Page 81 of This Haunted Heart

Water gushed over the entry steps. We climbed the porch to dry ground. The front doors stuck from disuse but were unlocked. I muscled them open. We were careful where westepped, avoiding floorboards that were too soft. We moved cautiously out of the entryway, around the main staircase, and into the drawing room where the uneven floors inclined.

The fireplace was piled high with dried logs, crinkled leaves, and ash. A thick layer of dust settled over everything. A single sofa remained, stained with age, abandoned like the rest of the estate.

I pointed to the wide windows. “I saw you for the very first time right through there.”

Rynn came and stood beside me, dress dripping into a puddle beneath her. We peered out of the dingy glass together, seeing what once was: A long drive. Boren, tall and pale, chopping wood near the stables. Gertrude tending to the floors while my mother crocheted on the sofa. Martha creating heavenly smells in the kitchen.

And lovely little raven-haired Rynn, walking up the drive carrying an old potato sack full of her things between her small hands.

“I saw you, too, saw you looking at me, and I hoped you were nice.” She slipped her hand inside mine and gave it a squeeze. “And you were.”

I smirked at her. “Not a pirate?”

“Not at all. Well, not yet.” Her smile was sweet, and it crinkled the corners of her dark eyes.

We set to work then. I pushed the sofa up against the central wall. Then I gathered the logs from the fireplace and built a pyre around the old seat. Rynn ripped down the dusty curtains and added them to the mess.

She opened the closet door, searching for discarded linens. The door clattered against the wall, and Rynn stopped, eyes downcast. I moved to see what had made her pause.

The bottom of the door was scored with scratch marks made by tiny hands—our tiny hands.

I crossed to her, steps echoing in the quiet room, and I moved her aside gently. Age and wear had turned the door brittle. I kicked it apart in two brutal strikes. The boards splintered, raining down broken bits like matchwood. Lip quivering, Rynn helped me gather the pieces, and we added them to the very top of the pile.

A floorboard creaked overhead, and we both froze. My breath caught. Our gazes drifted to the ceiling, following the sound of groaning wood. Upstairs, a door opened then closed. Another flew wide, smacking against a wall before shutting just as sharply.

Rynn’s throat bobbed. “Is that him?”

I nodded. My body had gone inert. For a moment, I couldn’t even get my fingers to respond to my orders.

“What’s he doing?” she whispered.

I wasn’t yet sure. More doors opened. More boards groaned above us. Heavy bootsteps clomped down the stairs. Tension gathered in my shoulders, coiling my muscles. A part of me half expected to see him there exactly as I remembered him: the tall man with the big mean hands, a smile that never reached his eyes, and a barbed tongue that could tear me to shreds faster than his whip ever could.

The man who was supposed to be my father.

But there was nothing but a shade of him now. His ghost, a smoky transparent essence, moved solemnly downstairs, peeking into one room before trying the next.

“He’s searching for something,” I said, then it dawned on me. “He’s looking for my mother. She hasn’t lived here for fifteen years at least. He’s caught in a mill, like the spirit thatwon’t stop making your floor wet. He searches room by room. Then he begins again . . . There he goes now, back upstairs to start over.”

Rynn’s brows lifted. Then she frowned. “He’s been searching for her here for that long?”

“Yes,” I said resolutely as doors clattered above us. “He’s not even paying any attention to us.”

She sighed. “I hate how much that makes me feel sorry for him.”

I rubbed a hand across my chest, easing the twinge of sympathy building there between my ribs. “I hate it, too.”

“What will happen to him once we burn the house down?”

“He’ll keep searching the mire. He’ll never stop looking. There was no one else he cared about in all the world.” Mother was the only person my father ever showed any affection for, and he couldn’t find her. It had been a while, but I received a letter from her sister from time to time. She’d let me know how my adoptive mother was doing. She would still get confused at times, and in those moments, she always asked after my father, wanting to know when he would come home.

“I’m glad he’s dead,” Rynn said, face crumpling. “I want the house dead and gone too . . . but I don’t need to add to his suffering now. Not in this way.”

“I could help him,” I said, peeking down at the mud on my boots, “but I don’t know if I want to.”

Rynn hooked her arm around mine and laid her head against my shoulder. “It should be whatever you want, Loch. I think you should decide, but it doesn’t have to be right now. We could always come back here, you know? There’s no rule saying it has to be today.”

The freedom to choose felt like the most beautiful gift. Withher warmth pressed against my side, I knew what I wanted: him gone from here, far from us, and this house gone with him. I waited until his form returned to the stairs.

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