“Jewel! Honey, where are you?”
He heard Avery March and Samantha coming up behind him as he stumbled, got up, kept running in the direction he thought her voice had come from. He ran faster, side twinging, breath ragged. He was so out of shape.
“Jewel!” Samantha called from behind him, panic pulling the syllables long and shrill.
There.
There she was.
He came to the clearing and saw her lying in front of the graveyard, curled up with her arms over her head. He dropped to his knees before her.
“Jewel.”
Her face, streaked with tears, was just as it was when he used to wake her from her childhood night terrors. Pale eyes wide with a terrified innocence. Her whole body used to shake, and it would sometimes take minutes—which seemed like hours—to wake her from wherever she’d gone in the universe, in her child’s mind, that was horrible enough to have her wailing and cowering in her unicorn bedsheets.
He gathered her from the ground, rocking her.
“Honey, Daddy’s here.”
“Daddy?”
“What happened, bunny?”
“There was a girl. I followed her,” she said. “She looked like—but she couldn’t be—”
Her voice trailed off, her eyes still staring at something only she could see. It had been a long time since she’d had night terrors, or sleepwalked. How long? Five years? Back when she was being bullied on social media and crying herself to sleep at night. The nightmares had come back then.
Her pediatrician had told them that these episodes would come back in times of extreme stress. Like now—when her mother had been sick, and her father had lost his job and moved her to his monstrous family home in the middle of nowhere. Guilt, the underpinning of parenthood. All your failings as a person were not just your problem anymore.
Samantha was beside them then, a hand on Jewel’s cheek. “Let’s get her inside. Can you carry her?”
With effort—she wasn’t a baby, and he wasn’t as strong as he used to be—he managed to get her back to the house, laying her on the couch.
“If you’ll allow me, I’ll make some tea?” suggested Avery March. “With honey. Sugar is good for a shock.”
“Thank you so much,” said Samantha. “It’s all over the stove, mugs to the right.”
Samantha covered Jewel with a blanket and sat beside her. After a few minutes, the teenager seemed to refocus, to snap back in, looked around, confused.
“What happened?” Jewel asked.
“You were screaming,” said Samantha. “We found you in the graveyard.”
She shook her head, frowned like she was trying to reorient herself. Just like when she was a little kid.
“Why did you go out there?” Samantha asked.
“I—” Jewel looked back and forth between them. “I don’t remember.”
“You said you saw a girl.”
She frowned. “I heard something. A slamming noise, then the ghost chair.” That was what they were calling it, the sound of something being dragged across wood floors. “I freaked out a little, so I followed you to the barn. That’s when I saw her.”
She sat up. “She walked through the trees and I followed.”
“There was no one there,” said Samantha.
Matthew’s shoulders tensed. “You were dreaming, kiddo. Sleepwalking.”
“No,” she said, frowning. “I saw her.”
“What did she look like?” Avery March had returned with a mug of tea. She leaned in to hand it to Jewel, who took it gratefully. “I put in a little honey. It will do you good.”
Jewel took a sip.
“The girl,” said Avery March. “What did she look like?”
“She was tall and super thin, leggy and gorgeous—like a supermodel. Long dark hair.”
“Someone from town?” suggested Samantha. “Pete said that people would sneak up here if we left the gate open.”
Matthew shrugged, feigning nonchalance. Something inside him had gone a little cold. Oh God. Please, no.
“What was she wearing?” March pressed, seeming tense.
Why did this woman have so many questions? Wait a minute. Matthew looked at her again, something dawning. Her name: March. It was a name he had buried deep, deep inside. But it clawed its way up into his consciousness now.
“She was wearing, like, a T-shirt with a faded four-leaf clover on it,” said Jewel, voice shaky. “With a white body and black sleeves, jean shorts, red Converse sneakers.”
“Sound like one of the kids from the area?” asked Samantha of March, leaning in to put a hand on Jewel’s head.
“There was a man too. I think,” Jewell went on. “Then a kind of fog fell.”
“Daddy might be right,” said Samantha, looking at Matthew with concern. “You must have been dreaming. One of your nightmares.”
“She was scared of him,” Jewel went on.
Avery March released a kind of noise—something between a groan and a gasp. She’d gone white, sinking into the tall wingback chair.
“Avery,” said Samantha. “What is it?”
“Amelia,” she whispered.
“Who?”
“Amelia March,” said Matthew, all the pieces clicking together. Avery March was the only Realtor in town who would work with him, who had an iota of interest in Merle House. Now he knew why. “Was she your sister?”
“Wait,” said Samantha, looking back and forth between Matthew and Avery March. “Hello? What are we talking about here?”
“She was my twin,” said March.
“Oh my God,” said Matthew, sitting on the matching chair. How could he not have made this connection? One of Samantha’s favorite criticisms: You only remember what you want to remember.
“Is someone going to tell me what’s going on here?” asked Samantha, her voice going up an octave.
But Avery March had put her head in her hands and was now openly weeping, issuing an unsettling sound that was eerily like whale song.
“Amelia March,” he said. He had hoped never to hear that name again. “She disappeared the summer I was sixteen.”
“She was never found,” interjected Jewel.
Matthew and Samantha both looked at her. “How do you know that?” asked
