Page 107 of Home Before Dark

“I have one last question.”

“What is it?” Marta replied with understandable exasperation.

“You said you were awakened by a sound from the third floor.”

“Yes. I realized later it was the sound of Curtis’s body hitting the floor. A loud, horrible thud.”

“Do you happen to know what time this was?”

“I looked at the clock when I realized Curtis wasn’t in bed. It was four fifty-four a.m.”

I had already assumed that. Yet it still didn’t prevent the full-body shiver I felt upon hearing it.

Baneberry Hall remembers, Hibbs had said.

And so it did.

It remembered key events and repeated them. What I’d been trying to understand was why. There had to be a reason I heard that dreadful thud upstairs every morning. Just like there was a reason for the ringing of the bells and Maggie’s near-constant visits from the man she knew as Mister Shadow.

He says we’re going to die here.

Coming secondhand from my daughter, it sounded like a threat. That the unruly spirit of Curtis Carver planned to do us harm.

Then why hadn’t he done it yet? Instead, he continued to try to communicate with us. Which made me think he wasn’t threatening us at all.

He was trying to warn us.

“Other than the tapping your husband heard, was there anything else he might have experienced that was suspicious?” I asked Marta.

“I already told you that he didn’t,” she said.

“And he never talked about feeling uneasy in the house?”

“No.”

“Or that he was worried in any way about your family’s safety?”

Marta crossed her arms and said, “No, and I’d appreciate it if you told me what you’re suggesting, Mr. Holt.”

“That someone else—or something else—killed your husband and daughter.”

Marta Carver couldn’t have looked more stunned if I had slapped her. Her body went still for a moment. All color drained from her face. Her appearance was so alarming that I worried she was going to pass out in the middle of the library. But then everything righted itself just before she snapped, “How dare you?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just that I’m starting to suspect that what happened that day isn’t what youthinkhappened.”

“Don’t you tell me what I know and don’t know about the destruction of my family,” Marta said with pronounced disgust. “How would you know better than me about what happened?”

I hesitated, knowing I was about to say something that soundedcolossally stupid. Insane, even. Not to mention completely insensitive to the plight of the woman who sat across from me.

“Your husband told me.”

Marta shot out of her chair like an arrow. She looked down at me, her face twisted by both anger and pity.

“I knew you were naive, Mr. Holt,” she said. “That was clear the moment I learned you’d bought Baneberry Hall. What I didn’t know—not until right now—is that you’re also cruel.”

She turned her back to me and started walking. Away from the table, out of the reading room, and, finally, out of the library.

I remained at the table, feeling the full, guilty weight of Marta’s words. Yes, it was cruel of me to burden her with my questions. And, yes, maybe I was also naive about the intentions of Curtis Carver. But something was about to happen at Baneberry Hall. Another remembering and repeating. Naive or not, I believed Curtis Carver was trying to save us from the same fate that befell his family. In order to avoid it, I needed to know who was responsible.

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