Chapter Twenty-Two

Nigel insisted he, rather than Edgar, carry Sarah to her bedroom. Now the two men waited in silence in the upstairs hall. Annabelle and Lenore saw to Sarah’s needs behind the closed door. Ten minutes passed. Then twenty. Finally, Annabelle and Lenore emerged from the room.

“Is she all right?” Edgar asked.

Annabelle smiled with reassurance. “Yes.” She turned to Nigel. “Thank you for carrying her upstairs. She seems to be sleeping peacefully.”

Nigel smirked. “I shouldn’t wonder. Nearly killing us would tire anyone out.”

Annabelle rolled her eyes and turned away.

Lenore smiled nervously. “Perhaps we should all get some rest.”

Edgar yawned. “I’m for that. I’m done in.”

Annabelle crossed to her room and opened the door. She turned back. “An auspicious start, in any case. It appears the home is truly haunted.”

Lenore’s dark glasses turned from one of them to the other. She smoothed back her hair and ran her hands down the front of her dress to smooth the wrinkles. Nigel cocked his head and stared at her, trying to get the measure of the woman. Is this modesty? Preening?

“I hope none of you are troubled further this evening,” Lenore said. “Thank you again for being here.” She gave another nervous smile and turned toward her room.

Nigel pushed himself off where he had been leaning against the wall. “Wouldn’t miss this for the world,” he muttered.

****

A short while later, now in her white cotton gown and gingham robe, Annabelle finished unpacking. She removed her tortoiseshell hairbrush and comb from her carpetbag, set them on a bureau, then unpinned her hair and let it fall to her shoulders.

Annabelle took up the brush and ran it through her tresses, as she regarded herself in the oval mirror above the bureau. Had the professor ever noticed her luxuriant brunette hair?

I’m twenty-eight—an old maid, she thought, suddenly despondent. She remembered reading that in Japan, she would be called a Christmas cake because no one wanted Christmas things after the twenty-fifth. She could be married with children by now, like most of the girls she grew up with. She then dismissed these thoughts. I have my own road to follow. Where it led, she didn’t know, but she did not aspire to domesticity.

In the meantime, her road led to this strange Nantucket house, and the prospect of unlocking its secrets excited her.

Annabelle stopped fussing with her hair and set the brush down next to the comb. She gave herself a little smile and turned away from the reflection. She returned to her bag and removed a final item—the folding golden-colored frame contained the picture of her father on one side and her mother on the other. The same one that prompted Sarah’s visions. Her parents gave her this gift when she left for college. Annabelle crossed the room, opened the picture frame, and set it on the bedside table next to the lamp.

No sooner did she place it down than Annabelle retrieved it. She sat on the bedside and regarded the portraits. Her gaze focused on her deceased mother, and she slowly stroked the image with her right thumb as tears formed in the corners of her eyes.

“Annabelle?”

Her mother’s voice. She could never forget.

“Annabelle?”

Annabelle put the picture frame on the bed and blinked her eyes clear. An odd tingling ran through both arms as goosebumps rose beneath the robe and nightshirt. She stood and shot her gaze around the room. Her shaky voice answered. “M-Mother?”

“Get out!”

Annabelle’s door flew open and smashed against the bedroom wall.

No one stood in the doorway.