Prologue

W hen I was eight years old, my mother tried to kill me.

For twenty years, I've wondered why.

What did I do wrong?

What caused her to hate me so much to want me, her only child, erased from this world?

What would have happened if she hadn't drunk the poisoned lemonade—of her own making—out of the yellow cup with white daisies printed on it that had always belonged to me?

Not a day has gone by that I haven't watched my dull gray-blue eyes and chestnut-brown hair staring back at me in the mirror as I asked myself these questions.

Her eyes. Her hair.

The only piece of my father that stares back at me is a splash of soft freckles that graces my features. My father always said that they were like the constellations in the sky and that these were our very own versions of the Big Dipper and Little Dipper. That we would always be together, shining brightly side by side.

At least, he used to say that...until the day my mother ruined everything and overturned our entire world with a heartless act of malevolence.

We weren't the same after that. Nothing was ever the same again.

I spent the rest of my childhood surrounded by ghosts. Walking the halls of the Crane Manor, a large manor house my father inherited from his father years before I was born. When it was just him and mother, surrounded in wedded bliss.

Did my birth take that magic away from them?

Did I become nothing more than an afterthought? Is that why my mother thought it would be best for me to just disappear from this world?

These are questions that have haunted my every waking thought, and followed me into every nightmare.

I try my best to remember the happy moments we shared as mother and daughter.

Because I know she loved me; I know it.

She used to read me stories before bedtime. Every night, we would pick a different book, a different genre—because Mom said I needed to be a well-rounded reader if I ever wanted to write novels of my own one day, like her.

My favorites were always the stories that made things go bump in the night. The ones that let your imagination run wild...making you second guess every noise in the house.

Is there a person in the hallway coming to murder me, or is that loud creak of the floorboard just Horton, our orange tabby cat, chasing away another mouse?

Is that a tree branch scraping the outside of the house, or is it a sharp-clawed monster coming to steal me away from my parents in the dead of night?

You know, the stories that make you feel like there were eyes on you while you were tucked in tightly into the pink-tufted bedspread, waiting with bated breath for something sinister to grab you by your uncovered feet to drag you under the bed.

Those were always my favorite. Not because I loved the dark and scary things, but because most nights, Mom would let me sneak into bed with her. She would hold me close all night long, keeping me safe in the embrace of her arms. Waking up and inhaling the scent of that White Diamonds perfume she always wore while being snuggled in tightly between her and Dad—those were the best nights.

My favorite nights.

Until it was all ripped away from me—from us. Leaving a hole of nothingness and darkness where my heart was supposed to be.

Instead of being wrapped in my mother's arms, I was being wrapped in the yellow wool throw blanket that belonged on the back of the couch. The same one we laid down in the yard under the weeping willow tree to have our family picnic on.

One moment I was sitting across from my parents, having an impromptu picnic breakfast with them because Dad had called off work and insisted on joining us for the day.

A real family breakfast, he called it.

Not the rush of workboots and waffles being tossed back and forth as they popped out of the toaster oven.

The next thing I knew, I was being rushed back into Crane Manor, my childhood home, by a policeman that I didn't know, while being chased by the screams of my father.

"No, no, no, Caroline. Why—how could you do this to her? To us!" my father yelled in agony over and over while clinging to the limp body of my mother.

I think part of me knew that it would be the last time I laid eyes on my mother. Each small detail of her etched into that integral part of the brain that holds onto all our dearest memories. I couldn't tear my gaze away from her as the police officer rushed me into the house, embraced in the yellow blanket and smothered by the smell of the cigar smoke that clung tightly to his uniform.

I remember the way her hand lay lifeless next to the overturned lemonade pitcher, the way her pale skin looked ghostly against the wispy branches of the willow tree that hung low to the ground. The white nightgown she always wore made her look like a princess stuck under a spell, waiting for the handsome prince to come wake her up. The way her dark hair fanned around her like a mermaid drying off in the sun after a long day at sea.

I wanted to remember her like that, looking like one of the characters in the fairytales she read to me as she stroked my hair and placed swift kisses on my cheeks when I started falling asleep.

That was the version of her I loved most.

The version of us I loved most.

The one I wanted to visit in all my dreams, since I wouldn't have her in any real tangible way any longer.

Instead, she decided to bring one of the scary stories to life—by standing at the end of my bed in that same white lacy nightgown. The white foam still spilling out of her mouth while the blood dripped out of her nose as she stood there, night after night.

Reaching for me.

Watching me.

Haunting me.

Waiting for me to join her.

I knew the minute I turned eighteen that I needed to run from that place. I needed to escape while I still had some fraction of sanity left.

Once I left, I vowed I would never go back there. A vow that rooted into my soul and bones. A vow that nearly destroyed me, knowing I would likely never lay eyes on my father again.

Not that he gave me many reasons to want to.

The hardest part, the part that felt like I was physically ripping my body in two, was I would never see the boy who grew up alongside me, Ian Foster.

The only thing that tied my heart to Crane Manor was Ian. I knew leaving meant abandoning half of myself here—rotting underneath the crown molding and pretending like paint and plaster could fix it all.

Leaving Crane Manor meant I would never skip rocks on the lake with Ian. I'd never see him flashing me that crooked smile that was just a bit too big for his face, or brushing the tears away after a terrible nightmare of my mother. The kind where I would wake up screaming and bury myself into the safety of Ian's arms—who used to sneak up the trellis and into my window every night from the night I turned nine.

I left in the middle of the night, right after I turned eighteen, with my acceptance letter into UCLA in my hand and two duffle bags slung over my shoulder. That's how I wanted it to be. A Band-Aid being ripped off, leaving only the tattered shards of my heart behind and a note for Ian on my bedside table. A note telling him to come find me when he was ready to let go of the ghosts of Crane Manor. I was okay with leaving that note and not saying a real goodbye...because I knew one day he'd be ready to leave our cursed past behind us and build a future together. A future where we could finally lay our dead to rest, and leave them there.

I promised myself I would never return to that haunted place. The place that only brought pain and misery while being trapped inside of its dark halls filled with the ghosts of my past. I believed that promise with every breath.

Or at least I thought I did, until I got that dreaded phone call from the manor's housekeeper, Mrs. Foster. I stupidly kept the same cell phone number and this morbid hope that Ian or my father might use it one day.

This wasn't the call I was expecting, one I truly wished I could've ignored.

My father was sick, and I was needed back at Crane Manor.

I was needed back home.

It was time to face the demons of my past.