I’m so confused. “How do you know?”
“Here’s what happened. She moved from England to Spring Brook after World War II, okay? To live with her cousin George. They were on the east side of Hayden’s Glen, which back then was very white and well-to-do. Now my Pop-Pop Willie, he lived on the west side of Hayden’s Glen. In a neighborhood called Corrigan. The colored section. He pumped gas at a Texaco, and after work he would walk down to the creek to catch his supper. Pop-Pop loved to fish. He ate trout and perch every day if they were biting. One day he sees this pretty white girl walking barefoot. Carrying a sketch pad. She calls out hello and Pop-Pop said he was too afraid to look at her. Because again, this is 1948, remember? If you’re a black man and a white woman smiles at you? You look the other way. But Granny Annie comes from Cresscombe, in the UK. A seaside town full of Caribbean migrants. She’s not afraid of black people. She says hello to Pop-Pop every afternoon. Over the next year they get friendly, and soon they’re more than friendly. Soon Pop-Pop is creeping through the forest in the middle of the night, so he can visit Granny in your cottage. Do you follow what I’m saying?”
“I think so.” I glance over to the pool to check on Teddy. He’s still drifting in circles on the life raft, and I feel guilty for ignoring him on my last day, but I need to hear the rest. “What happened?”
“Well, so one day Annie goes to cousin George and says she’s pregnant. Only she wouldn’t have used that word back then. She probably said she was ‘with child.’ She tells George that Willie is the father, that she’s going to elope with him. They’re going to move west to Ohio and live on Willie’s family farm, where no one is likely to bother them. And Annie’s so stubborn, George knows he can’t possibly stop her.”
“So what happened?”
“Well, George is furious, obviously. He tells her the child will be an abomination. He says their marriage won’t count in the eyes of God. He says Annie will be dead to him, and the family will refuse to acknowledge her existence. And she says that’s fine, she never really cared for them anyway. Then she packs her things and disappears. Which puts George in a very embarrassing situation. He’s a pillar of the community. He’s a deacon of the church. He can’t tell people that his cousin has run off with a colored man. He’d rather die than have the truth get out. So he makes up a story. He goes to a butcher shop and buys two buckets of pig’s blood. There was no forensic science back then, blood was blood. He sloshes it all over the cabin, knocks over the furniture, makes it look like someone ransacked the place. Then he called the police. The town had a manhunt and they dragged nets through the creek but they never found a body because there never was a body. Granny called it the Great Escape. She spent the next sixty years on a farm near Akron. She had my mother, Dolores, in 1949, and my uncle, Tyler, in 1950. By the time she died, she had four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. She lived to eighty-one.”
Curtis tells the story with confidence and conviction, but I still can’t believe it. “And no one ever learned the truth? People in Spring Brook still think she was murdered. She’s the local boogeyman. Little kids say she’s haunting the forest.”
“My guess is that Spring Brook hasn’t changed much since the 1940s. Back then it was well-to-do, now I bet you just call it ‘affluent.’ Different words for the same thing. But if you drive over to Corrigan you’ll find plenty of people who know the truth.”
I’m reminded of my conversation with Detective Briggs. “I think I’ve already met one. I just didn’t believe her.”
“Well, I hope this puts your mind at ease,” Curtis says. “My wife’s waiting for me in the car, so I should put your friend back on.”
I thank Curtis for his time and he passes the phone back to Adrian. “Incredible, right?”
“We were wrong about everything?”
“Annie Barrett was never murdered. She’s not our ghost, Mallory. All those pictures have to be coming from someone else.”
“Teddy?” I look up and see Caroline Maxwell standing at the edge of the pool, calling to her son. “It’s getting late, honey. Time to rinse off.”
“Five more minutes?” he asks.
I wave to Caroline, signaling that I’ll take care of him. “I gotta go,” I tell Adrian. “Do you want to come over when you get home? Since it’s my last night?”
“If you don’t mind staying up late. The GPS says I won’t get back until midnight.”
“I’ll be waiting. Drive safe.”
My mind is reeling. I feel like I’ve run right into a brick wall. I realize I’ve spent the last few weeks chasing a dead end—and now I need to rethink everything I know about Anya.
But first I need to get Teddy out of the pool.
“Come on, T-Bear. Let’s get you rinsed off.”
We grab our towels and walk across the yard to the outdoor shower stall. There’s a tiny bench outside the stall, and Caroline has set out Teddy’s fire truck pajamas and clean underwear. I reach inside the door to turn on the water, adjusting the faucets until the temperature is warm. Then Teddy goes inside and latches the door and I stand outside holding his towel. His swim trunks hit the concrete floor with a splat, and then his tiny feet kick them out to me. I twist the polyester fabric in my hands, wringing out all of the water. Then I glance across the yard to Mitzi’s house. The lights in the kitchen are on, and Detective Briggs has returned to the scene of the crime. She’s walking around the backyard with some kind of metal pole, poking at the dirt, taking measurements. I wave hello, and she comes over.
“Mallory Quinn,” she says. “I heard you’re leaving Spring Brook tomorrow.”
“Things didn’t work out.”
“That’s what Caroline said. I was a little surprised you never mentioned it, though.”
“It didn’t come up.”
She waits for me to elaborate, but what does she expect me to say? It’s not like I’m proud of being fired. I try to change the subject.
“I just got off the phone with Annie Barrett’s grandson. A man named Curtis Campbell. He lives in Akron, Ohio. Claims his Granny Annie lived all the way to age eighty-one.”
Briggs grins. “I told you that story was a whopper. My grandfather grew up with Willie. They used to fish together.”
Teddy interrupts us, calling from inside the shower stall. “Hey, Mallory?”
“Right here, buddy.”
He sounds panicked. “There’s a bug on the soap.”
“What kind of bug?”
“A big one. A thousand-legger.”
“Splash some water on it.”
“I can’t, I need you to do it.”
He unlatches the door and then retreats to the far corner of the stall, getting out of my way. I reach for the bar of Dove soap, expecting some kind of nasty slithering silverfish, but there’s nothing.
“Where is it?”
Teddy shakes his head, and I realize the bug was just a ploy, an excuse to make me open the door. He whispers, “Are we getting arrested?”
“Who?”