Sam took a step toward me. “Bram, are you okay?”
“After my dad died, they put all his stuff into boxes like these. They piled them into a truck and drove them away. I was young when it happened. I was afraid to ask where the truck was going. I still don’t know where it went.”
Once the movers had gone and the truck had disappeared, I’d searched the house. Even the basement. It was like he’d never been there at all. Like maybe I’d imagined him, too.
“How old were you when your dad passed away?” Sam asked gently.
“Twelve,” I said.
“How did he die?”
“Carbon monoxide poisoning.” I’d been asked what that meant so many times that I’d prepared an answer I could recite by heart. “Carbon monoxide is a colorless, odorless gas produced when any kind of carbon-based fuel is burned. If the gas isn’t properly vented, it can fill a building and kill everyone inside. More than two thousand people die from carbon monoxide poisoning every year.”
I watched surprise take over Sam’s face as he put two and two together. “I know what carbon monoxide poisoning is. Isn’t that how—” He stopped.
“Go ahead,” I said.
“Isn’t that how your uncle’s first wife died, too?”
“Yes,” I told him. “It is.” I forced a smile. That was all I was going to say. “Thank you for bringing me here. If you see James, tell him I’ve gone out for the day. If I’m not at breakfast tomorrow morning, you can assume I’ve been eaten by spiders.”
“I’ll be sure to check in on you before that,” Sam assured me. “I know Louth hasn’t felt like the most welcoming place, but none of us want you to get eaten by spiders.”
“What a relief,” I told him.
Once he was gone, I locked the door and got down to work. I opened the first box of books, setting aside my own history as I dug into Lark’s. I’d been fascinated by her for months, but I don’t think she’d been real to me until that moment. The books shared secrets about her that the town gossips had never known. Several novels appeared to have been dunked in water, which puzzled me for a moment, until I realized Lark must have liked to read in the bathtub. She loved the Brontës and Wharton and du Maurier. Her copy of Rebecca was falling apart, and the tattered cover had been carefully taped together. The first page of every book bore an embossed stamp. From the Library of Lark Bellinger, it read in a fancy-script font. I ran my finger over the raised letters the way she would have. The embosser must have been a present from someone she loved. The style hardly fit the girl I’d seen in the photos. And yet Lark had used it religiously. She was sentimental.
When I’d finished with the two boxes that Sam had brought out, I went to grab more. I discovered four more boxes of books, two labeled Stuff, and a box marked only with the letter X. I pulled off the strip of tape that sealed it and found a stack of seven framed photographs inside. They had all been taken at the manor at various points in history. There were women in flapper dresses playing croquet on the lawn. A man in a tuxedo with ridiculously wide lapels was hosting a lavish party. Dahlia descending the renovated grand staircase in an evening dress. At the bottom of the box was a little leather book with a clasp. I thumbed through enough of the brittle, yellow pages filled with phone numbers and addresses to conclude that it couldn’t have belonged to Lark—or anyone else from the twenty-first century.
I unpacked and repacked three more boxes before I hit pay dirt in the form of a black cardboard scrapbook. It was old, but not old enough to look interesting. Used, but not loved. It looked like something Lark might have found at a thrift store or a flea market. Anyone who’d seen it on a shelf would have left it there. From the outside, it seemed like a scrapbook meant to be filled and forgotten.
I opened it, and inside was a different story. I flipped through the scrapbook, page by page. Brittle photos that looked a hundred years old and clippings that appeared to have been printed right off the internet were attached to black sheets that felt like preschool construction paper. Captions and notes written in white pencil accompanied many of the pictures. They weren’t scribbled down. Lark had taken the time to write clearly. She’d known that the scrapbook wasn’t just for her eyes. She had planned to share the stories she collected, but I don’t think she’d finished. The book ended with a third of its pages empty.
I went back to the beginning and started going through it more carefully. The first dozen pictures Lark had carefully adhered to the pages were all of Grace Louth. Arranged chronologically, they followed Grace’s development from a plump infant in frilly lace dresses to an impish child and later to a beautiful young woman with long blond hair worn in a single plait. In every picture, Grace stared fearlessly at the camera with such interest and intelligence that she seemed to be peering into a different world on the other side. This was not the girl I’d pictured as the heroine of the ghost stories I’d read online. I’d imagined a dainty doll with ringlets and ruffles. That girl had nothing in common with the real Grace Louth.
The final two images of Grace had been pasted side by side in the scrapbook. One was a photo, the other a newspaper illustration. The photo showed Grace at seventeen or eighteen. She was standing against a wall, her hair piled in a bun on top of her head and her arms crossed in front of her as she peered down at her photographer. She appeared thinner than she had in the earlier pictures, perhaps a bit paler. But the look in her eyes was the same as it had been—confident and determined. In a word, unafraid.
Beside the photo was a newspaper illustration that had accompanied a story about Grace Louth’s tragic death. The drawing was a perfect copy of the photograph in all ways but one. The newspaper artist had altered Grace’s eyes. Instead of peering out confidently at a photographer, they now gazed up toward the heavens. It changed everything. The girl they’d drawn looked like she was ready to throw herself into a river. The real girl in the photo looked far more likely to push someone in.
On the opposite page were Lark’s notes in white pencil.
Grace was born in New York City 1872. Died 1890 in Louth.
She fell in love with someone in Manhattan. (Can’t find a name.)
Must not have been rich enough. Daddy dearest was furious.
Legend says Grace and her lover were going to run away together.
The night they planned to elope, the dude was a no-show. (No proof this ever happened.)
Grace came here to Louth Manor to recover from a broken heart.
She refused to leave the house, so her father hired an artist to bring the outdoors to her.
The artist seems to have been a woman. (Can’t find any more.)