Page 52 of Holly & Hemlock
The letter Mtrails off like a dying pulse. I fold it in half, then quarters, then eighths, and press it flat between my palms. The air in the room feels colder now, and the dust motes circle in the shaft of light like the aftermath of some small, private explosion.
I sit back in the creaking chair, the will in one hand and the letter in the other. I think about the Christmas tree in the hall, about the way the ornaments refracted the light, about the feeling of belonging that lasted maybe three minutes before the old doubts returned.
I don’t understand what she means about breaking the chain. I don’t understand any of it, except for the haunting feelings the house gives, but I don’t know what they mean. I don’t know what it wants from me. And no one has, or even can, explain.
I wonder if Whitby has always known what this means, or if she is just another part of the mechanism.
I hear the key roll off the desk and hit the floor with a metallic, disappointed clatter.
The silence returns, but it is a different kind of silence—less a vacuum, more a waiting.
I tuck the letter into my pocket and gather the photographs. My hands are steady now. I may not know exactly what I have to do, but I’m determined to figure it out and do it. Hemlock House was left to me for a reason—I know that for sure now.
The dust motes, illuminated, settle on the will, obscuring everything but the words: “It must end here.”
I look up, and for a moment, I am certain that I am being watched.
But when I turn, the room is empty, the air only disturbed by my own breath.
And the chain, at least for now, is unbroken.
The kitchen isWhitby’s domain, but today it feels like a courtroom. The light is filtered through a pane of stained glass, painting the counter in blood and bruise. The air is thick with the residue of coffee and old arguments. I set the evidence down—wills, photographs, the letter folded so small it could vanish if I blinked.
The kitchen maid I’ve never actually met sees me first and disappears as quickly as she can. Whitby is washing something at the sink, her hands methodical, each movement pared to the absolute minimum. I clear my throat, loud enough to be heard but not so loud as to admit urgency.
She dries her hands on the hem of her apron, then turns to face me. Her expression is neutral, the mask so perfect it could have been carved in the early years of her employment and left to cure in a dark cupboard. But there is a tremor at the edge of her jaw, a ripple that suggests the mask is under stress.
“These were in the morning room,” I say, sliding the documents toward her. “You must have known I’d find them.”
She doesn’t move to touch them. “Everything in this house is meant to be found,” she says. “If not by you, then by someone else. The order is less important than the outcome.”
“The outcome,” I echo, soft but sharp. “So what is it? That I inherit all this?”
She finally looks at the papers, her eyes moving quick and surgical. “It was always going to be you, in the end.”
A pause, thick enough to chew.
“It wasn’t, though,” I say. “Not at first. Larkin was the original choice. Lane, too, at least part of the estate, in a different draft. Why me?”
Whitby’s shoulders tense, then release in a visible shudder. “Because the others were already part of it. The house. The pattern. You, at least, had a chance to choose.”
It is the most honest thing I’ve ever heard her say, and for a moment, I see her as she must have been: young, afraid, hopeful. It is gone in an instant, replaced by the same old machinery of service.
“Your aunt believed you were strong enough to resist what this house does to those who love it,” Whitby says. The words are brittle, like icicles about to shatter. “She made the choice for all of us.”
The fire in the stove is low, barely more than an ember. I cross to it, poker in hand, and stir the logs until they collapse in on themselves. The heat is insufficient. The kitchen is cold, the kind of cold that clings to the insides of your wrists and does not let go.
“So all this,” I say, waving the poker at the papers, the walls, the air, “was just a script? A pattern to break?”
Whitby’s mouth tightens, but she does not deny it. “We all play our part. Some of us know it. Some of us pretend not to.”
Her hands go to the teacups on the sideboard, arranging them in a line so perfect it is almost obscene. The porcelain clinks. Her fingers are trembling, the tremor traveling up her arms and into her neck, where a pulse beats visible at the hollow of her throat.
“I’m sorry,” she says, and it is unclear who she means—me, herself, or the dead woman who orchestrated all of this.
“I still don’t understand. What does the house want from me? What does it want with any of us?
“You’ll see. It will reveal its plan when it thinks you’re ready. This place . . . it’s evil, Miss Vale. But even evil things need care.”
