Page 14 of The Haunting of Paynes Hollow
We’d gone to town, only Mom started talking to Mrs. Smits, and I got bored and asked to head home. She’d said okay, and I’d run the whole mile, raced up our lane and spotted Dad in the forest, digging a hole—
I yank myself back. My gaze snags on a black shape hanging on the back of a kitchen chair.
Dad’s cardigan. Still on his chair. Where he’d left it that morning.
“What the hell?” Gail breathes behind me. She walks past, gaping around. “What thefuckinghell?”
I don’t think I’ve ever heard my aunt use that word.
She turns to me, and for a second, she doesn’t seem to see me. Her eyes are wide, her mind someplace else, her breath coming quick.
Remembering her brother. Remembering all the times she’d stayed with us, in this cottage, when it looked exactly like this.
Her arms go out to me, but I pretend not to see them, turning away and tossing my bag into the corner.
“Sam?” she says.
“We should bring in the groceries.”
“Sam? Please.”
“Well, look on the bright side. At least we don’t need to worry about fixing the place up.” I run a hand over the little table by the door. “Not even a speck of dust. It’s like he sealed the building in plastic wrap.”
I look around. “I’m impressed. I mean, seriously impressed. It’s perfectly preserved, right down to my artwork on the fridge.” I walk over to the pencil sketches of deer and squirrels. “They aren’t even yellowed. Grandpa must have had them archived and put back up, exactly as we left them.” I whistle. “Next level, Grandpa. This is some truly next-level bullshit.”
Gail doesn’t answer, and I squirm. I try not to be so scathing around her. Whatever my grandfather had done, he was still her father. I understand the pull of that loyalty better than anyone.
I’m about to say I’m sorry when I see her eyes brimming with tears. Now I’m the one reaching out, and she falls into my arms, hugging me tight.
“I am so sorry, baby,” she says. “I have always known what my father is, and I have spent my life fighting against the urge to hate him. Making excuses for him. But this is inexcusable. This is…”
She trails off.Sadistic.That’s what it is. My grandfather had always been cruel, but this is pure gleeful sadism. I truly cannot imagine how much work went into preserving this time capsule for me. Because it was always for me. For the day when my grandfather died and I came back here, sentenced to spend a month in this twisted memory of my perfect childhood with my perfect dad.
How much joy had he gotten out of imagining this moment? Mewalking in, expecting a ruin, instead rocketed back to my last day here? He wouldn’t be around to witness it, but he must have spent joyful hours imagining it.
You twisted old fuck.
All those times my grandfather swore my dad was innocent because his very nature meant he couldn’t be guilty.
There wasn’t a cruel bone in Harris’s body. You know that, Veronica. Samantha knows that.
No, Grandpa. There must have been cruelty there, a darkness, and there is no doubt where it came from. Just look in the mirror.
How many people at my grandfather’s funeral said what a good man he was? My dad had been better at hiding his darkness from those who loved him. My grandfather hadn’t bothered. It was those who cared about him who’d suffered.
“You aren’t staying,” Gail says, herding me out the door before I can protest. She yanks it shut behind me and locks it with a decisive click.
“Gail…” I say.
“No,” she says firmly. “He is not getting away with this.”
“So the property goes to strangers who don’t need the money?”
“No, the property goes to the person who deserves it most. You. We are going to screw that old bastard over, and I hope to God he’ll be watching us do it.”
“There are no loopholes—”
“Yes, there are.” She turns to me. “I’ve had ideas. I didn’t want to tell you, in case you got here and things weren’t so bad, because my ideas require some work.”
