9

I was back at Pat’s by midday. The sun had failed to warm the cold brick exterior—let alone the rooms inside. Without taking off my coat, I shimmied out of my wet jeans, flung them over a chair, donned the bobble hat, turned up the heater, dove under the bedcovers, and curled my toes, hoping to recover at least marginal body heat before my next trek outside.

Day one, and I’d already made it to the top of Birchardville Hill. I’d seen the murder site and snapped a few photos. Next, I needed to climb Cobb Hill Road to find the old family homestead, take a peek inside the Birchardville Church, snag a few interviews with local descendants of the Roth family—should there be any left—and type up my notes into something readable. With any luck, I'd be able to add this segment to one of my February shows.

I transferred the pictures from my phone to my laptop and spent the remainder of the time before lunch typing my notes. In all, it would have been a quiet, cozy first day in Birchardville, almost completely uneventful—barring, of course, my weird interaction with Reed and his mustachioed father.

Per her arrangements with Leah, Pat had stocked my mini fridge. She'd also left an electric kettle and a packet of tea on the counter. After a sandwich and a hot tea, I felt decidedly more human. It was time to tackle Cobb Hill Road.

Although, technically I had the site of the old Roth homestead on my agenda for tomorrow, I'd taken a peek at the weather forecast and decided to get it done today. It was only seventeen degrees, but at least it wasn't windy or actively snowing. Smart researchers make notes while the sun shines. At least, that’s what I told myself.



The hike up Cobb Hill Road proved more taxing than I'd expected. Though honestly, having grown up in Florida, anything that wasn’t flat was taxing. My weight broke the frozen crust at the side of the road. Thank God for waterproof boots. The road rose steadily for over a mile, climbing through a twist of bare trees and deadfall reminiscent of a fairy tale—and not a happily-ever-after fairy tale, either. The sort that ended with the prince transformed into a bear or eaten by goblins.

It probably wasn't best to think about bears in this particular scenario. I had done some research and assured myself that unless the winter was “unseasonably warm,” the bears should be holed up in caves somewhere hibernating until spring. Hopefully, seventeen degrees didn’t count as “unseasonably warm.”

Something crashed through the underbrush to my left, and I completely overreacted. I levitated to the center of the road, arms raised and feet poised for flight. Six feet of gangly teenager gaped back at me.

Mimicking the gesture he’d given his dad just hours earlier, Reed flung up his hands, palms out. He rolled his lips in under his teeth and bit down, obviously straining not to laugh. He jammed his bare hands into the pockets of his red hoodie and bounced on his toes. “Sorry! I didn't mean to scare you. I was just taking a shortcut.” He gestured down the rocky embankment littered with patches of drifted snow and crisscrossed with deadfall.

How did he know I'd be up here? But oh, wait…consider the evidence. Reed knew I was here to research the Roth murders. This would be the next logical site for me to visit.

“What do you want?” And where was his coat? Did Pennsylvania boys really run around the frozen foothills in nothing more substantial than jeans and a hoodie?

Apparently this one did.

Reed hustled me off the road—and just in time. A truck downshifted as it roared around a bend and passed with a great plume of exhaust. Reed fell into step beside me. “I wanted to remind you to sign my copy of Sins of a Father. And also help you find the Roth homestead. I know right where it is.”

Of course he did. I resigned myself. This kid seemed determined to tag along for my entire research trip, and I might as well get some use out of him. A niggling concern reared its head. “What about—” My gesture toward the center of town must have made my meaning clear.

“Oh, that?” He lifted bony shoulders to shrug off the incident with his dad. “That was nothing. It’s all good.”

“Is it OK for you to be here right now?”

His eyes shot sparks. “Great Scott! Are you worried about me?”

“I'm not. And don't call me that.” I hadn’t carried the last name Scott for long, but it was a joke I’d heard too much.

Reed laughed. “Don’t flatter yourself, Morgan. It's just a common expression. It has nothing to do with you.”

Sure.

Reed loped along beside me. “It's just that I have to check in with my mom every day during vacations. If I don’t, she flips out and threatens to call Social Services for a child welfare check. Then the social services lady has to drive out from Montrose, and she hates it here. She says Birchardville is like a town God forgot, which is silly because God doesn't forget anything.”

“He forgets sin,” I pointed out.

Reed skidded to a stop. “Great Scott!” He exclaimed. “You know your theology.”

Why was I encouraging this kid?

“Smart, pretty, successful, and theologically sound.” He hopped from foot to foot. “Uncle Levi will be so impressed when I tell him.”

Again with the Uncle Levi. “Your mother’s brother or your dad’s?”

“My mom’s.” He jammed his hands into his pockets and bounced in place, most likely to keep warm.

A point in Uncle Levi’s favor that he wasn’t actually related by blood to the mustachioed man. Not that you could help who your siblings were. Or so I’d been told.

Reed jammed his hands further into his pockets and resumed forward momentum. “My mom hates your show. She says it reminds her too much of when—” He broke off and cleared his throat. “Anyway, Mom won’t come back to Birchardville anymore. Not since she split with Dad. But I come back here for holidays and stuff, and it’s great. I love Christmases here. We do a big Christmas Eve service at the church and then a party after at the Birchardville Store. On Christmas morning, Uncle Levi drives me down to the city and we spend the rest of the day with Mom.” He heaved a sigh. “I hate the city.”

“What city?”

He gaped down at me. “The City. New York City.”

Oh. No wonder he hadn't felt the need to clarify. “How can you hate New York City?”

He snorted. “Have you ever been?”

I shook my head. I’d always wanted to go. In the movies, New York always looked amazing at Christmas. Bustling sidewalks, street carolers, twinkle lights.

Reed glowered. “If you'd been, you’d understand.”

We had reached the top of the rise, and he veered left, skidding down a snow-powdered trail. “It's this way.”

I was glad he was with me. The path cut sharply back and to the left, meaning you really had to know where it was. I followed him down one slope and then up another. He pulled his sleeves over his palms and moved blackberry brambles out of the path, urging me to follow close behind. The snow made hiking treacherous, so I stepped directly in his booted footprints. “This is all overgrown because nobody really comes up here much. Of course, if I'd known you would be coming, I would have cleared all this out last week.”

I stared at the back of his fluffy head. Twenty-four hours ago, I hadn't known this kid existed. And yet if he’d known I was coming, he would have been out here in the cold cutting brambles.

The blind devotion of fans was both odd and deeply touching. Growing up, I’d felt invisible. Now I had a following of strangers who loved me devotedly and snapped up every scrap of information they could get their hands on. Some of them probably knew me better than my own neighbors did.

I doubt my actual neighbors knew my name. Though that wasn’t entirely their fault. I kept to myself; and because of my schedule, I didn’t often leave the house during daylight hours. They probably thought I was a vampire.

We’d reached a creek. Though partially crusted over with ice, it was still flowing toward the center. Reed stepped to a stone in the middle and straddled the creek on the far side. He pushed a hand out of his sleeve and extended it to me. Ignoring the hand, I hopped the stream and scrambled up the opposite bank.

Reed whistled through his teeth. “Smart, pretty, successful, theologically sound, and athletic.”

I stood at the top of the bank, my breaths rising in front of my face. Beyond the mist stood the old Roth homestead.

Ironically, unlike the clearing on Birchardville Hill, this actually looked like a murder site. The homestead was only two stories high, but it perched at the top of a knoll, looming above the surrounding clearing. A once-tall chimney crumbled into a partially caved-in roof. Windows, bare of panes, gazed with blank malevolence. The wooden siding somehow looked both soft and slick, as if it were in a constant state between wet and dry. What remained of the door leaned on its hinges.

This spot chilled me in a way the clearing on Birchardville Hill had not. The Roth Homestead had witnessed years of family horror leading up to one appalling afternoon when Ezra and Silas Roth had chased their father down the lane, through the graveyard, past the church, and up Birchardville Hill.

Axes gripped in sweat-slicked palms, they’d run him down as they would have tracked a wounded deer. By all accounts, they’d worked in wordless tandem to hack their father to death. This done, they stuffed him into a hollow tree and lit out for Boston.

The body hadn't been found for days.

A delicious shiver worked its way up my spine.

I stepped forward, my boots crunching against a thin layer of ice-crusted snow. Not until I was close to the house did the smell hit me—dank and moldering and wet. It must be unbearable in summer. I switched to mouth breathing. It didn’t help.

Reed hung back, shoulders hunched. He bounced on his toes—whether from cold or nervousness, I couldn’t tell. “You're not going in there, are you?”

I stepped onto the porch. The boards sloped under my boots. I eased back to the ground.

“Not today.” I tilted my head back. Skeletal tree branches clawed the crumbling eaves. The woods were in the process of reclaiming their own. “Have you ever been inside?”

Reed shifted uncomfortably. “All the kids in Birchardville go in at some point—on dares and stuff. Grant Conwell says he went upstairs and saw a skeleton smoking a pipe, but none of us believed him.”

“About going upstairs or about seeing a skeleton?”

“Both.” Reed stepped back. “Uncle Levi says it’s not safe. He says the house has lost its structural integrity and that nobody should go inside.”

Wise words. I’d like to meet this Uncle Levi. Unlikely, considering I'd only be here a few more days. Just long enough to get through the Johnson verdict and past Christmas.

Treading back to the edge of the clearing, I snapped a few pictures for the blog. Reed waited, bouncing on his toes. Annoyingly, my phone took longer than normal to accomplish these simple tasks, the screen displaying the spinning circle of doom.

This was silly. My phone wasn’t even that old. I slipped it into my pocket and inclined my head, calling Reed to heel.

His eyes lit up and he bounded ahead, tugging his sleeves over his hands and thrusting brambles out of the way. “Careful, Cap. It’s icy near the crick.”

“Cap?” I tilted an eyebrow at him. “As in Captain Morgan?” That was worse than Great Scott.

“Of course not.” He blinked, the picture of innocence.

“Sure.”

He bristled. “I mean Captain Scott as in Captain Robert Falcon Scott!”

I laughed, my breath rising in puffs. “Does that make you Lawrence Oates?”

Reed paused mid-stride, letting go of blackberry brambles and whipping his head around. He pulled himself to his full height. “Tom Crean,” he reported in dignified tones. “Tom Crean or nothing.”

I scoffed. “So you're saying you'd make it back from the South Pole alive.”

He bounced on his toes and whistled through his teeth. “Captain Morgan, you’re too good to be true. Smart, pretty, theologically sound, athletic, and well-versed in the Polar Explorers.”

I stepped around him. “I think knowing the Polar Explorers goes along with smart,” I said, annoyed that he’d put me on Scott’s expedition rather than Amundsen’s—or Shackleton’s, for that matter.

Reed skipped to catch up just as I released a handful of brambles. He swerved to avoid them, but they still caught against his jeans. He plucked gingerly and moved them aside, talking all the while. “The way I see it, the problem with Scott’s expedition wasn't improper preparation—”

“He tried to take horses to the South Pole.”

“They were Manchurian ponies, and hear me out. Scott’s main problem wasn't preparation, it was hubris.”

Hubris. Not a word you hear often in conversation, but one I used often on my show. I shouldn't be surprised to hear this kid spouting it. He was right too. “At least Amundsen and his men knew how to handle real cold. I mean, they’d grown up in Norway. Scott and his Brits were in over their heads.” I knew how they felt. Bobble hat or no bobble hat, I'd overestimated the amount of time I could be outdoors without feeling as though I might suffer the fate of my famous namesake and his doomed friends. Not that I was in danger of starving to death after eating my own boots, but I felt fairly certain that if I didn't get someplace warm soon, I'd likely freeze.



My second entrance to the Birchardville Store was heralded with even less fanfare than the first. Not only had the strip of jingle bells not been reattached, but the store itself was completely empty. No diners nursed coffees at the tables, and no one staffed the counter.

Reed let himself behind the bar and made me a cup of hot tea. I didn't remove my gloves until he set it in front of me. I wrapped my aching fingers around the mug and sighed as warmth seeped into my chilled bones. My hands shook as I lifted the mug. The liquid scorched my throat. I thought of those poor explorers who had died alone and cold in their tents without enough oil left to melt snow for a last hot drink.

My phone vibrated, reminding me that I'd entered a wireless hot spot. I pulled it from my pocket and discovered an e-mail from Leah containing summaries of the day’s correspondence. She added a brief line at the end informing me that the jury at the Johnson trial had been dismissed to deliberate.

My stomach swooped.

At his first trial, Johnson’s jury had deliberated for almost a week. I didn't think this second group would take that long. Not with Christmas looming. Within scant hours, the fresh verdict would be rendered. Johnson would return to death row, the media furor would die down, and all would return to normal. Or whatever counted as normal when a deranged murderer who’d read your book about his crimes hated you for writing it. A murderer who held grudges and threatened your life and, in concert with your crazed Internet stalker, pestered you until you hired a complete stranger to liaise with the police so you wouldn't have to think about it every single day.

I should have become a librarian.

Reed leaned across the counter. “Checking on the trial?”

It was pointless to ask how he knew. He listened to the show. He'd read my book. He knew all about the Johnson case. He likely knew as much about the first trial as I did.

Not this trial, though—no one knew this outcome yet. Not that I was worried. Johnson had definitely done it. His fingerprints were all over the crime, both literally and figuratively.

I shut off my phone and laid it between my hands, palm-flat on the counter. “I don't want to talk about the trial.”

Reed said nothing. Even in the short amount of time I'd known him, I found this uncharacteristic. I lifted my eyes to find him watching me silently.

“What?”

He shook his head. His hair swayed like stalks of wheat on a summer breeze. “I was just trying to imagine what it would feel like to have someone hate me as much as Johnson hates you.” His eyes narrowed. “Is that why you're up here right now? Did you come to get away from him, you know, just in case—”

“He won’t get released.”

“I hope not! But as you say on the show, justice is tricky.”

He was right. Shivering again, I wrapped my hands around the mug, hoping Reed didn’t notice the moist slicks of sweat they’d left behind on the counter.

This was exactly the sort of conversation I'd been eager to avoid. It was the reason I'd put Leah in charge of my correspondence during the trial and traveled over a thousand miles to spend Christmas in the Endless Mountains.

That and the fact that I couldn't handle another holiday in an empty house. At least here, I'd have Pat Martin to share Christmas with, and nobody would be talking to me about the Johnson verdict.

At least in theory.

Reed jammed his hands through his fluffy hair. “Listen, I'm sorry. If you don't want to talk about it, we don't have to talk about it.”

I nodded, slipped some bills onto the counter to pay for the tea, and told him to keep the change. I pulled on my gloves and adjusted my bobble hat. His shoulders drooped. Even his hair seemed to deflate.

My heart squeezed up.

Why did I care? This kid wasn’t my responsibility. He was an awkward teenage boy with the personality of a Labrador puppy. If he wanted to mope as if someone had kicked him, that wasn’t my problem.

Yet when I turned to walk away, I felt that I was leaving him in a place more chilled than the frozen wasteland where the polar explorers had met their doom.



The walk from the Birchardville Store to Pat Martin’s StayAway wasn't long, but along the way, the wind cut through my flimsy coat and layers of pathetically thin Florida clothes. By the time I reached her doorstep, I was shaking so badly I could barely stomp the snow off my boots. I braced my hand against the doorframe to give my feet one last good stomp, and that’s when I saw it.

The dead crow on the doormat.

It had been placed there deliberately, wings partially fanned and tacked down so that it looked as if it had been caught mid-flight. The dead eyes, empty and glassy, reflected the glow of the white twinkle lights.

Definitely real.

Definitely dead.

Definitely meant for me.