Page 63 of When Hearts Surrender

“How did she die?”

“She fell down the stairs and broke her neck. They said it was because Rex was playing with his marbles and didn’t clean up and she slipped.”

“How awful!”

“It really is. And what’s worse, Rex found her body.”

I gasp in horror at the image of a young boy finding his dead mother, and Melody sadly shakes her head.

“You see that patch of soil on the side of the photo? How no roses grow on it?”

I squint. She is right—there is a section of the rose garden that is bare, a large clump of dark soil.It’s the same plot of barren soil I noticed when I first arrived here.

“They said that nothing ever grows there—that it’s a sign of the curse. No life can survive in that spot. No one knows why.”

Goosebumps form on my arms as I stare at the area for a few more seconds, a niggling sensation in my mind—like a thought trying and failing to burst through.

Calm down, Belle. There has to be a reasonable explanation. Maybe the pH is off or something.

She moves on to another portrait, this one black and white, and explains to me this is Linus with his parents and siblings.

When I ask when Maxwell’s grandmother passed away, Melody replies, “It was a few years after Sir Linus was born, from what I heard. She had a heart attack, but she was so young, so it surprised everyone.”

Melody chats about the history of the family as she walks around the room, and I notice the photographs soon turn into oil paintings, the portraits clearly arranged in chronological order from the most recent to the oldest.

We move from portrait to portrait, Melody doing her best to tell me the stories behind them, and I’m fascinated by the little tidbits of history I’m learning and the changing fashions of the times, from elegant sheath dresses to the fringes of the twenties to the thick petticoats of the nineteenth century.

However, the levity of our conversation is dampened whenever she mentions the fates of some women in these portraits. There is an eerie pattern of seemingly random accidents culminating in their deaths, particularly the wives married to the older sons. Carriage mishaps, accidental drowning, influenza, tuberculosis, food poisoning—women dying after a series of events attributed to bad luck.

Melody whispers, “I mean, sure, everything could’ve been random, but then, what about the tree branch? No one can explainthat.”

I frown. “What tree branch?”

She slaps her hand on her forehead. “You need to know this stuff. So, apparently, before each of these unfortunate deaths, there’s always a tree branch shattering a window in the estate. It always happens shortly before the deaths and usually during a storm.”

My veins turn into ice as I shiver.This stuff can’t be real.

Melody cocks her brow, as if she knows what I’m thinking. “All I’m saying is, it’s a strange, specific pattern, and one can’t help but think it’s an omen.”

Finally, we stand in front of a large oil painting of a family of four from around the late eighteen hundreds, lovingly preserved behind a glass frame. There are two boys who look to be around ten years old, their postures ramrod straight and faces unsmiling, common for portraits around that time. They’re standing in front of a regal couple, a beautiful woman with blonde hair arranged in an elegant updo, wearing a lavender gown with sashes and adornments I assume were at the height of fashion back then.

But it’s the man standing next to her who gives me pause, who lodges my breath in my throat.

He looks like Maxwell.

Chapter 23

I swallow my gaspas I stare at the man, dressed in all black except for a crisp white shirt and an expertly tied cravat of a similar shade.

He has the same dark hair and striking eyes I’ve seen with each generation of Anderson, but his eyes are more familiar. He stands next to his wife, his hands clasped in front of him, his thumb rubbing a silver jeweled ring.

His piercing gaze smolders with so much anguish and sadness.

It’s a gut feeling, something I can’t shake.He has experienced something terrible in his life, I’m sure of it.

The floor suddenly swirls around me and I place my hand on the wall for support, my body growing clammy. I may be coming down with something.

“Are you okay, Belle?” Melody asks.

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