That was the only explanation. Founder’s Day always brought out weirdo distant cousins, but not this many. The last time I had seen this kind of a crowd was when my second cousin once removed had croaked. Half the family showed up at the Cottage to see if they had made it into her will.
“No,” Prue said, shaking her head. “No way. They would have told us in school. I don’t even recognize half of these people—she’s just having a special party and forgot to tell us, as usual.”
Okay, that wasn’t impossible, but why did it feel like they were waiting for us?
The wind whistled through the dense trees around us, stirring up the whispers of the leaves on the ground. I felt it nudge at my back, pushing me forward down the steep path, toward the cobblestoned driveway. The wild ivy that grew alongside it stopped at the exact point where stone met dirt, as if too frightened to grow in the direction of the house. The birds in the trees stopped their chattering as they fluttered down to the wrought-iron fence that guarded the estate like the barbed back of a serpent.
“Is that…?” I began, squinting.
It was. My grandmother was standing in front of the family, holding a silver tray of chocolate chip cookies.
I almost didn’t recognize her. Grandmother, who only ever wanted to be called Grandmother or Grandmère even though none of us were French and had no plans of becoming French, was a lady with sharp features. Her hair was the same shade of gray as an overcast sky, always kept in a tidy little bun at the base of her skull. Grandmother was tall and always rigid—and I mean rigid. Sometimes, when she wore a gray dress suit, it felt like I was talking to a frosty streetlight.
“Ooooh, children!” she sang out. “Hurry, won’t you? We’ve been waiting for you.”
That was it. I whirled around with only one goal: to run back up that hill, through the creepy forest, and straight out of Redhood. If she was giving us sweets and talking in that strange, drippy voice, it could only be for one reason. She was going to poison me.
Prue caught my elbow. “I’m so sorry we’re late. Mrs. Marsh’s orchestra was playing in the gazebo and we were enjoying ourselves so much we lost track of time.”
There was a slight twitch at the corner of the old lady’s right eye, but she recovered quickly. “No matter, my darlings.” She handed the tray of cookies to one of my aunts and motioned for my other one to take our schoolbags.
A drop of sweat ran down the back of my neck despite the cold air. Everyone, at least fifty people, was staring at us. Even Great-Uncle Bartholomew, who had been engaged in bloody warfare with my grandmother over the Cottage for years. He was missing his left eye, which Grandmother swore was because he had an “unfortunate run-in” with a fireplace poker. Personally, I think she was aiming for his heart, and had missed.
Grandmother ushered Prue into an awkward hug. Her arms were stiff as twigs, and one hand came up to pat Prue’s back, like she was burping a baby.
I took a step away, but my cousins swooped in.
“Prosp, it’s so great to see you,” said David, who once locked me in the Cottage cellar for ten hours to see if the mice down there would eat me.
“It’s been too long! What’s up?” said Josh, who spread the rumor at the Academy that I still wet the bed.
Sarah, who had stolen one of Grandmother’s diamond bracelets and dumped the blame on me, asked, “How is school going? I hear you have Mr. Wickworth this year….”
And Charlotte, the oldest of all of us, the one responsible for throwing me off a second-floor balcony to see if I could fly, only smiled and wrapped an arm around my shoulder. They all looked like my aunts: tall, extremely blond, and tan, even in the dead of Massachusetts winter.
The rest of the family came at us like ants swarming a piece of candy on the sidewalk. We were crushed in a sea of white suits, silk dresses, and fur coats. I was passed up through a line of family members, half I didn’t even recognize. They didn’t let me go until I reached the foot of the curved marble stairway that led into the Cottage’s grand entry. My grandmother stood at the top step, staring down the length of her nose at me.
She clapped her hands three times, summoning silence. The lights flickered on behind her, the candles in the hanging lanterns sparking to life like magic. I glanced up at the dark sky and felt my chest tighten. Behind us, the curls of fog from the nearby woods were rolling down the hill, spreading like curious fingers along the grass. Trying not to shudder, I turned to look for Prue.
I caught the spark of her red hair at the other end of the crowd. But standing beside her, like he belonged there, was the stranger. He glanced toward me, bright eyes narrowing. I shifted on my feet and looked at the ground.
“Good evening,” Grandmother said finally. She handed her apron to the servant that had popped up like a daisy behind her. “We’ve awaited this night for a very long time, and it warms my heart to see so many of you decide to travel back to your ancestral home. Rest assured, we will put this all behind us tonight and finish our great ancestor’s work. We will be free of the last chain holding us back.”
I snorted, the sound deafening in the silence. Grandmother turned to look at me. Her light eyes slanted with the tight smile that spread over her face. “Welcome home.”
Let’s get one thing straight—the Cottage wasn’t really a cottage. It wasn’t a little wood house, with flowers and vines climbing up the white walls like you’ve seen in fairy-tale books. No. A better word for it would have been estate or palace.
New England Architecture magazine called it a “castle,” but that was kind of a stretch. Sure, if you went around back you’d find stables for horses and an acre filled with nothing but my grandmother’s garden, but it wasn’t like there was a moat and drawbridge. As my dad tried to explain to the reporter a good ten times on the tour, the Cottage was only called that because it sat on the site of the original Redding family cottage, from when they had first settled in Redhood.
The building is somewhat difficult to describe, the reporter had written, being a mixture of the kind of stone castle you would expect to see in Europe and the grand tradition of colonial estates. The overall effect is sturdy, imposing, and hideously wealthy. What had once been a dark wood one-room cabin now contains thirty-eight fireplaces, marble imported from Spain, an indoor pool, a wine cellar, a front portico the size of a normal home, fifty guest rooms, a private spa, and a series of towers capped by finials, gables, and turrets.
Grandmother glowed like the moon when she read that. But, frankly, I thought it made the Cottage sound like a hotel for rich people to come get murdered. The kind you see in scary movies. Where the halls are haunted by ax-wielding monsters.