I was squeezing Matthew’s hand so tightly that it was turning white. I couldn’t take my eyes off Carter. He looked so earnest that I knew he believed everything he was saying to be true. Based on what Jane had said earlier—Mercy was dead, and then she wasn’t—I knew she believed it, too.
I didn’t know what I believed. I could tell Matthew was feeling the same way.
The only thing I knew for sure was that I needed to hear the rest of the story. I’d reserve judgment until then.
“Go on, Carter,” I urged him. “We’re listening.”
He lifted his glass to his lips with shaking hands, swallowed, and cleared his throat. “It started with animals,” he whispered. “Thomas would find them in the yard, in the garden. Even on the patio. Squirrels, birds, chipmunks. Even the odd duck or two.”
My whole body went cold. “You’d find them dead?” I choked out the words, not quite believing I was saying them.
He nodded, lifting a hand to his forehead and rubbing his brow. “We had no idea what was going on at first,” he said. “But then I saw it myself, child. One afternoon, I was in the carriage house and, through the window, I saw Mercy in the yard. She lured a chipmunk to her with a handful of peanuts and then, quick as a wink, grabbed it and snapped its neck. And then she laughed. She dropped its poor little body, turned around, and saw me looking at her through the window. And she laughed again, locking eyes with me. I’ll tell you, it gave me a chill.”
I snuggled closer to Matthew.
“And then the accidents started happening,” he went on. “Workmen would be on the roof and their ladders would go missing, stranding them there. Knives would be buried, blade side up, in the dirt to cut the hands of the gardeners. Tires on the cars would be slashed.”
“She was trying to intentionally hurt people?” Matthew asked. “What did you—or more appropriately, her parents—do about it?”
Carter nodded. “Mr. Alban saw it right away, he knew. But Mrs. Charity wasn’t having any of it. She was blind to what was going on, and nobody could make her see. But then Mercy tried to drown her sister in the lake, almost taking Johnny with them in the bargain.”
He dabbed at his brow with a handkerchief. “We heard it, all of us. Fate’s terrified screams, Johnny’s shouting. The splashing. We ran to the lakeshore, me from the carriage house, Thomas from the gardens in back, Jane and her mother, along with Mr. and Mrs. Alban from the house, and we found Mercy holding her sister underwater, with Johnny trying everything he could to stop it. She turned on him, then, pushing him under …” He shook his head, remembering. “It took all of us to get her off of them. She was just a child, but it was like she had otherworldly strength.”
I unfolded myself from the couch to grab the scotch decanter and refilled Carter’s glass. “Then what happened?” I asked as I poured.
“Later that day, once Fate had been tended to and Johnny had calmed down, I heard them arguing about it, Mr. and Mrs. Alban. He wanted to send Mercy away. Initially, she would hear none of it. But she couldn’t deny that the girl had tried to hurt her other two children. She realized Mercy was dangerous and something had to be done.
“Soon enough, I was sent to collect the family doctor, who had been administering to the Albans for many years. He was sworn to secrecy—nobody was to know Mercy was alive. The world thought she was dead and buried, and by Mr. Alban’s decree, it was going to stay that way. The doctor prescribed something for her, sedatives, I imagine. And Mr. Alban moved Fate and Johnny downstairs and locked Mercy away on the third floor. She was to live there, in captivity so to speak, away from everyone, until he and Mrs. Charity could agree on what to do.”
“That’s when he must have built the wing on the facility in Switzerland,” I offered, shooting Matthew a look. “The doctor there told me it was built when Mercy was still a child.”
Carter nodded.
“So what? She was locked in her rooms on the third floor for years?” I asked, shaking my head.
“She was,” he said. “Charity tended to her, kept her company, fed her, and even, at night, took her outside. Mercy never interacted with anyone, except her mother, again. Or so we thought.”
Another chill ran through me.
“Nobody knew that she had discovered the passageways. They had been locked, but she was able to unlock them. They became her world. She would creep about, watching us, watching her family, her sister especially.”
“Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “If nobody knew that, how do you know it?”
“I shouldn’t say ‘nobody.’ There was one person who knew. Charity. When Charity discovered that Mercy had been using the passageways, she encouraged it. She was torn up about her child, you see, having to be locked away. It was guilt she felt because of her part in it. She knew her husband would send Mercy away if the child didn’t remain sequestered and hidden, but even so, she wanted to give Mercy, evil as she was, some kind of life. And that’s how the passageways became her world. Mercy began to live through her twin sister, imagining it was her out there in the main part of the house, doing whatever it was Fate was doing. Mercy became Fate’s shadow.”
I shivered and glanced at all four walls in the room. Was Mercy in the passageways right now, watching us? Did she have the nurse with her, or worse?
“Of course, nobody knew about this until much, much later,” Carter went on. “And the household gradually returned to normal. Years passed. Fate met your mother at school, dear Adele, who brought so much light and love and laughter into this household. She became part of the family very quickly. Mrs. Charity especially took to her, and I think Fate looked upon her as the sister she no longer had. All of us began to exhale, believing the situation was handled for good. We didn’t know something much, much worse was brewing.”