I reached a hand up and brushed it through his shaggy auburn hair.
“I’m wondering if this is crazy? Subleasing our house, uprooting our lives to spend a winter out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“Crazy? No.” He kissed the hollow beneath my ear. “Adventurous, exciting? Yes. And our life comes with us. Our home in Traverse City will be there in May when we’re ready to go back but for now, for today, we can be Mr. and Mrs. Flynn of Kerry Manor,” he said in a high English accent. “Really, though, what do you think of the house?”
“It’s beautiful,” I murmured. “And isolated.”
“And…”
“A little eerie.”
“And…?” he asked, eager but sincere.
He wanted me to say I loved it, I could write here, I could live here for the winter.
“And I like it,” I offered.
“Yes! I knew you would. Wait until Isis sees it.”
I imagined our little girl with her red cheeks and dreamy brown eyes trying to capture the house in a single glimpse. What would her memories of the house be when she grew older? The year we lived in the spooky Kerry Manor, or would she remember the house as a fairy-tale castle of sorts?
I thought of my childhood home, a small ranch ever in disrepair sitting on the outskirts of Cadillac. A rusted car stood on cement blocks in the backyard, left by a prior tenant. My mother worked various odd jobs cleaning houses and waiting tables. After my sister Amy turned sixteen and got a job, followed by me two years later, our mother stopped working. We paid the rent, the utilities, and used the bridge card to get groceries each week. My mother stayed home, drank gin and played sad music. I still hated Bonnie Raitt’s I Can’t Make You Love Me.
Like most parents, I wanted a better life for my daughter. Sometimes I lay in bed terrified that I was failing her. We watched too much TV, Sammy and I worked too much; she ate white bread when it should have been whole grain. When I aired my fears to Sammy, he would laugh and remind me that we had both grown up on sugar cereal and Wiley the Coyote and lived to tell the tale. Most days I agreed with him; others I merely powered through, hoping the rigid sense of doing it all wrong would soften at nightfall and I’d wake the next day renewed. I often did.
But in that moment, with Kerry Manor looming behind us, a flutter of apprehension, of foreboding even, stole into my thoughts. I wondered if we were making a terrible mistake.
CHAPTER 3
Now
Corrie
“M rs. Flynn? Mrs. Flynn?” I heard the detective talking and realized he spoke to me. Of course, he spoke to me. We were alone in the room.
“Hmm,” I asked, barely able to peek an eye up from where my head rested on my hands. My face felt huge, like one of those bloated fish in saltwater aquariums. I tried to focus on his face, but everything had the blur that arose after hours of tears.
“Was there anyone at the party you didn’t invite? Any strangers?”
I looked at him, and a burst of hysterical laughter poured forth. I closed my mouth and my eyes.
“I don’t know,” I mumbled. “Sammy had friends from the comic book business. I had friends that brought friends. Sarah’s friends brought friends. It was a big party.”
I smiled, remembering the look on Sammy’s face halfway through the night when people packed the house and lawn - monsters and ghouls and skimpy angels everywhere. Paper ghosts hung in doorways, skeletons danced near strings of orange lights, laughter and little periodic screams of fright echoed in the night. Our friends gushed about the towering old mansion, some shared stories they’d heard of Kerry Manor, a few insisted it was haunted.
“I understand this is hard, Mrs. Flynn, but…”
“Do you?” I asked, dragging my head away from my hands and fixing him with red, blurry eyes. “Really? Or is that just something you say?”
He blinked at me and set his large hands on the table. He wore a wedding ring, and Sammy’s ring flashed in my mind, a smear of blood on the glimmering gold.
“Without sharing too much personal detail, yes, I do. I entered law enforcement because I lost a loved one to violence. For many years I was angry and wanted vengeance. Later, I found a way to make those feelings more productive. Here I am.”
“Corrie?” Sarah spoke from the doorway and her voice trembled.
She’d pulled me from the lake but I’d hardly seen her since she peeled off my soaking clothes and left me in a heap near the fire. She still wore her construction woman costume. Black mascara rimmed her puffy red eyes, and she’d pulled her hank of blonde hair into a messy ponytail.
I swallowed and forced my legs to work as I stood and opened my arms for Sarah, for Sammy’s twin. She rushed into me and burst into tears. My own tears returned with a force that threatened to pull us both under, sweep us into the great big lake beyond the window.
“He’s dead,” she murmured, as if it took the police and the paramedics and this troupe of experts to confirm what she’d known the instant she saw him.
I couldn’t say it out loud. I nodded into her shoulder, grumbled a muffled affirmation, and then sank from her arms onto the floor. I could not be strong for Sarah. I had no strength left, no bones either, nothing of substance. I was a puddle of nothing and wished to dissolve into the cracks beneath me.
“What happened?” Sarah demanded, and I knew she’d turned her gaze to the detective now.
I laid my head on the floor and closed my eyes.
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. I didn’t get your name…”
“I’m Sarah Flynn, Sammy’s twin sister. I called the police.”
Twin - they always said twin - never ‘this is my sister or brother,’ but always my twin. I asked Sammy why one time, and he said, ‘How could I leave out the most important part?’
“I’m genuinely sorry for your loss, Sarah. I’m Detective Collins. Were you at the party tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Can you sit with me and answer a few questions?”
“Yes but…” She trailed off, and I imagined her staring down at me - strong Sarah. She could not sit and answer questions as I lay on the floor. I wanted to reassure her it didn’t matter where I was. Nothing mattered now. In fact, the floor was preferable to some comfortable place that would make Sammy’s absence more stark, more true.
“Let’s get you onto the couch,” Sarah said, crouching beside me.
“Here, let me,” the detective urged. “Corrie, do you mind if I lift you?” he asked.
I shook my head.
Strong hands slipped behind by back and beneath my knees, scooping me from the floor. He deposited me on the couch. Sarah tucked a blanket around me, but I could not look at her. I rolled to face the sofa and stuffed the blanket into my mouth, biting down, suppressing the screams and sobs battling for release.
“Can we give her something?” Sarah asked. “I have a sedative in my bag.”
The detective paused for a long time, and then finally said yes.
She slipped the pill into my mouth and I didn’t bother swallowing it. I let it dissolve, bitter on my tongue, grainy when it slid down my throat.
Sarah
SARAH PACED AWAY from the detective. Her heart hurt and her mind felt foggy from the shots of tequila she’d been drinking only hours before.
“Tell me what happened when you found Sammy and Corrie,” the detective started.
Sarah put an unconscious hand to her heart. It was still beating. Sammy’s was not, but somehow hers was.