Page 58 of The Gallagher Place
“Are you all right in the cold?” Marlowe asked. “I can help you back inside.”
“Oh no, I’m fine,” the woman rasped, her voice like sandpaper. She raised the cigarette, as if to prove her vitality. At her age, Marlowe figured, what was the point of quitting?
The woman gestured to the chair across from her. “Sit. It’s too damn crowded in there, isn’t it?”
Marlowe sat down, relieved to keep her distance from the other smokers who had been eyeing her. This old woman seemed harmless—teetering on the edge of batty—and Marlowe doubted she would remember her in a few hours.
“Did you know Harmon?” the woman asked.
“No, not really,” Marlowe said. “I know the Gallaghers. Tom Gallagher was friends with my father.”
A version of the truth—something she was becoming quite good at.
“Ah, Tommy.” The woman’s yellowed teeth stretched into a grin. “My cousin. I’m Caroline. I was his favorite, you know.”
Marlowe stilled. Caroline Rodine. The one who’d inherited the land and sold it to Frank. Her heart raced. She’d come looking for answers, and here they were. After so many dead ends and uncertainties, Marlowe was frightened by the potential.
“I think I heard him mention you once.” It was a blatant lie, but Caroline beamed, probably the first time in years anyone had offered confirmation that she was anyone’s favorite. Marlowe thought of the crumpled family tree in her purse. Caroline grew up in the Gray House. Tom Gallagher would have patted her head long before Marlowe was even born. The thought stirred something sour in her chest. Jealousy. She wanted the old man to belong solely to her childhood. And yet Caroline had been callous with his memory, selling all the brothers’ land. In a way, Marlowe wondered if she was a better guardian of their legacy.
“He left me his land,” Caroline said, nodding toward the fields beyond the house, as if they could see the old Gallagher land if they looked into the distance. “The land Harmon died on.”
Marlowe leaned forward, matching Caroline’s hushed tone. “Really?”
“Oh yes. And I sold it quick. I was married with children of my own to take care of. Knew no good would come of keeping it.” Hereyes sparkled as she was likely remembering the tidy sum she’d made on the deal. “Harmon never knew Tom and his brothers, or he’d have stayed away.”
“Oh?” Marlowe kept her voice even. “Why’s that?”
“That farm was cursed,” Caroline said.
Marlowe blinked. “Cursed?”
“All family farms are, one way or another, but ours, well, it was special,” Caroline said. “Years and years ago, when the farm was thriving, a Gallagher married the wrong woman, I’ll put it that way.”
A shiver prickled Marlowe’s neck.
“James Gallagher, my great-grandfather.” Caroline spoke the name with pride. “He married a witch.”
Marlowe couldn’t speak, raising her eyebrows instead.
“Don’t worry, dear, I know how I sound,” Caroline said. “But when you’re my age, you stop caring. And you’ve been around long enough to see a few things. Believe me, I’ve seen things. Everyone back then knew that his wife was a witch, and his daughter, Victoria, was one too.”
Victoria Gallagher. The daughter obsessed with the hedgerow. Marlowe’s head swam, and she felt like she might suddenly topple over in her chair.
“James didn’t know what to do with her after her mother died,” Caroline continued. “Victoria was beautiful but dangerous, and useless on top of that, which is even worse for a farmer’s daughter. Made his life miserable, and she was just as unhappy. She spent her days locked up in her room, wandering the fields at night, riling up the cows, doing strange witchcraft in the barns. James beat her for it, but she’d just laugh and keep on.”
Marlowe pictured the old house, lit up by a full moon, the window cracked open, a girl in a white nightgown slipping out and into the fields, just as she and Nora had once done.
“He shouldn’t have beaten her.” Caroline sighed. “Only made her worse. That’s when she cursed the farm.”
“What—what was the curse?” Marlowe’s mouth had gone dry.
“Madness.” Caroline lifted her cigarette for emphasis. “They married her off to some poor neighbor, and she poured her own madness into that land. Sealed it with blood, they say, muttering the curse on her deathbed. Childbirth gone wrong. No doctor. Bloody business.” Caroline gave Marlowe a grave look. “Well, you already know what happened to Tom and his brothers.”
Marlowe nodded, a heaviness in her chest. Three brothers, three tragic deaths—an aberration she sometimes forgot, since it had happened when she was young. But now, after reading Dave’s journal, it all seemed darker. Sharper. A design crafted by a cruel hand.
“And then that girl in the nineties just disappeared into thin air,” Caroline added. “I warned the man who bought the land from me to be careful. I told him all about Victoria Gallagher. But he didn’t listen.”
“You think that girl went mad?” Marlowe asked, feigning casual interest.
