Daughters of the Lake(36)

“Listen, I’ve had an idea,” Simon said. “You know we’re planning to tackle that third-floor restoration project this winter. A ton of old boxes are up there that I just haven’t had a chance to get to. I want to sift through them and find any suitable photographs or artwork or other things to display. You know I like to use original things from the house to decorate.”

“And?”

“And I’d love your help with that. Since you’re planning on staying in town awhile, I thought maybe I could steal you for the rest of the day. Maybe two.”

“I’d love that!” Kate cried. She could think of no better way to spend time than combing through old family heirlooms and artifacts of the past. Just the thing to take her mind off the present. “I haven’t been up to that third floor since we were kids.”

The cousins shared a grimace. When visiting their grandparents, young Kate and Simon had feared the third floor. The house had been inhabited by elderly people for so many years that the third floor, with the steep staircase leading up to it, had long since fallen into disrepair. It was dark, dusty, and filled with the ghosts of the past—more so than either child realized—and as such, was a perfect haven for goose-bumped childhood exploration.

One of their favorite games was a variation of “chicken.” Hand in hand, Kate and Simon would creep up the dark staircase, knowing that a ghastly portrait, propped haphazardly against a trunk, awaited them when they reached the top. It was the image of a particularly stern woman wearing a black dress and veil, like some sort of haunted bride of the dead. Neither child knew that it was a portrait of Celeste’s mother, who was hanging on to a peculiar dislike of the Connor children and their presence in a house she still regarded as her daughter’s and her daughter’s alone.

The game was to see who could endure the gaze of the “lady in black” the longest. Usually it ended seconds after it began, with Simon and Kate flying—shrieking, breathless, hearts pumping—down the stairs, back to the normalcy and safety of their grandmother’s welcoming home. One day, however, the game went differently.

As Simon beat the well-worn path down the stairs, Kate remained in the room, unable to move, transfixed by the portrait’s gaze. Mysterious and threatening as it was to a nine-year-old girl, the woman’s flat image on the canvas—her dark, hollow eyes penetrating the veil; her stern countenance; her black dress; all of it—seemed to animate, there, before Kate’s wide eyes.

Kate heard the words, clear and forbidding.

“Get out. Get out of this house.”

Frozen to the spot, Kate gasped but could not take in any air. She felt as though all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room. Kate tried to take a breath, and then another, then another, but nothing entered her lungs.

She found her feet and flew down the stairs in an instant, screaming in the high-pitched way that only young girls can manage, knocking Simon down when, it seemed, a full lifetime later, she finally reached the bottom.

“You win,” Simon said, simply.

“I don’t want to go up there again.” Kate was gasping, finally able to take a breath, feeling as though she had been nearly suffocated.

And that was the end of their third-floor games.

Now, with decades of sense and reason between her and that otherworldly experience, she was anxious to see what secrets the third floor held.

Kate took a bite of her breakfast. “I had intended to start trying to find more information about my mystery woman today, but, hey, Addie can wait.”

Simon looked at her for a long while. “What did you say?”

“When?” Kate was confused.

“Just now. What did you say?”

“I said that I was going to delve into this mystery today, but it can wait,” Kate said.

“No, you didn’t say that.” Simon’s eyes were wide. “I think you said, ‘Addie can wait.’ Who’s Addie?”

Kate was silent, searching her brain. “I have no idea,” she said, finally. “I wasn’t thinking. I just said it.”

Simon finished his mimosa in a gulp and set the flute down on the table. “Okay, that’s really weird.” He was excited. The two sat staring at each other. “Katie, do you think that’s her name? Your woman’s name?”

“I don’t know.” Kate rubbed her arms and shivered.

“Oh, that’s her name,” Simon said, holding out his arm to display goose bumps. “I can feel it.”

“Me too,” Kate said, her thoughts swirling back toward her dreams, the woman and her husband, her body on the beach.

“Addie,” Simon was murmuring. “What kind of name is that, anyway?”

“It sounds sort of old fashioned, doesn’t it? Could be short for Adeline or something like that,” Kate said. “Maybe it came up in one of my dreams about her, and it just slipped my mind. How else would I know it?”

“How else, indeed,” Simon said, raising his eyebrows with a mock sense of drama. “This little mystery just keeps getting better and better. You should come here more often. This is the most excitement I’ve had in months.”

After breakfast, Simon and Kate made their way through Harrison’s House toward the third floor. Kate loved these hallways. The walls were papered with a rich, red print and filled with family photos and portraits. The brightly colored decor—deep reds and yellows contrasted with the dark wood of the doors, doorframes, and moldings—allowed visitors to imagine this house in its heyday more than a century ago. Kate liked to think of her grandmother as a child in this house, growing up with all this opulence and beauty around her.