Page 136 of A Heart So Haunted
Even if I did, I wasn’t so sure my heart could take it. There was something cathartic about waiting every night. A little ounce of hope that a shadow would move out of the corner of my eye, that I’d hear something that couldn’t be explained. But I hadn’t seen so much as a curtain out of place, and neither had Emma.
I hadn’t gotten the courage to message Irene yet. I wanted to ask her about a reversal—if maybe she could ask that forum writer if he knew the curse that might have created the door in the first place. But our last conversation was too raw, and there was a deep, guttural feeling that the forum writer wouldn’t know any more than I did. Because, now, the house felt like a one-way street: I was driving in the right lane and no one was at my left anymore. The sense of dread wasn’t there at all.
Once or twice, I’d thought I’d felt the pressure from before, but it never lingered long enough for me to tell. I truly felt like whatever had kept Hadrian in the house had broken when his remains had been ruined.
I can fix it.
You can’t fix me.
He was right. I couldn’t.
Hadrian hadn’t needed fixing. Because loved ones didn’t need to be fixed. They simplywere.
Maybe Mom would reach that point one day, too. Where she found the solace she needed to heal from the inside out.
Emma and I finally pulled onto another dirt road—nothing more than two paths for tires, long since dried to nothing but dust andpebbles. The sea oats were high and packed on either side of the SUV, brushing up against us like fingertips, and I thought we might be close to a shore or marsh.
“Isn’t the Uroahs’ farm back that way?” Emma pointed off to the right, straight to a tree line that grew inland. We’d gone to school with the Uroahs’ youngest, Melony.
“Maybe,” I whispered.
We bumped over a small hill. Emma held onto the handle above her door, while I craned my neck to see over the wheel. The grasses broke apart into a flattened area, and sure enough—the soggy glint of marsh dissolved into a river just beyond.
The flattened area was trimmed, though not recently. A little wrought-iron fence, eaten with rust, guarded the plot.
I eased to a stop. The plastic bag in my pocket felt unnaturally heavy.
I glanced to the papers stuffed between my console and my seat. Then the GPS, just to make sure.
This was it.
“This … is not far out of the way,” Emma said, cautious. She turned to me. Her white tank slipped off a shoulder, exposing her bralette. “How did we not know this was so close to the house?”
It was about four miles up the road.
“Because it used to be part of the property a long time ago,” I said. Emotion clogged my throat. “I’m sure someone’s responsible for keeping it mowed.” There was no telling who’d taken ownership of the family cemetery. For all I knew, it could be the county, since the house was a registered landmark.
Emma watched from the passenger seat as I climbed out first. I pulled the little box where Hadrian’s teeth had been stored out of my pocket and clutched it in my fist, so hard it pressed against the bones in my hand. Finally.
Warm, welcoming air swirled around me.
This was him.
“What are you doing?” Emma scrambled out after me. I already reached the little gate by the time she caught up, my hands gliding over the arrowed points of the fence. I wiped away a few cobwebs. The grass hissed around us in welcome, but the slow gurgle of water in the distance calmed it, calmed me.
“I need to find someone,” I whispered.
“Uh … okay?” She shielded her eyes from the sun and swiped her hair off her neck. “Who are we looking for?”
The gate screeched as it swung. I propped it against a weed cluster so it stood open for us. I didn’t say anything as I started scanning headstones—starting closest to us, then row by row, working my way back. The most recent years were up front, and grew older the farther back I wove. One after another, I scanned the names.
“I’ll know it when I see it,” I said, soft. My hands grew sweaty, slick.
In the very back, off to the right, a little square marker, shaped like a brick, lay hugged with weeds. The date caught my attention first.
1855.
I paid no attention to the other plots. Only this one.
