Chapter 1
The mansion had survived fire, grief, and the strange night when the dead walked its halls. Now it survived tourists.
Four guest rooms on the second floor, each with its own antique bed and lake‑view window. A basement bar with mismatched stools, a pool table, and the old Pac‑Man and Galaga machines that Tyler once played. The lake glittered behind the house, wider now after the fire cleared the old trees. Guests swam, sunbathed, and took pictures of sunsets that didn’t belong to them.
Elle ran the place with a tired grace. She moved through the halls with a practiced smile, answering questions, carrying towels, fixing breakfasts, and then driving into town to help Stacy at Kristen’s. She had become the kind of woman who never stopped moving because stopping meant remembering.
Elodie had her own room on the third floor. Elle had hers. Tess had retreated into hers. Mara’s room sat untouched, the bed made, the curtains drawn, the air still.
Mara had died quietly, the way old women sometimes do — a heart that simply decided it had done enough. Tess had been the same age, but grief aged her ten years overnight. She stopped coming downstairs. She stopped speaking. She stared out her window as if waiting for Mara to walk back into the room and scold her for being dramatic.
Elodie and Elle left meals outside her door. Sometimes Tess ate. Sometimes she didn’t. Her children never visited. Her grandchildren didn’t know she existed. The accusations from her ex‑husband had been true, and Tess had carried that guilt like a stone in her chest for decades. Mara had been her absolution. Without her, Tess was just a woman waiting for the afterlife.
Elodie felt the house change after Mara died. The halls felt heavier. The air felt older. The mansion had always been a place where the past lingered, but now it felt like the past was watching.
She didn’t know yet that one ghost was watching her in particular.
