“Here.” Sam took off his wool hat and held it out to me as he pulled up the hood of his coat. It was the first thing either of us had said. It was enough to convince me that he wasn’t planning to kill me. At least not right away.
“Thanks,” I told him.
“I know you’ve got a phone,” Sam observed. “Don’t you use it to check the weather?”
“I didn’t realize I’d moved to the arctic circle,” I replied. “Does the snow ever get a chance to melt around here?” I gestured at the waist-high snowbanks along the road that were beginning to grow once again.
“Not this year, I guess,” Sam said. “By the end of March the snowbanks will be taller than both of us. They’ll find some interesting stuff when it all starts to thaw.”
“Like what?” I wondered what he knew.
I saw him glance at me out of the corner of his eye.
“Dropped phones. Dead deer. Lost dogs. Things like that.”
“People?” I asked pointedly.
“Once,” he replied. “Did Maisie tell you about April Hughes?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I guess you heard the story when you were growing up?”
Sam snorted. “At least a thousand times. Every time I went camping, someone would claim they’d seen her ghost wandering through the forest in her nightgown. Guys liked to make jokes about it. Every time you left the tent to take a leak, some douchebag would say you’d—” He grimaced at the memory. “Never mind.”
“What?” I asked. “Tell me.”
“They’d say you’d gone for a quickie with April Hughes.”
I felt him glance over at me. I didn’t look back. I turned my head toward the woods on the opposite side of the road. A girl had died out there all alone. She was wearing a single slipper when they found her—along with a nightgown and a terry-cloth robe. I remembered the police photo that Lark had pasted into her scrapbook. In her final moments, April had crawled under the boughs of a spruce tree and curled herself into a ball. Just imagining the terror she must have felt made me want to cry.
“Sorry,” Sam said softly.
“Why do people around here think April left the manor in the middle of the night?”
Sam seemed relieved that I was still speaking to him. “There are plenty of theories. The authorities were convinced she was suffering from some kind of mental disorder that had gone undiagnosed. I don’t know how many people around here ever bought into that one. Most think April either arranged to meet someone in the woods—or ran away from the ghost of Grace Louth. Then there’s my mom’s theory.”
“Your mom has her own theory?” For some reason, that surprised me.
“She met April the night she died. Believe it or not, they were around the same age in 1986.”
I did the math in my head. He was right. I tried picturing April as a middle-aged woman, but all I could see was Maisie’s mom. “How did they meet?”
“Back then rich New York types used to rent the manor for events, and people from Louth would be hired as staff. April Hughes and her parents were here for a weeklong New Year’s Eve celebration. My mom’s family had always worked at the manor, so she got a job as one of the servers.”
“She talked to April the night she disappeared?”
“Yeah,” Sam said. “It’s a weird story. On New Year’s Eve, my mom’s boss sent her downstairs to get some supplies, and she found April half-frozen in the cold storage locker.”
That got my attention. “How’d she get in there?”
“April claimed she’d been exploring the manor and had taken a peek in the locker. She said she didn’t know how to open the door from the inside and got trapped when it closed behind her. My mom didn’t believe it. She thought April had been hiding.”
“From who—or from what?” I asked.
“April wouldn’t say, and Mom never found out,” Sam said. “After April disappeared, Mom told the police what had happened, and they thought it was proof that April was suffering from some kind of illness. But Mom didn’t think April was delusional, and she still doesn’t. She thinks she was scared. April left a note—”
“The one that said someone’s at the door.”
“Yeah. Mom thought the note looked like it had been ripped out of some kind of diary. But nobody ever found the rest.”
We crested the hill and saw the manor’s lawn stretched before us, perfectly white and pristine. The snow was falling furiously, and I was glad to see the topiary monstrosities disappearing again, under the cover of snow. I stopped for a moment to gaze at the manor.
“If the house isn’t cursed, how do you explain all the terrible things that have happened here?” I said, not really expecting an answer.
“Lark once told me the manor is the key, not the cause,” Sam said.
“What do you think she meant?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. She used to talk in riddles sometimes. But I don’t care what people say. Lark was perfectly sane. She knew something. She just didn’t get a chance to tell anyone before the fire.”
That was exactly what I suspected as well. “Any idea what it was she knew?”
He shook his head. “I wish I knew.”
We stood side by side, watching the manor as if it might show us its secrets. But it sat there sullenly, wrapped in its blanket of ice and ivy.
“I tried to call Lark today,” I told Sam.
“They didn’t let you through, did they? We’ve tried, too.”
“The woman on the phone told me I’d have to speak to Lark’s dad. I thought maybe I’d try.”
“Ruben’s not talking to anyone these days,” Sam said. “If you try to go see him, there’s a good chance you’ll get shot.”
“So he really is—?” I didn’t want to say it.
“Ruben did two tours in Afghanistan as a medic. Lark said he saw things no one should ever have to see. Now his ex-wife is dead and his daughter is ill. I’d say he has every reason to be angry. Life hasn’t been kind to him.”
I was impressed by Sam’s compassion. Most people show either pity or fear when they talk about people like me or Ruben. Few ever try to understand.
“Sam, there’s something I need to ask you about. The other day when we were out here, I know I saw someone standing on the balcony of my room. It was a girl in white, and I’ve seen her since. Do you think it could have been Grace Louth?”