Page 51 of Holly & Hemlock
Whitby materializes in the doorway, her apron streaked with flour, hair pinned so tightly I wonder if her skull aches. She notes the key in my hand and, for a moment, her face distorts—the faintest recoil, almost a wince. But then she is herself again, impeccable.
“Finders keepers, Miss Vale?” Her voice is neutral, but her eyes aren’t.
“Was it meant for me?” I ask. The question is a probe, a test of boundaries.
She shrugs, a delicate flick at the shoulder. “The house is full of keys. And locks. Sometimes they get misplaced.”
I set it down on the table, the clink louder than it ought to be. “This one looks important.”
She inspects it with a glance, as if she’s seen a thousand identical trinkets. “I don’t recall,” she says. “But I’m told that when the house wants something found, it finds the right hands.”
“Was it you who left it?” I press.
She gives nothing away. “If it was, I’ve already forgotten.”
And with that, she is gone, leaving only the fading echo of her perfume and the sense of an answer rendered in negative space.
I finish my bread with the key in my lap, the weight of it a question mark against my thigh.
The morning roomis at the top of the stairs, past the point where the carpet runner begins to unravel into thread and memory. I’ve only been there once, on the tour with Whitby—no reason, really, except that I’ve kept to only a few rooms I find most comfortable and this isn’t one of them.
It is, however, the fifth room I’ve explored, looking for locks the key would fit into. I’m hoping fifth time’s the charm.
I turn the key in my hand, feeling the ridges imprint on my skin. The door is unlocked, of course, but the gesture matters. The ritual of entering, of claiming the right to be here. I step inside, and the air is immediately different—dry, tart with the scent of old paper and moth crystals. The fireplace is cold, but there is ash in the grate, meaning someone has used it this winter.
The desk is a secretary, in the oldest sense: roll-top, battered, the brasswork so pitted it looks like bone. I run my finger along the edge, dislodging a line of dust that sparkles in the hard light. The lock is original. The metals match and my pulse ticks up.
I push the key into the lock and turn. It eats the key with a greedy little snick.
The roll-top slides up with the slow reluctance of old age, the hinges squealing softly. Inside, the compartments are a chaos of half-written notes, bills, brittle envelopes. A single dried rose, blackened and shrunken, is pressed beneath a paperweight. The first layer is nothing—a decoy for the idle snoop. But behind the pigeonholes, shoved deep, I find the real cargo.
Papers, yellowed to the color of tea. Official seals. The first is a will, or a draft of one, my aunt’s handwriting unmistakable in the margin notes: “no, not this,” “find better,” “leave nothing for them.” I scan the lines, searching for my own name, and am half surprised to see it there, spelled with perfect malice. But the will is not finalized; there are multiple versions, each one more contradictory than the last.
In the earliest, Larkin is the sole heir—property, funds, even the title. But as the drafts progress, my name creeps in, first as a footnote, then as a direct challenge.
The final will is clipped at the top with a rusted bulldog clip, the signature dated two days before her death. This time, the house and everything in it is bequeathed to me. There is a note, scrawled at the bottom: “It must end here.”
My breath quickens. I look for evidence of forgery—some sign this is a joke, a performance. But the paper is thick, the ink a peculiar blue-black, the sort that stains forever. It is real. Realer than anything else in this room.
Behind the stack is a bundle of photographs, still in their original sleeves. I pick one at random. Whitby, thirty years younger, standing beside my aunt. They are outdoors, backs to a garden party. Whitby’s hand is on Maeve’s shoulder, possessive, as if she is pinning her to the spot. In the next frame, my mother appears, her hair in a tight bun, face obscured by the angle. There is a faint circle drawn around her head, a notation in pencil: “Too much like me.”
I flip to the next: Lane, as a child, flanked by a man I recognize from the photo in his cottage as his father, both of them in overalls, both caked in mud. They stand at the edge of the orchard, looking at something off-camera. In the blurred foreground, I spot the edge of school uniform-clothed boy. Larkin, even then, watching from a distance, eyes dark, mouth in a line.
There is a shiver that runs through the room, or maybe just through me. I drop the photos and open the side drawer, expecting only detritus—dried pens, a spill of tacks.Instead, there is a single envelope, addressed in my aunt’s looping script: “For N.” The paper is crisp, untouched by time.
I hesitate, feeling the pressure at my temples. My hands are sweating, my mouth dry. I open it.
Dear Nora,
If you are reading this, it means I have not succeeded in doing what I should have done long ago. Forgive me. Or don’t. I know better than most that some things cannot be forgiven, only outlasted.
You will find, in these papers, the evidence of what I could not bring myself to do. I am sorry for the burden, but I am more sorry for what would happen if I did not place it on you.
There is a sickness in the house, in the bloodline, in all of us who reside here. You may have seen it already—in Whitby’s obsessions, in Lane’s silences, in the way Larkin looks at you as if he is starving. It is a pattern older than any of us, and it feeds on the same things: hunger, longing, repetition. You are here to break the chain. If you can.
I am sorry for leaving you alone with it. But you were always the only one who could.
—M
