Chapter 1

Chapter One

Esme

Morning light seeps into my cold bedroom, a losing battle against the dark cloud that hangs over me.

The ghosts are supposed to disappear during the daytime, aren’t they?

But I still feel them, like a chain around my neck. They whisper in my ear. They tap on the sill.

Dr. White is convinced that these phenomena are paranoid delusions.

He’s probably right.

But knowing that doesn’t stop the heavy feeling. Even when I’m alone in my bed, unable to get up. Unable to move.

Or “unwilling,” as the weary doctor corrects me.

I should do as he suggests. He’s the best in the business, and he’s been providing house calls to our family and others like us for decades.

I squint at the creeping morning light as static from the intercom fills the room. The unfortunate noise promises another long day of being cajoled to do something. To make the most of the day. To make some decisions about the house. Or to attend a charitable function. To meet with a contractor. To meet with my counselor, my aromatherapist, and so on and so on.

How in the hell am I supposed to do any of that when none of it matters?

“Ms. Bryant. It snowed overnight.”

I lift my head and look at the door, half expecting Frye to open it and scold me out of bed. But he doesn’t do that. He’s tried that before. Tough love doesn’t work on me. And lately he doesn’t seem to have the fortitude to overcome his fear of heights to climb the grated metal stairs to my turret bedroom. Looking down through the slats always makes him queasy, poor man.

I don’t answer. I’d have to get out of bed and shuffle to the device on the wall to do that, and this room is cold, an easy excuse to stay huddled where I am.

Frye pushes, though. Through the intercom, he gives an off-sounding chuckle, dry and forced. “Remember how excited you used to get when you were a little girl? When you would wake up to snow and I could hardly keep up with you long enough to button your coat before you would burst outside to make snow angels?”

I don’t remember that.

I don’t remember it because I refuse to. Because of the people who are no longer with me, to share in any new memories.

I know what Frye is doing. He’s trying to remind me that I used to be happy, hoping that will help me.

But he can’t help me. No one can. Or, as Dr. White has taught me to say: No one has. So far. I can help myself, though. I just have to believe.

I catch Frye’s sigh. It radiates through the intercom, full of disappointment. Frye misses the old Esme. The one who used to burst through doors with a bang so loud he would clutch his chest and declare I was going to be the death of him. I wonder if he, the cook, and the housekeeper miss the old Esme who spent all of 2020-2021 online shopping and taking over the kitchen, learning how to bake sourdough. Those were especially trying times for us all. I’m convinced that 2020 was the year that broke me.

Didn’t it break us all?

That year did not break Frye, though. The Bryant estate’s longtime house manager is like a German shepherd in need of an occupation. If he took a truth serum, Frye would admit he’d rather be employed by a demanding, bratty, capricious heiress, because at least she would keep him busy. Looking after an inexplicably exhausted 29-year-old who has given up the will to do much of anything is not in his job description. Nor should it be.

Frye clears his throat. “Your appointment with Dr. White is in three hours. Afterward, Mr. Cowen would like to discuss the restoration project ideas. Cressida will bring you breakfast shortly.”

I wriggle one arm out from the covers and reach for my phone. Mr. Cowen has texted me twice this morning.

In addition, there are half a dozen messages regarding fundraising galas and cotillions. How many tickets do I want for this dinner? Would I like Bryant Estate to be listed among the top-tier donors for the charity auction? It’s all white noise. It’s all too much.

Cowen: The carriage house is worse than we thought. I’ll bring a comprehensive list of issues that need to be addressed.

And, ten minutes later,

Cowen: Have you spoken with a historical expert about chimney restorations? I have a list of names for you to call…

And, two minutes after that,

Cowen: If you wish to re-open the Bryant Estate gardens to the public this spring, we should expedite the carriage house restoration…

There have been several good days since my parents died. Days when I was eager to oversee this house and the family’s obligations. I went to meetings. Made decisions. Spoke to contractors and experts and architects and event planners. However, once one project began, more problems arose. Now, it’s all too much.

Now, I can’t seem to muster the will to even look at plans, or sit at a table with these people who talk over my head. My head simply goes…elsewhere.

I don’t reply to anyone.

If I engage with Mr. Cowen or the others, they will reply with more questions. I won’t be able to breathe.

I know I’m being impossible, and I don’t understand why the contractor, for one, won’t simply move on to and take on a more lucrative project from someone easier to work with than me.

Scratch that — yes, I do know why. Everybody wants a piece of the Bryant Estate. To show potential clients that you worked on Bryant Estate? That’s worth its weight in gold.

I tap out a simple, “OK,” to Frye. He doesn’t like communicating via text. Too bad, because I don’t like the intercom. It was installed in the 1980s, when my mother was a teenager, and would sulk in this very room for hours. Grandmother added the intercom system so Mother would always be a click away.

Doctors and Grandmother worried about Mother because of her heart condition, so she needed to be constantly reminded to not run up the stairs, not take her mountain bike into the woods, not dance, and for the love of god, no parties and of course no dating. Boys get your heart galloping like a wild little pony, Grandmother would tell her.

What a lot of good it did to try to keep Mother away from boys. She and Father married weeks—not months—after they met while she was studying abroad. She was ready to fall in love the second she was set free from the nest.

In the end, her heart simply gave out, utterly broken after Father got sick and no one could save him after his diagnosis. The disease spread like wildfire, and they were both gone before my 21st birthday.

Dr. White says I have the same condition as Mother.

Frye reads the text but doesn’t respond via phone or the intercom, which tells me he’s satisfied for now. He needs to know I’m still breathing, or else he will pester me until he gathers the tenacity to mount the narrow metal staircase or send someone up to check on me. Poor man.

I snuggle down deeper into the covers.

The blankets and quilt are no match for this drafty room, and my feet get cold. I hate that.

Esme, I say to myself. The sooner you put on socks, the sooner you can get back into bed.

I sit up slowly, willing the vertigo to stay away. Baby steps, as Dr. White says. When I feel overwhelmed, I just have to focus on three things to get me through the next minute — putting my feet on the floor, walking to the dresser, finding socks.

I’m aware of how ridiculous it seems that a grown, physically able woman has to mentally plot out the act of putting socks on.

Carefully, I swing my legs over the side of the bed, and push back the covers, my eyes catching on the small red bird tattoo inside my left wrist.

The sight of it wakes the tiniest spark of warmth in my belly.

And with that spark comes one word:

Sagan.

The feeling passes quickly, but it’s enough to get me to stand up.

Numb once again, I shuffle to my closet and find my favorite socks, sitting on the tufted stool there to pull them on. My feet are warm, finally, but the rest of me is cold.

I pause by the curtained window on my way back to bed. Pushing aside the midnight velvet, I let in the brilliant light of a snowy, clear morning.

Squinting against the whiteness of it all, I wonder if simply going outside will fix me. Does the snow-loving little girl inside me still exist?

Perched on a pine branch outside my window sits a muted red cardinal looking back at me. According to Bryant family lore, a red cardinal at the window is an ancestor coming to check on you.

This one, a female, is my grandmother. Bossy and glaring. The same family of birds has lived at the estate and perched in that same tree for generations. I have a whole mansion at my disposal, yet this is my constant.

The bird cocks its little head as if to say, “It’s already 11 a.m. and I’ve finished half a day’s work. I planned the menu for the scoliosis event. I met with a contractor to discuss the cracks in the south wing chimney. I took all of Dr. White’s vitamins and hiked five miles. What have you done so far today?”

Grandmother was always up before dawn. Sometimes, I think she did it not because she liked to be awake before everyone else but because she enjoyed letting her children and grandchildren know how lazy they were. Ironic, considering how my mother wasn’t allowed to partake in her favorite physical activities, yet she was constantly made to feel lazy because sometimes she was so dejected she couldn’t get out of bed.

What have I done so far today? “Felt immeasurable resistance to the simplest of tasks. Avoided interacting with other humans. Despaired that night is inevitably coming again, when the ghosts get louder.”

“Did you say you wanted strawberry or blackberry jam?”

I startle and then turn away from the window.

A tall woman stands in the doorway. She’s looking skittish this morning, in her tight bun. The silver domed tray in her hands wavers slightly. She smiles hesitantly, with a questioning look.

“Whichever is fine, Cressida,” I say blankly but politely. I used to be able to muster a smile. Now, everything takes a monumental effort.

But it’s not her job to make me smile. Cressida’s job is to cook the food and bring me the food and take away the food once I’ve taken more than zero bites of the food.

I want to scream. I want to ask her why I’m not hungry, even though I haven’t eaten a bite since yesterday. I want to know why I can’t do a simple thing like go to the kitchen and shove bread in the toaster. I want to know why she’s still willingly employed here when she must be bored out of her mind with nothing to do but cook toast and tea for a strange, broken bird who doesn’t eat.

Cressida leaves the breakfast tray and recedes down the hallway. She may as well be fading into the blackness. The world of my bedroom is that separate from the rest of the world.

I turn back to the window, and the bird has flown away.

The grounds look pretty with a fresh blanket of snow.

Frye is hoping the sight of snow will jolt me out of my stupor, compelling me to feel or do literally anything. To eat breakfast, to shower, to get dressed, and to meet Dr. White downstairs for my weekly appointment.

But it is all meaningless, as far as I can tell.

I peer out the window, across the creek, over the treetops, and out toward the stone wall that marks the property’s edge. Someone has decorated the length of it with green garlands and red ribbon for Christmas. The embedded fountains along the wall haven’t been operational in years, and their basins have been filled with oversized Christmas baubles that glint in the sunshine.

Who did all that? Presumably I’m paying someone. Perhaps a landscaper? So many moving parts to this house that I don’t even know about…

As I ponder this, a shadow shifts in the tallest tree right in my line of vision.

The shape is shrouded by the boughs, but something black moved there, like human legs scaling a trunk. Well, whatever it was seems to have disappeared again.

It’s probably more paranoid delusions.

If I manage to attend my medical appointment, I’ll have the doctor up my prescription for tonight.

The medication Dr. White prescribes helps a little by putting me to sleep. But I still wake up at all hours to the noises.

That’s what I call them when Dr. White asks about them. But if I’m honest, it’s not just noises.

It’s voices. And sometimes… I see them floating across the room. Gray, faceless, and dressed in rotted rags.

I haven’t told anyone that what I’m hearing and seeing at night seems to be humans who whisper raspy nonsense. They could have me committed, as my grandfather did to my mother at 17.

Life at Bryant Estate sounds so much like a horror movie sometimes I could laugh.

If only my life was a horror movie, in which the main character has a fresh perspective every morning, brushing off last night’s terror as nothing more than a faulty electrical system or a silly prank by neighborhood children.

Maybe if I were a character in a horror movie, I would be able to convince myself that all my problems are simply in my head. I could seize the day and “make the most of the daylight,” as Grandmother used to say.

If I had the will to do that, I could go outside and investigate what I actually saw just now.

But that doesn’t work for me. Seize the day? Nah. I’m going back to bed.

For just a little longer.

And a little longer after that.

Leaving the curtain halfway open, I crawl back onto the mattress, my wrist with the red bird tucked under my pillow.

I can’t seem to get warm, but I don’t feel like sitting up to rearrange the blankets. These days, the house is colder. The utility bill for this place is exorbitant, I’m told. Frye had to make the executive decision without me to only heat the place enough to keep the pipes from freezing in a cold snap.

Today is the snappiest of cold snaps in my recent memory, and on top of that, I’m told I can’t use the fireplace in my room because of a crack in the liner, or the crown, or something like that.

A laundry list of things regarding the house needs my attention, but I can’t seem to give it.

I close my eyes and wait for sleep.

The door opens a short time later, and I assume it’s Cressida, coming to check and see if I’ve eaten.

I open my eyes in alarm, then. The footsteps approaching the bed do not sound like the cook.

An earthy leather scent fills the room, one that’s eerily familiar, but I can’t place it.

The bed frame creaks under the weight of someone large.

I freeze.

All I know is it’s not Frye. It’s not anyone who belongs here, I can tell that much. None of the staff would dare sit on my bed.

Not-Frye’s voice says, “Esme. Are you awake?”

I don’t know how to answer that.

I run the tip of my tongue over my dry lips. I swallow. Words don’t come, and I don’t know which ones I’d use, anyway.

A sinewy hand pulls back the blanket.

I wince at the cold.

“Yeah, you’re awake,” says the rough voice, with a hint of a teasing smile in it.

Once again, I try to wet my lips and reply, but all that comes out is an embarrassing wheeze.

“That’s it,” he says, but I don’t know what he means. What’s it?

That same hand that pulled back the curtain goes to my hair. A light, brief petting sends a pleasing rush over my skin. How long has it been since someone touched me who wasn’t a doctor or another type of professional hired to help me?

Everyone around me is employed by me. They wouldn’t dare touch me unless they were under orders from Frye to check my temperature or my pulse. And they do it awkwardly and quickly, without sitting on my bed or bossily removing the covers.

So why am I not screaming and reaching for my phone to call the police?

This person could be here to rob me…or worse.

But at 11 in the morning?

No, it must be yet another practitioner hired by Frye to “help” me. A personal trainer? Physical therapist? Motivational coach?

Oh well. There’s nothing they can do.

The man removes his hand from my hair and clears his throat.

“Esme, the first thing we’re going to do is eat this breakfast while it’s warm.”

I bury my head in the pillow. I don’t know who this is, but I’m not hungry.

“Fine. Don’t eat. But you do need to drink something.”

Strange…I hadn’t noticed my head pounding from dehydration until he said that.

I turn and stare out the window. That same rough hand that was touching my hair now thrusts a delicate teacup in front of my face, the hot, pleasant-smelling liquid forcing me to lift my head off the pillow.

The cup is at my lips. And if it’s poisoned? So what.

“Good girl,” he says as I take a drink.

I turn away again and close my eyes, my hands reaching for the blankets that this stranger won’t allow me to burrow under. I know I won’t win a game of tug-of-war with this man, but I grip my favorite fuzzy throw all the same.

“Nope. Not time for night-night. The next thing we’re going to do is have a shower. OK?”

That’s…not what I was expecting a personal trainer to say.

When I don’t respond, he pushes. “Baby, I can’t force you. I’m gonna need you to tell me if I can help you with that.”

The voice is deep and rough, like a person who might have shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. The friction of that gravelly bass hardens my nipples.

Baby.

He called me baby.

And “good girl”?

What the hell is going on here?

Is this … a sex thing? Did Frye finally lose his marbles completely and hire me a sex worker?

And what if he did? He wouldn’t be the only person in this house who has lost their grip on reality. Never mind that I’m not supposed to have sex because it’ll be too much stress for my heart.

The “not supposed to” part makes me eager to jump the bones of any damn person even close-ish to my age who barges into my room unannounced.

A small part of me likes the feel of this stranger’s weight in the bed behind me. He smells good, too. The leathery scent is mixed with wood chips and pine, like someone who’s just spent all morning hiking through the cold woods.

“Hm,” I muster.

“What was that?” The bed creaks as he leans in closer. “I can’t hear you, baby.”

My fingers release their vise grip on the blanket at my knees, as that dangerous voice liquifies my core.

“Yes,” I croak, barely audibly. It takes everything in me to push out that one syllable. Silently, I add: as long as you don’t mind me lying here like a dead fish while you do whatever it is you’re going to be paid to do because I don’t have it in me to fight back.

He responds with, “Alright. Here we go.”

In the next moment, I’m pulled to sitting up, the man’s arm reaching around my back to hook under my right armpit.

“Good girl. Can you stand?”

Good girl? I did nothing.

And…I don’t know, can I stand? I take a moment to think about that—didn’t I stand up earlier to put socks on? I can’t remember—I’m being lifted. The man’s arm supports my back, and his other arm hooks under my knees. I’m being carried like a bride on her wedding night.

I have no choice but to hug my arm around this man’s ham-hock shoulder.

My eyes are even with his neck, and they finally focus on the sharp-edged calligraphy that spans the side of his corded throat.

Non timebo mala.