“Sure,” he said. “That would be great.”
Echo motioned for him to follow her into the kitchen and he did so, taking in all the kitsch along the way. The walls were covered in various paintings and tapestries—old landscapes in frames of questionable quality, a macramé tapestry with wooden beads hanging from its fringe. A portrait of a woman with cropped dark hair hung just shy of the kitchen’s entrance. A little girl wearing a crown of daisies was poised on her hip.
“Is this your mother?” Lucas asked, pausing to take in the photograph.
“That’s her,” Echo replied from the depths of the kitchen. She pushed aside a few drapes to let in some light, illuminating a million dust motes with the motion. Gathering a couple of mugs from a cabinet, she placed a can of Folgers on the counter. “That picture was taken by Derrick Fink,” she said. The mention of Derrick’s name made Lucas’s skin crawl. It was strange to hear it brought up so casually, as though Derrick had been nothing more than a family friend, not a face that had made headlines.
“That’s incredible.” He murmured the words more to himself than to Echo, but she heard him regardless.
“Not really,” she said. “I mean, if you take away all the stuff you’ve read in the papers, they were all regular people. Good people.” She paused, scooped a few spoons of coffee grounds into the coffeemaker’s basket, and smiled. “Like you and me.”
That was what got to Lucas the most—the fact that everyone involved with Halcomb had been “regular.” Normal. Not demented. Not psychotic. Not weird and creepy with inexplicable religious beliefs. They were simply people. Shelly Riordan, Laura Morgan, Audra Snow . . . they had been like Jeanie. And yet somehow, they ended up swept off their feet by a madman’s musings.
“What happened to her?” Lucas asked, drawing his gaze away from the portrait and stepping into the kitchen. “I mean, if you don’t mind me asking.”
“My mom?” Echo shrugged her shoulders, as though her mother’s fate had no real bearing on her life. But despite the casual response, Lucas could tell the question bothered her.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m being way too forward.”
She waved a hand at him. “Oh, please. I’m the one who brought all that stuff over to you. If I didn’t want you asking questions, I should have probably kept to myself.” She filled the coffeemaker with water and flipped the switch, then moved across the kitchen to the little table that sat next to the window. Sliding a mess of mail and books and receipts away from its middle, she took a seat and motioned for Lucas to do the same. “Sorry about the mess,” she said. “I don’t usually have guests.” A pause. “Actually, I don’t ever have guests.” She laughed. Lucas cracked a faint smile. “After what happened over at your place, my mom got really depressed. I mentioned that she and Audra were best friends. Well, she took what happened to Audra pretty hard.”
“I can imagine.”
“When all of this was going on, I was staying with my grandmother a lot. She lived just outside of town, a quick fifteen-minute drive.” She shrugged again, gave him a wistful smile. “But something happened. Being so young, I can only assume what. Suddenly I wasn’t staying with Gran anymore. I remember that vividly. I just can’t remember if it was Gran telling my mom that she wouldn’t take care of me any longer, or whether it was my mom refusing to take me over to Gran’s anymore.”
“What do you think happened?” Lucas asked.
“I think my grandmother found out about Jeff,” she said matter-of-factly. “She probably got spooked by something my mom told her about the group. I ended up staying with an aunt just outside of Portland full-time after that. All the while, my mom was here. And then things got crazy—the group killed themselves, Audra died, Jeff got arrested. My mom killed herself a few weeks after that.”
“Jesus,” Lucas murmured. “I’m sorry. That must have been hard.”
Another shrug. “Life is hard. Death is easy.”
“What about your dad?”
“Never knew him.” Echo leaned back in her seat. “For all I know, he might pop out of the woodwork one day. That would be a trip, right? So, the photos I brought over . . . they’re helpful?”
Lucas looked away from the pile of junk on the table and gave her a nod. “Yeah, I can’t thank you enough. It’s all incredible. They belong to you? If I wanted to obtain rights to reprint them in the book, who would I ask?”
“Everything in the box that I gave you came from my mom,” Echo said. “All her stuff was legally passed on to me when I turned eighteen. So I guess you’d ask me.” Another smile. “It’s nice to finally have someone living so close by. Weird that you’re writing about Jeff, but I guess that’s what you call a happy coincidence.”
“I guess so,” Lucas said.
“The last family who lived in your house only stayed for a few months. They were a lot like you and Virginia, just a man and his son. But we never did gel.”
“Why’d they leave?”
“Something about work,” she said. “They broke their lease and moved to Seattle, I think. Maybe Vancouver. But I never did believe it was work related.” She paused, gave him a knowing look. “I think it was the house.”
The back of Lucas’s neck bristled. Had something happened to the man and his son that had driven them away? Like maybe the kitchen table magically ending up in the middle of the living room? Had they found people wandering around the property, holding séances and fire-lit rituals in an attempt to speak to the dead?