Haunted by Lynn Carthage Page B

murder her.
    Unless I could offer up someone else’s child.
    Â 
    I emerged from the claustrophobia of the manor and dragged in several welcome breaths of untainted air.
    But it was tainted. The winds on these grounds obeyed Madame Arnaud. They blew when she wanted. I looked to the thick covering of woods, which was keeping Madame Arnaud’s secrets for her.
    If only we had never come here. We’d still be in California, and the halls of the Arnaud Manor would steadily accrue their layers of dust.
    What had I done? I watched a few leaves skitter across my shoes. Was it something Bethany and I did? Why did I get in trouble and she didn’t?
    I tried to cast my mind back to that faraway place, that world where my worst worry was whether the mole in my cleavage could be seen in the shirt I was wearing. Had I maybe . . . partied too hard and screwed up somehow? Blacked out so I didn’t remember? I wasn’t a big drinker and definitely no drugs—I couldn’t run the risk of getting kicked off the swim team—and Bethany was always with me; we kept an eye on each other so we didn’t get into trouble with guys. Bethany would’ve kept anything from happening.
    I focused and tried harder, fixing my gaze on the upper roofline of the manor. What were those called: crenellations? ramparts? I used to have a plastic bucket that created those rectangular cutouts in the sand castles I made with it. For a moment, I remembered sitting on the sand at Stinson Beach, a child packing wet sand into the bottom of that bucket, hoping the shape would hold, that the castle walls wouldn’t fail and slide like salt settling in a shaker.
    Maybe it had something to do with Richard Spees.
    I bit my lip and walked away from the manor, feeling it at my back like someone about to tap my shoulder. Leave me alone, I thought. I’ve had all I can take .
    I could walk into town, leave all this behind. I could follow that twisting roadway until Miles pulled up to me in his car, grinning and leaning across to open the door for me. Except that he wouldn’t. He’d kissed me and then run away like he was horrified.
    I kept walking. I noted the ruins of a gate I hadn’t seen before, that had once blocked the way to the manor—someone had chipped away at it to reopen the drive, and left a pile of the bricks by the side. Where was one of those hallucinatory episodes, to rescue me? Couldn’t my mind zap me to the pool, or send me to the flower field just over the bridge that Miles wouldn’t drive to? For once, I wanted to be yanked away; I would gladly give up control. I just wanted to be somewhere, anywhere else.
    I left the driveway and cut through the trees. I heard a single bird issue a strident whistle. The trees had impressive root systems that gnarled through the dirt like ragged-skin serpents, making it difficult to walk without stepping up and over them.
    I came into a small clearing. In the middle, I saw a little stone cottage nestled amid thick foliage. My jaw dropped; Steven had said there weren’t any neighbors for miles around.
    This was a tall structure, but its facade was meant to emphasize its coziness. It looked a bit like a grotto, with handpicked rocks hewn into place to suit each other. Moss grew over the stones. There was one small wooden entrance, curved like a chapel door, with a brief set of stone steps leading up to it. Ever since I was a child, I had pictured Hansel and Gretel’s cottage as something wooden with a thatched roof, but now I was rethinking that. They might live in a stone cottage such as this, in the very heart of the woods, where inside they baked bread, never dreaming their father would push them into the wild.
    I climbed the flight of stairs. I don’t know what I was thinking, that I’d just knock on the door and introduce myself? Ask for help fighting Madame Arnaud? I reached out and turned the doorknob, made of a single, perfectly round gray