Райли Сейгер - Home Before Dark - A Novel

I called the police to report a disturbance at the house. Officer Alcott came to the motel soon after. And for the next hour, I told her about Mister Shadow and Miss Pennyface and the horrors we’d endured. I knew the officer didn’t believe me, especially after she went to the house to check things out.

When she returned to say everything looked fine, I knew there was a chance that we would actually get away with it. We would move to another town. Settle in a place far away and pretend the incident at Baneberry Hall never happened.

What I didn’t expect was everything that came after. The newspaper interview, which I felt compelled to give, lest the police think we weren’t serious. That was the rub, Maggie. We didn’t care if people believed us. We just needed them to think that we believed it.

So we kept up the ruse, even when the story started making news across the state and beyond. Then came the book offer, which was so unexpected and so lucrative that we had to take it.

Your mother didn’t want me to write House of Horrors. Especially when I had to return to Baneberry Hall two weeks after the crime to fetch my typewriter. But I knew there was no way to avoid it. Your mother had stopped going to her teaching job, and I had no writing gigs lined up. We desperately needed money. I didn’t think anything would come of it. I considered it a temporary job that would hopefully lead to other writing assignments. I never for a second thought it would blow up into this unruly thing we could no longer control. When it did, the die had been cast. Your mother and I were forced to spend the rest of our lives pretending the fictions in that book were the truth. It was a lie that ultimately tore us apart.

Through it all, your mother and I debated how to help you going forward. You had killed someone, be it in anger or accidentally, and we worried about how that would affect you and what kind of person you would become. I wanted to send you to therapy, but your mother—rightfully—feared you’d reveal what we had done during one of your sessions. She wanted to tell you the truth—something I desperately wanted to shield you from. I never, ever wanted you to feel the guilt I carried.

Since you seemed to remember very little about our time at Baneberry Hall and had no recollection of the night we left, your mother and I decided the best thing to do was let you forget. We chose to stay silent, be watchful of your mood and mind-set, and try to raise you as best we could.

I know it was hard on you, Mags. I know you had questions neither of us could truthfully answer. All we wanted to do was shield you from the truth, even though we knew the falsehood we’d created in its place was inflicting its own damage. That book hurt you. We hurt you as well.

We could have done better. We should have done better. Even though every time you asked for the truth was a reminder of the guilt all of us carried.

I suppose that’s another reason I’m writing this, Maggie. To unburden myself of the guilt I’d felt for almost a quarter of a century. Consider it my confession as much as it is yours.

It’s now five a.m. and the sun will be up soon. I’ve spent the whole night writing this in my office in Baneberry Hall. You may or may not know this by now, but we never sold the house. We never even considered it. Knowing what was under the floor, selling it was too much of a risk.

Guilt brings me back here every year on the anniversary of the night it happened. I come to pay my respects to Petra. To apologize for what we did to her. My hope is that if I do it enough times, maybe she’ll forgive us.

Each time I’m here, I ask myself the same question: Did I make the right decision that night?

Yes, if you consider how you’ve grown up to be a smart, strong-willed young woman.

Will I be judged harshly for it in the afterlife?

Yes. I truly believe I will.

I suppose I’ll find out soon enough.

All I know for certain is that you have always been my proudest accomplishment. I loved you before we set foot inside Baneberry Hall, and I loved you just as much after we left it.

You’re the love of my life, Maggie.

You always have been, and you always will be.

Twenty-Five

Reading my father’s letter feels like plummeting through a thousand trapdoors. One after another. Drop after drop after jarring drop. And I can’t stop the sensation. There’s no fighting this fall.

“You’re lying.” My voice sounds warped, like I’m talking underwater. “You’re lying to me.”

My mother comes toward me. “I’m not, honey. This is what happened.”

She wraps her arms around me. They feel like tentacles. Foreign. Cold. I try to push her away. When she refuses, I squirm out of her grip, falling from my chair. My hand skates across the table, taking the pages my father wrote with it. I hit the floor, paper fluttering around me.

“It’s a lie,” I say. “It’s all lies.”

Even though I keep repeating it, I know in my heart of hearts it’s not. My father wouldn’t make up something like that. Neither would my mother. There’s no reason they would. Which means what I read is true.

I want to scream.

I want to throw up.

I want to reach for the nearest sharp object and rip open my veins.

“You should have told the police,” I say, hiccupping with grief. “You shouldn’t have covered it up.”

“We did what we thought was best for you.”

“A girl was dead, Mom! She was just a child!”

“And so were you!” my mother says. “ Our child! If we’d called the police, your life would have been ruined.”

“And I would have deserved it,” I say.

“You didn’t!” My mother joins me on the floor, crawling toward me in the slow, cautious way one approaches a trapped animal. “You’re sweet and beautiful and smart. Your father and I knew that. We always knew that. And we refused to destroy your life because you made one mistake.”

“I killed someone!”

Saying it unleashes the flood of emotion I’ve been trying to hold back. It flows out of me. In tears. In snot. In saliva that drips from my mouth as I moan.

“You didn’t mean to,” my mother says. “I’m sure of it.”

I look at her through tear-clouded eyes. “We have to tell the truth.”

“We don’t, Maggie. What we need to do is pack your things and leave. We’ll sell this place and never come back. This time for good.”

I stare at her, appalled. I can’t believe she still refuses to do the right thing. That after all these years and all these lies, she still wants to pretend none of this happened. They tried that once, and it damn near destroyed us.

Something breaks inside me. Surprising, since I didn’t think there was any part of me left unscathed. But my heart was still intact, just waiting for my mother to shatter it. I can feel it disintegrating—a shudder that makes my chest heave.

“Get out,” I say.

“Maggie, just listen to me.”

My mother reaches for me, and I recoil. When she comes for me again, I strike, my open palm whipping across her cheek.

“Get out!” I scream it this time, the words echoing off the wall of bells. I keep screaming until I’m red-faced and frothing.

“Get out! Get out of my fucking house!”

My mother stays frozen on the floor, her hand to her cheek. The tears glistening in her eyes tell me her heart’s also broken.

Good.

Now we’re even.

“If you want to throw your life away, I can’t stop you,” she says. “But I refuse to watch you do it. Your father’s not the only one who loved you unconditionally. I feel the same way he did. About everything.”