Page 57 of This Haunted Heart

“Good,” she said, and her voice cracked. Her body loosened further, going lax in my arms. “That’s real good, Loch.”

“Mother used to get confused and go wandering. Do you remember?” I felt her hair tickle my chin as she nodded. “I told him she was missing, and he rushed out to go looking for her. I followed him, surprised him, and strangled him until his legs stopped kicking.”

She coughed out a little sob, like it had caught in her throat. I knew without her saying so that thesob was for me, for the hard and horrible thing I’d had to do. Not because I’d shocked or upset her. I sensed it in her comforting touches, in her need to reassure me even as her heart raced faster under my palm.

Once I’d started, the words poured from me freely. “I covered his body in lilacs, wicker, straw, and whatever I had been able to fit in my pockets. And I left his corpse as a gift to the weaver women under a willow tree. He was gone by the next morning. No trace of him. When he never came home, everyone assumed he must have stumbled into a sinking spot in the marsh.”

“What happened after that?”

“Then the ghosts came,” I said, voice raspy. “Or, they were always there, I should say, filling up the dark places. But I was sure of them now. I could hear them all the time and see them even more clearly—not just when I was trapped in the shadows. I could feel them more crisply, too. They punish me and rightly so. They scream at me and keep me awake. They are my comeuppance. My penance.”

“If we left this house,” she said, sounding hopeful, “if I took you someplace else, would the spirits leave you alone?”

“For a short time. I’ve tried. I own several properties, but they always find me again eventually. It’s not the house that’s haunted, Rynn. It’s me. I’m haunted. Because of what I did to Pa.”

“I think I might be haunted too,” Rynn sniffled. “I know I should be sorry for the part I played in his death, but—”

“Not for that,” I told her. “There are many things I’ll let you be sorry for. Not him being dead. He doesn’t deserve it.”

The next quiet that fell between us was thick and sticky with tension, like I’d sunk into a vat of pine sap. I waited in earnest for her to fill the silence, could almost hear herthoughts churning to get out.

“Are you ever going to forgive me?” she asked, her voice so soft it was difficult to hear her over the rush of my pulse. “For the rest of it? Are you ever going to forgive me for leaving you?”

I didn’t have an answer for her, so I didn’t give her one. I stayed with her that night until her breathing evened and she fell asleep.

Chapter 15

Rynn Mavis

The next week brought lots of rain. I loved watching it storm from my big cozy window seat, a book in my hands and a warm blanket over my lap. Sometimes Lochlan joined me with tea and coffee and cakes.

We didn’t talk much, just watched from my window as the sky bathed the earth.

When the rains finally stopped, we returned to our walking ritual. Two days later, after we concluded our morning routine, I set off looking for where Lochlan was hiding my savings—or so I told myself. Eventually, I wound up in the attic and could no longer pretend that my cash was what interested me most.

I wasn’t certain I even wanted my savings anymore. Dreams of retirement and a new life had lost their glimmer themoment I learned who Finley truly was.

I had to know more abouther, the woman Lochlan had loved and lost. When I tried to ask him questions during our walks, he laughed at me and quipped about my jealousy. Curiosity burned through me each time he evaded the inquiry. I needed something more. A picture. A name. Had she given him children? Had she been educated? Had they traveled? What had she been like? What had their life together been like?

Why’d she leave him before she died?

How had she died?

She’d gotten to live the life I hadn’t, and I was damn near obsessed with learning more about what I’d missed. It was self-torture. In this I was a masochist, chasing my own demise. I knew it, but it didn’t make it any easier to stop myself.

My wandering brought me down to the first floor, just past the foyer where the main stairs divided around the locked central room, the one I’d spotted the first time I’d been shown the house.

Lochlan joined me there. He leaned against the banister, observing my progress with amusement.

“Why is this door locked, too?” I tried unsuccessfully to peek through the keyhole in the large set of double doors. “Are there scary ghosts in there as well?”

A secret smile lit up his face. “No scary ones. Granted, there are ghosts everywhere.”

“Then can I go in?”

He shrugged his shoulders, pushing off the wall. “You can certainly try,” he said, lumbering down the hall toward the drawing room.

That sounded an awful lot like a challenge. A challenge I immediately accepted. I went at the lock with a kitchen knifeand a hat pin, but the tumblers were too advanced and my efforts were in vain. I tried every trick in my arsenal, but I didn’t have the right tools.

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