CHAPTER 8

MEREDITH

Saturday, 9:18 a.m.

Meredith watched Leyna stare out the window, expression resigned. She touched her scar—for the fourth time since entering the house, Meredith noted. She could always tell when Leyna was thinking about her sister.

“Someone is definitely inside the Miller house,” Leyna said.

“I told you, it’s probably someone from the cleaning service.” A lie. The cleaner had been at the house earlier that morning, but Leyna had always been annoyingly curious, and Meredith wanted her gone.

Leyna shook her head. “Not with the lights out.” But her expression seemed less certain. That had long been Meredith’s superpower: making her younger daughter doubt herself.

With Leyna distracted, Meredith took full stock of her daughter’s appearance. Her blond hair was constrained in a tight ponytail, the layers grown out. She obviously hadn’t been to a stylist in a while. At least she’d tamed her eyebrows. When Leyna was eighteen, they’d given the impression of a pair of warring woolly bear caterpillars.

Then there was her face—round since birth, it seemed puffier than usual, her natural pallor turned positively pasty. Her twill joggers and T-shirt were worn loose. Leyna was definitely stress-eating again. As a child, she could finish half a box of ginger cookies before a big test or after a heartbreak. She’d gained twenty pounds in the months following Grace’s disappearance. So why was she bingeing now?

Asking that question might take the conversation in an unwelcome direction, so Meredith remained silent. She shifted to better block her half-painted canvas.

Seemingly unaware of her mother’s scrutiny, Leyna gestured toward the neighbors’ house. “Think the Millers booked it last minute?”

“With the power out and the red-flag alert, that seems unlikely.”

Growing up, Leyna had lived mostly in her head and in books. It’d made for a much quieter house, but now Meredith regretted having enabled her daughter’s Agatha Christie habit.

“Why does it matter who’s inside the Miller place?”

If anybody even was. Meredith squinted at the house on the adjacent lot. Leyna had mentioned the door was open, but it was closed now. The house appeared empty.

“It doesn’t matter,” Leyna said, but she continued to stare. The wind had started to pick up again, and a gust shook loose a flurry of pine needles. “You sure there’s enough gas in your generator?”

“I topped it off earlier this week when the weather started to turn.”

“New batteries in the flashlights?” When Meredith scowled in response, Leyna mirrored the expression. “If the generator fails, it’ll be hard to find batteries in the dark.”

“I know how night works, Leyna. And if the flashlights run out of juice, I have candles.”

Leyna looked over her shoulder toward the entryway. Her eyes clouded. “Not those candles?”

“Those candles, and others,” Meredith said.

Her daughter’s hand landed on her arm again. That made the fifth touch. This time, her fingers lingered on the discolored skin.

That damn scar.

Leyna had gotten it on the day they’d lost Grace. It had been a wet March, and with a five-day storm fizzling out that morning, neighbors had emerged from forced hibernation to rake leaves, clear debris from driveways, and unclog rain gutters. Meredith spent the day in her garden, but even after night fell, she’d vibrated with unspent energy. She tried painting and two shots of bourbon. Neither helped. After a huge fight with Grace—par for the course in their house but unusual in that the bloodshed that night had been more than figurative—Meredith felt an unexpected urge to check on her younger daughter.

Meredith found her asleep in bed, lamp casting shadowed light across her face, a copy of Murder on the Orient Express cutting into her cheek. Likely sensing Meredith watching, Leyna shifted in her sleep, exposing her arm—and a two-inch cut, jagged and raw. The wound hadn’t been there earlier.

It seemed an omen—as if the ugliness of the day had manifested in the bloody mark on her daughter’s arm and foretold worse things to come.

Meredith had shaken Leyna, more violently than she intended. Leyna startled from sleep, and Meredith pointed at the wound.

“You need to get a bandage on that.”

Leyna blinked slowly, coming fully awake. “I didn’t know where to find the Neosporin.”

Meredith noticed a balled-up tissue spotted with blood on the nightstand.

“You should’ve asked,” she snapped before realizing they’d used the last of it the month before on Leyna’s tree-scraped knee and how unfortunate it would’ve been had Leyna actually gone looking. Better she’d been asleep.

Leyna started to sit up, but Meredith placed a firm hand on her shoulder. “Tomorrow.” She reminded herself to be gentler with this daughter and leaned in to take a closer look at the cut. “What the hell happened?”

“It was an accident,” Leyna said, rubbing her eyes.

Those words chilled Meredith still. It was an accident. In those days, an even more popular excuse than Grace didn’t mean to do it.

She’d tucked Leyna back into bed and paused in the doorway until her daughter closed her eyes. If only it had been as easy for Meredith to do the same that night.

The memory had teeth, and it took several shakes to loosen its grip. Meredith crossed her arms, a comfort as much as a blockade.

“Think I’ll check on what’s going on next door,” Leyna said. “If they’ve just come from town, maybe they have an update on the weather.”

It’s hot and windy. There’s your update.

But Meredith knew what really drew Leyna to the house next door. She’d been chasing Grace’s ghost for sixteen years. For just as long, Meredith had been praying she’d never catch it.

“Fabulous idea,” Meredith said dryly.

“I won’t be long. Thanks for your help with Ellie.” Her delivery was deadpan, but Meredith recognized the sarcasm.

With that, Leyna glanced one final time out the window, then left in search of whatever ghosts she imagined waited for her on the other side of the glass.