I’ve known men like him—ones who get violent when they think someone has taken something that belongs to them. I remember the boyfriend who came home from a bar with a swollen eye. He’d punched out another man just for looking at my mom.
I’ve only seen Jim Grosso in passing—mostly I wait in the car whenever Ashley goes into the butcher’s after work to pick up a cut of meat for dinner. But Cliff’s face is vivid in my mind. His mouth, always twisted with rage.
I don’t want to think about what he’s capable of when that rage comes to the surface. What he’d be capable of after a night of drinking and running into the girl he thinks took everything from him.
—
The hours tick by, and I stay in my room, watching the empty screen of my phone. I don’t want to face the thousand questions from my family. I’m hiding again, like I did those first few weeks after I moved to Broken Falls.
For my first month or so in town, my strategy was to stay out of everyone’s way. As if maybe the Markhams would forget I existed. I’d sneak into the kitchen when I knew no one would be there, like some burglar who’d broken in just to drink their expensive almond milk and eat handfuls of farm-fresh cherries.
Ashley was too busy with running Milk & Sugar and my dad was too absorbed in work-sleep-repeat to breathe down my neck much. Lauren was like a cat, skittering out of the room when she sensed me nearby.
Andrew, on the other hand, wasn’t content to let things be. He’d decided that the right thing to do was be my friend, and he wouldn’t stop until I relented. I was washing my cereal bowl one Saturday morning when he bounded into the kitchen, skidding to a stop when he saw me. “Hey. What are you doing?”
I felt my face redden. “Cleaning up after myself?”
“Want to go for a run?”
“Like, on purpose?” I never ran unless someone was chasing me or if New York State required it for me to pass gym class.
“Yeah, why not?” Andrew zipped his fleece up to his chin. “It’s a beautiful day.”
It’s not like I had anything better to do. He’d scolded me when I came back into the kitchen wearing my Vans, telling me they were terrible for my feet. I had to borrow Ashley’s running shoes—we’re both a size eight.
I felt his eyes on the scribbles alongside my shoes. I was born with the devil in me. Heat went to my cheeks; it was a stupid lyric from some band I was obsessed with in ninth grade. I would loop the song on those nights where music was my only escape from my mom and the boyfriends and the awful things coming out of their mouths.
“So you like running?” I asked while I was lacing up Ashley’s tennis shoes, as Andrew called them. Desperate to change the subject from my ratty, creepy Vans.
“It’s okay. I feel like I have to do it.”
“Why?” If he was going to say to stay skinny, I was going to punch him in the nuts. I had about ten pounds on him despite being six inches shorter.
“I’m going out for cross-country in the fall,” he said. “I used to play soccer and I’m afraid colleges will think I’m getting lazy.”
“Why did you stop playing soccer?”
“I got kicked off the team for missing too much practice.”
I couldn’t fathom Andrew being kicked off anything; he was so type A, so hyper-focused on success. Before I could ask why he missed so much practice, he nodded to my feet. “Those fit okay?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
I followed Andrew as he made a right outside the house. I realized we were heading west and would pass Sparrow Kill.
I saved my breath to say something once we approached. The barn wasn’t visible from the road, but the hill was still covered in snow at the top.
“Do you believe the Red Woman stories?” I asked Andrew.
Andrew hadn’t even broken a sweat; I realized he was running under his usual pace for my benefit. “I mean, everyone knows the massacre was real. But I don’t think there’s anything, like, supernatural going on.”
“But the Red Woman,” I said. “For her just to disappear.”
“People disappear all the time.” Andrew shrugged. “Most of the time, they’re dead. Sad but true.”
For some reason, the thought put a deep sadness in my gut. A sense of loss I couldn’t describe.
“What if it’s not always true?” I said, the cold air cutting through my lungs.
Andrew turned to look at me. “What do you mean?”
“Hold up.” I stopped by a wooden rail guarding the Strausses’ property. I sucked in air, greedily, one hand over my heart. Andrew’s chest rose and fell evenly.
“I mean, maybe it’s crazy to think the Red Woman got away and lived happily ever after,” I said, when I got my breath back. “But all those other people who go missing…it’s not like the whole world looks for every person who disappears.”
I’d never felt stupider in my life. But I went on: “I don’t know, maybe the world sometimes just swallows people up. Maybe people just get away.”
“I hadn’t thought of it like that.” Andrew leaned against the guard posts. I pulled at a blade of grass near my sneaker.
“Can I go up there?” I asked.
“The barn? Why would you want to?”
“Curiosity.”
“It’s pretty disappointing during the day. It’s just a barn. No evil spirits lurking.” He wiggled his eyebrows and made his voice deep. “Those only come out at night.”
But I was already leaving him behind. The sun was coming up over the hill, bathing everything in gold. My calves ached until I reached the top and collapsed on a stump, chest heaving.
I thought of what had happened up here—the brutality of what Hugh Leeds had done to his family, and I felt sick. I thought of the things I had almost done to my own mother.
A chill passed through me as I imagined Josephine Leeds, trapped in the barn. Her screams as she heard the gunshots from inside the house. That was when I decided that all the ghost stories got it wrong: evil isn’t a spirit or a monster or a ghost. It lives inside regular people, and it doesn’t know the difference between night and day.
CHAPTER SIX
The shrill sound of the house phone invades my sleep. I turn over and see the time on my cable box—four-thirty a.m.—and snap to attention. There’s only one acceptable reason for someone to be calling this early, and that reason is death.
My heart hammers. Bailey. They found her. Or she’s home.
The landline stops ringing; I swing my legs over the side of the bed and pat my nightstand down, searching for my phone in the dark. The screen lights up, but there are no calls or texts from Jade. If they found Bailey dead, Jade would know, and she would tell me—
I flip on my bedside lamp and scan the carpet for my slippers, slip them on, then fly out of bed and throw my door open.
Ashley is standing outside my door, one hand poised to knock. The other is holding the house phone. Her eyes are red.
I swallow. “Was that about Bailey?”
“Oh hon, no. I’m sorry. But a bit of good news.” She sits on the edge of my bed. “There was a pipe burst at the high school. You don’t have to go to school today. Probably going to take the rest of the week to fix it, actually.”