

Mrs. Wiley, indeed. This was not the grandmother I’d been preparing myself for. Instead of a sweet, frumpy housedress, she wore a sleek burgundy suit that I instinctively knew was more expensive than about five of my mother’s suits put together.

“I’ll be right back,” Megan said, giving me a pointed look and dashing up the stairs.

Mrs. Wiley gave me the once-over.

“Are you on the squad?” she asked. She reminded me of the stepmother in Cinderella, except not mean—just cool, reserved. I could see where Megan got it.

“Um, no,” I said.

Ergh, lie! Lie, you idiot.

Mrs. Wiley waited for an explanation, her salon-groomed eyebrows pressing closer together. I felt like a piece of art being studied at a museum—or more likely, in Mrs. Wiley’s case, a small company about to be gobbled up by a huge corporation.

I groped in the back of my mind for something to say. “I’m doing a photo shoot for the school newspaper.”

“Ah, a photographer,” she said. I waited for a suspicious reaction, but she didn’t seem interested in providing one. I could have died of relief.

“I dabble,” I said, mentally willing her not to ask me about the school paper. I didn’t even know if they had photographers. When I looked at her to see how she

would reply to this, her eyes weren’t on me. They were fixed on the window over the sink—or rather, somewhere in the distance.

“Megan’s mother was a photographer,” she said. “A good one. She used to win contests.” Then a tremor seemed to move through her body, and she looked down at the mail on the counter.

“I didn’t know that,” I said. It was the only thing I could think of to say.

“Do you want to study photojournalism in college?”

Back to the photography. “Not really,” I said. “My stuff is more…artistic. But not pretentious,” I added quickly.

“I do dislike pretension,” Mrs. Wiley mused, tearing open an envelope. “I wish Megan would take up an interest in something like photography.”

“She’s a really good cheerleader; she could probably even get a scholarship.”

Grandma tut-tutted under her breath. “And spend college funneling beer and dating football players. It’s not the scholarship…I just wish she would use her mind instead of her muscles.”

I was surprised to feel the urge to defend Megan spring up inside me. I didn’t even know what I would say, except that I’d seen her countless times walking around school with her eyes glued to her black cheerleading

notebook. As much as I disliked the whole idea of shaking pom-poms and hopping around in short skirts, it didn’t seem fair to say that Megan wasn’t good, or that she didn’t work hard at it. That thought took a second to settle in, and I brushed it away before I had time to feel like a huge hypocrite for everything I’d ever thought or said about Megan.

The kitchen was mercifully quiet for a minute or two. I gazed around the room, trying to look mesmerized by the iron candelabra on the counter, but just when I was feeling confident that the hard part of my job was over, Mrs. Wiley spoke again.

“Are you going to the dance Friday night?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said, immediately regretting it. If I had just given her a simple “no” and acted dejected, she would have left the subject alone.

“Do you have a date?”

“I guess that’s kind of what it is,” I answered. “What does your dress look like?” My dress?

I tried to picture a dress in my head, but all I could think of was the pastel Easter dresses Kasey and I had worn as little girls. Somehow, baby blue with puffy sleeves and chicks embroidered on the front didn’t seem to cut it for Homecoming.

“I guess I don’t have one yet,” I said.

“It’s getting late,” Mrs. Wiley said, sounding a little concerned. Then she perked up. “You should borrow something of Megan’s.”

“I don’t think her clothes would fit me.”

“Yes they would,” she said, giving me a decisive up-and-down glance. “You’re the same size. You’re taller than she is, but that shouldn’t matter.”

She smiled kindly and went back to the mail. I felt a slow flush spread up the sides of my face. No way could she think someone like me would even be friends with Megan, much less fit into her clothes. I was so…so different. Megan was perfect, and I was…not perfect. Megan was skinny and fit, and I was…well, I was plenty skinny, but since I didn’t work for it, it didn’t seem possible that we could wear the same size anything.

“What could be keeping Megan?” she asked. “Why don’t you run up to her room? First door on the right at the top of the stairs.”

“Okay,” I said, hoping my relief wasn’t too apparent. Mrs. Wiley was nice, but if she pressed for any more information–a simple question about earrings or footwear—I would blow the whole operation.

I bolted up the stairs and knocked on the first door on the right.

Megan opened it and looked at me in surprise.

“What about my grandmother?” she asked.

“It was her idea,” I whispered.

I slid through the door and Megan eased it shut again behind me. Then she walked over to the bed and got down on her hands and knees, digging around behind the dust ruffle.

“Do you need help?” I asked.

“No,” she said, her voice muffled. “I’m almost done.”

I leaned against the door, part of me still shocked that I was standing in Megan Wiley’s bedroom. I can’t say what I was expecting, but her bedroom didn’t look like a stereotypical cheerleader’s room. There was some evidence that a pom-pom pusher lived there, but it was minimal—mostly confined to one shelf of the bookcase.

The rest of her stuff was just an eclectic mix of books and knickknacks. It was kind of cluttered, but not in the way that drives me crazy, like Kasey’s room—it was clutter with a purpose, like one of those expensive designer furniture stores in the mall. It made me think of a professor’s study, only instead of maps and journals, there were embroidered pillows and polished stone sculptures.

I noticed a black-and-white photo in a silver frame hanging on the wall near the closet. It was of a very young Megan and younger Mrs. Wiley sitting on a flat rock in front of a lake. “Did your mom take that?” I asked.

Megan pulled her head out from underneath the bed and stared at me. “What are you talking about?”

I pointed to the picture. “That photograph.”

Megan stared at the photo for a moment. “Why—? I doubt it. It’s just something I’ve always had.” She took a step toward it, looking at the image—her own tiny face staring seriously at the camera, and Mrs. Wiley, smiling and elegant in her picnic dress.

It was almost like Megan had never really looked at it before.

“I like it,” I said. “It’s really good.”

“But…why would you ask that?” she said, looking back at me. “If my mother took it?”

“Because your…“I didn’t know what to say. “Because your grandmother said your mom was a photographer.”

The corners of Megan’s eyes crinkled. “She told you that?”

I nodded cautiously. Maybe Megan considered these little pieces of information private, secret.

But she didn’t seem angry, just puzzled. “She told you something about my mother. Something she never told me.” Her voice was calm, but kind of too calm—the way a person talks when they’re in shock. She pulled the frame off the wall, then placed it upside down on the bed and pried the metal clips off. Lifting the backing away, she gently picked up the photo by its edges.

I stayed where I was. I’d done plenty already.

She breathed out softly. “Come look,” she said, wonder in her voice.

I went to her side, and she pointed to a corner of the photo that had been hidden by the mat. Someone had signed it faintly in pencil, with a first initial and their last name.

“Shara Wiley,” Megan said.

“Is that…?” I studied the next word.

“Mom,” Megan said. She shook her head and kind of sank onto the bed.

“Wow,” I said.

Megan set the photo down carefully on the frame and turned to me. “My grandmother adopted me after the accident. She never talks about my mom. Never.” She glanced back at the photo. “They didn’t get along well, and they weren’t speaking when Mom died. I guess it was horrible for her.”

“I’m sorry…” I said. I couldn’t finish the thought.

I leaned in closer to look at the image. It was really a nice shot, not too posed or phony, the way a lot of people’s family portraits look. And Megan was a cute kid, with one eyebrow raised skeptically.

“Hey,” I said, noticing the bracelet hanging off her chubby toddler arm. It was one of those hearts that looks like it’s been cut in half. “I have a charm like that.”

Megan reached to her neck and pulled a gold chain out from under the sweatshirt she’d put on, revealing the dangling charm. “I still wear it,” she said. “I think these things were pretty popular.”

“It’s really cool that your mom took this,” I said, marveling that I’d never even thought to take a picture of my family.

“Thanks,” Megan said, delicately replacing the photo in the frame. I could tell by the tightness in her voice how meaningful this was for her. “I guess there’s time for this later. Right now we have more pressing issues.”

“I’m really sorry,” I repeated.

Megan ignored my apology. “Grandma said she was a photographer?”

I nodded. “A good one. Award-winning, your grandma said.”

“Wow,” Megan said. And then her eyes lost their focus and she stared off in the distance. She hung the picture back in its corner and looked at it one last time. Then she glanced at me. “You’re into photography, right? Maybe sometime you could show me…”

Her voice trailed off.

“Are you kidding?” I said. “Of course.”

And I meant it. I mean, I totally owed it to her, but more than that…I just got this subtle vibe from Megan

that I didn’t get from anybody else. That if I showed her my photos, she would understand. She would get them. The idea of having an intelligent conversation about photography was as oddly irresistible as the thought of listening to Carter insult my house with all his fancy architectural terms.

Megan sighed. “I guess we’re ready to go,” she said.

“Oh,” I said. “Your grandmother told me to ask you about dresses, so if she asks, just say we talked about it.”

“What about dresses?”

I hesitated. “She said I should borrow one from you for the dance.”

“You don’t have a dress?”

I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

“You should take one,” she said. “Then she won’t ask any questions.” She went to her closet and pushed the doors open.

I felt extraordinarily silly. “Megan, I don’t think any of your clothes…”

“Chill,” she said, scanning the racks of clothes. “It’s just for show. You don’t have to actually wear it, but you might as well.”

“If I’m even alive for the dance,” I said, only half joking.

She turned and looked at me solemnly. “You will be, Alexis,” she said. “I promise we’ll find a way to fix what’s happening.”

I sighed. The fact that she took it seriously made it seem so much harder. Half of me wanted someone to convince me that it was all in my head. Then I could pop a magic pill and go back to my normal life.

Except, what was my normal life? Could I go back to hanging out with the Doom Squad? Could I go back to hating Megan?

“What are you going to do with your hair?” she asked, reaching toward the back of the rack. “Have you thought about wearing it up?”

“No,” I said truthfully, because I hadn’t thought about my hair at all.

“Okay, don’t hate me for this,” Megan said, and turned around, holding out a dress…a pink dress.

When I say pink, I mean Pepto-Bismol pink. Easy-Bake Oven pink. Beauty-pageant pink. I took an involuntary step back, as if she were holding a snake. “Uh-uh. No way.”

“Come on, it would be adorable. You’d look like a punk-rock Barbie doll.”

“No,” I said. “Megan, no. People would think—”

“I thought you didn’t care what people thought about you.”

Crud. “I would look like a strawberry.”

“Not even,” she said. “I’m telling you, it would be the cutest thing ever.”

I looked at the dress. It was kind of 1960s looking, with a neckline that went in a straight line from the top of one shoulder to the other, and no sleeves. It flared a couple inches under the bust into a puffy skirt that went down to about knee-high. The fabric was kind of stiff, so it stuck out.

“Take it. You’re taking it. You have to,” she said. “Everyone will die.”

“Oh, great,” I said. “Just what I need.”

“What, for people to think you’re cute and have good fashion sense? That would be devastating. Oh, oh– I know what’s missing.” Her eyes swept over the room, searching for something. “Where’s my tiara?”

I couldn’t take it anymore. “Fine!” I said. “I’ll take the dress, but nothing else. No accessories.”

I’d only meant to make us safe from her grandmother, and now I was being talked into wearing a pink princess dress. I hadn’t worn pink clothing since fourth grade. We had to leave before she found the tiara.

“Yay,” Megan crowed, and she draped it over my arm. She took one last look around the room.

“Are you going Friday night?” The question kind of slipped out.

“Yeah. Kind of have to. School spirit, rah rah rah.” “Who are you going with?” I asked. She shrugged. “Myself.”

“You don’t have a date?”

“Who needs a date?” she asked. “He’d just try to dance and look stupid anyway.” Who’s punk-rock now?

We didn’t even pause as we walked by the kitchen. Megan picked up her schoolbag from the front hall and shouted over her shoulder, “Bye, Grandma!”

“God keep you,” Mrs. Wiley called back as we walked out the door.

“Why did she say that?” I asked. Was she on to us?

Megan shrugged. “That’s what she always says.”

19

The afternoon light had begun to fade from pale white to gold, and the wind had picked up, sending whirlwinds of fallen leaves tumbling across the street. When we paused at stop signs, the leaves blew against the car and made faint scraping noises.

“We’ll go inside and look around a little,” Megan said, drumming along to the song on the radio, “and then maybe we’ll have something to work with.”

“Megan,” I said, hesitating.

She turned the radio down. “Yeah?”

“I don’t want this to sound weird, because you obviously know more about these things than I do, but my sister is seriously unpredictable right now. I don’t think we should mess with her.”

She drove on, not looking at me, not saying a word.

“It’s just that it could get…risky. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I’m here of my own free will,” she said. “Stop making up reasons to feel bad.”

She went on tapping lightly on the steering wheel, and I stared out the front window of the car, trying to ignore the fear that hovered over my thoughts like an approaching storm. Megan and I had reached a delicate balance—and I didn’t want to upset that balance by second-guessing her.

Neither of us said a word as she turned onto Whitley Street.

We parked across the street from my house. After turning the engine off, Megan gazed silently out the window, not moving, not even to take off her seat belt. The air in the car seemed to settle, and the only sounds were our breathing and the scratching and skittering of the leaves outside.

I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye. She sat straight up, her body rigid with stillness, like a tiger crouching in the grass. The sudden change in her behavior frightened me.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

I didn’t even notice her hand move, but her seat belt clicked and went flying in violent release, scaring me out of my skin. I gave a shriek, which seemed to wake her up. Her lips pulled tight in a grim little line, revealing tension she didn’t want me to see. It was suddenly as if the house, and whatever was inside of it, were more than she’d bargained for.

But if she wasn’t going to admit it, I wasn’t going to challenge her. “Ready?”

She gulped in a breath of air and nodded resolutely. “Let’s go.”

The car doors unlocked with a soft click, and we stepped out onto the road. The wind hurried by us, moaning softly. The perfect fall day was cooling into a chilly twilight, and the sky seemed to glow soft brown. I shivered involuntarily.

Megan grabbed her bag from the trunk and faced the house.

“The dress?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Leave it for now.”

I closed the trunk. The noise seemed to get lost in the wind.

We must have looked like a solemn little procession, staring up at the house as we crossed the street and went up the front walk. I volunteered for the front position, and Megan followed a few steps behind me.

The front door was unlocked. I pushed it open and hesitated for half a second before going inside.

“Is she here?” Megan whispered.

“I don’t know.”

“Wow,” Megan said. I turned to see what she was looking at, but she was just studying the foyer. I tried to see it the way she was, the high ceiling plastered with

cherubs and angels, the leaded-glass window over the front door, the sweeping staircase opening up in front of us, the ornate handrail with its carved roses and vines….

“Let’s go upstairs,” she said.

As I reached the top of the steps and listened for sounds from Kasey’s room, I began to relax; although, as I learned earlier, it didn’t have to sound like she was home to mean she was. The door was open. I edged closer and sighed with relief; the room was empty. Even if Kasey was home, she definitely wasn’t in her bedroom.

Megan came more slowly up the stairs, looking back at the foyer and peering down the hall.

“I feel like I’ve seen this place before,” she said.

“There’s one in every scary movie,” I said, trying to lighten the mood. “Do you want to see my sister’s room?”

I went alone into Kasey’s room while Megan hovered a few feet behind me. The longer we were in the house, the quieter and more withdrawn she seemed to get.

Nothing struck me as out of the ordinary. I turned around to leave, but Megan wasn’t there. She’d wandered down the hall and stood just at the top of the stairs, studying the wallpaper, dragging her fingertips across it.

“Hey,” I said. “Maybe we should go outside for a minute.”

She turned to look at me, but instead of answering, she went ghostly white and seemed to freeze in place, staring over my shoulder down the hallway.

Not a good sign.

“Megan?”

She didn’t answer. Didn’t even move. I took a step toward her. “Wait,” she said. An order.

I obeyed. Too afraid even to move my head and follow her gaze behind me, I stared at her, trying to read her expression.

Nothing. Her face was blank.

“Sarah,” she said. “Sarah.”

“…Megan?”

“Sarah, Sarah, Sarah—”

“Megan, what are you saying?”

After a moment she seemed to wake up. Her eyes went wide and she shook her head furiously, but the name wouldn’t stop coming out of her mouth. Her whole body was stiff, her muscles so tense that the tendons showed in her arms.

“Sarah, Sarah, Sarah, Sarah—”

“Megan!” I cried. “Quit it!”

But she couldn’t. It was like me, in the basement, with the story.

I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her hard. “Megan! Stop it!”

She stopped, blinking a few times. Finally her gaze settled on me, and her glazed eyes seemed to clear.

“What happened here?” Megan gasped.

“Why do you keep saying that name?”

“In this house,” Megan said. “Something happened in this house.”

She collapsed.

Down the hall, Kasey’s door slammed shut all by itself.

Megan had fallen gracefully into a little heap in the corner. I knelt at her side and felt her wrist for a pulse. It was there—weak, but there.

“Come on,” I said, shaking her shoulder gently. “Wake up.”

Megan stirred; her eyelids fluttered open and then slid shut as if they were weighted. Her lips moved in an attempt to speak.

“Megan, come on, wake up. We have to get out of here.”

I grabbed her by both shoulders and pulled her up to a sitting position.

She blinked. “Let’s go,” she whispered, color flooding her pale cheeks.

I helped her to her feet, and as we went down the

steps, her hand gripped the banister as if it were a life preserver.

“What just happened?” she asked, her voice shaking.

“I’ll tell you outside,” I said, holding her by the arm as we crossed the foyer and hurried out of the house.

While Megan rested against the side of her car, my eyes searched the house, looking for any strange light or movement—Kasey’s face in a window….But there was nothing.

After a minute, Megan raised her head and looked at me.

“I’m okay,” she said, trying the words out.

I didn’t ask if she was sure, but our eyes met, and hers darted away.

“I am” she insisted. I waited for her to climb into the driver’s seat before I walked around to the passenger side.

Once we were safely in the car, she gripped the steering wheel in her hands and tightened her fists until the skin over her knuckles was white. She took a long, deep breath in and held it.

“Who’s Sarah?” I asked. The name seemed vaguely familiar to me, but I couldn’t place it.

“What?”

“Sarah. You just kept saying that name…Don’t you remember?”

“No,” she said. “I really don’t. All I remember is feeling something evil.”

She leaned back against the seat, staring intently at the steering wheel.

“You know how I keep saying I’m doing this for me…?” She hugged herself tightly. “Ever since I was a little girl, whenever I was around people—fortune-tellers, psychics—they’re all afraid of me.”

“Afraid how?”

“I just walk by their tents, and they come out and start yelling at me. Not the fake ones, but the real ones– the ones who aren’t just making stuff up.”

I didn’t want to ask what they yelled.

“They tell me Sarah is here and Sarah is angry and Sarah hates you. And they’re so scared; they just want me to go away. They get so upset.”

“Who’s Sarah?” I asked her.

“That’s what I want to know.”

I looked up at the house. It looked so serene from the outside.

“Whatever I felt in there,” Megan said, “it’s totally evil. Like bad evil, Alexis.”

She exhaled and started the car. As we drove down Whitley Street, away from the house, her face seemed to at least soften a little bit.

Where could we possibly go after that?

“We’re going to the library,” she said.

I nodded and leaned back in my seat. But as we neared the stop sign on the corner, something caught my eye. In the rearview mirror I could see our neighbor Mary guiding her gigantic grandma car into her driveway.

“Stop here,” I said, undoing my seat belt. “Park right around the corner and wait for me.” Before Megan could even ask where I was going, I was already out the door and cutting across the neighbors’ yards to Mary’s house.

I reached her as she was hoisting her trunk open. I gave her a bit of a scare, which made me nervous because she’s so old.

“Good heavens,” she said, looking at me. “Alexis, are you all right?”

“Yes, fine,” I lied.

“It’s not your father, is it?” she asked.

“No, no, nothing like that.”

I glanced at her trunkful of grocery bags.

“Do you want some help with these?” I asked, nodding toward them.

“Well, no…you’re all out of breath,” she protested, but I knew she didn’t mean it. I scooped three bags into my arms. Mary grabbed the small brown sack with the eggs in it and started up the front walk. How on earth did she ever manage to get all of her own groceries

inside? She must have had to make a separate trip for every single bag.

Up until a couple of years ago, I went to her house a few times a week and had lemonade and cookies while she asked me all about school and friends and life. She never ate any of the cookies, but she always had plenty around. They must have just been for me, and for Kasey, when I dragged her along. When was the last time I’d been there? I thought of a whole package of cookies going stale waiting for us to come visit.

It took two trips to get all the groceries inside.

Mary pulled a chair out from the kitchen table for me. “Would you like some lemonade?” she asked, making a move for the refrigerator.

“Actually, I can’t stay long,” I said. “I just have a question.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” she said. She let the fridge door slip shut and turned to me. “What’s your question?”

“You’ve lived here a long time, haven’t you?” I asked, even though I knew she had.

“Elvin and I moved here in 1972,” she said. Elvin was her husband. He died before we moved in, but I’d heard plenty about him over the years.

“Did you ever hear about anything weird happening in my house?”

Mary froze.

Aha.

Then she shook her head. “Maybe you’d better run along,” she said, suddenly very interested in the contents of one of the grocery bags.

“What was it, Mary?”

Now she looked right at me. “Perhaps when you’re a little older,” she said. “But I don’t feel right telling you now. Not when your father—not when you’ve got so much stress already.”

I wasn’t leaving that kitchen without names, dates, details. Everything she knew, I was going to know. I crossed my arms and looked back up at her. “I won’t tell my parents you told me, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

She stared at the floor. I kept my eyes on her. The sunshine coming through the window silhouetted her puff of silvery curls.

“I need to know,” I said simply.

She turned away, but I knew I was breaking her down.

“Who’s Sarah?”

“Sarah?” she asked, spinning back, her eyebrows forming a deep V on her forehead. “I don’t know anything about a Sarah. Do you mean—”

She abruptly cut herself off.

“Mary, please, it’s so important.”

“No, Alexis, I just don’t…Oh, for heaven’s sake.

Let’s see…They moved in at the end of the summer, 1995.”

“Who?”

Mary paced and fidgeted for a moment, wiggled her fingers, stared out the window. “I…I don’t remember.”

A lie. We both sighed at the same time.

“Can’t you just give me a hint?”

“No. I can’t. I can’t say any more.”

“Just tell me, did someone get hurt?”

“I guess so…” She stared helplessly at the ceiling, gripping the cross that hung from a chain around her neck. “I don’t know if I would say hurt, but she did…die.”

I fell limply against the back of the chair. “In the house?”

“Goodness,” she said. “This was a mistake.” “No, wait—someone died in my house?” She sighed like she knew it was too late to stop now. “Yes, in your house.”

“From natural causes?” “No, dear,” she said. “What year?”

“Let’s see, it was 1996. October. The middle of October.”

“So…okay, wait—nobody lived there until we moved in?”

“No, an older couple moved in for a year, but they

moved out very quickly. They didn’t seem to like the neighborhood.”

“What was their name?”

“Oh, good heavens, I’m terrible with names….” She frowned in concentration, the corners of her eyes and lips turning downward. “Sawamura. Walter and Joan, they were Japanese. Not very outgoing.”

“And then it was vacant until my family moved in?”

“Vacant, yes,” she repeated.

Holy cow. I leaned back in my chair.

“Are you sure I can’t get you some lemonade?” she asked.

Then I remembered that Megan was waiting for me. “October 1996,” I said, jumping out of my seat. “Oh, Alexis, I hope you won’t think about it too much. It was just so awful, we hate to talk about it.” Well, obviously.