I grabbed a handful of hangers from the closet, then another, then another. I dumped a pile of dresses on the bed—silk, rayon, polyester. Gold, powder blue, fire-engine red. I opened a drawer in the dresser and found Mariana’s old girdles and bras, her high-waisted underwear. I threw all of those on the bed, too. If Beth couldn’t get rid of all of these things, then I would.
I left the master bedroom and walked into the next room—Beth’s teenage room. It had a narrow bed with a checkered blanket. There was an expensive 1970s stereo in a cabinet with glass doors, a record player on top of it and a stack of records leaning against it on the floor, as if someone had just been riffling through them, choosing what to play.
Gritting my teeth, I grabbed the records and threw them out into the hall, letting them crash to the floor. Peter Frampton, Neil Diamond, Fleetwood Mac. I opened the closet and found Beth’s teenage clothes in here, jeans and wraparound flowered tops. I threw those into the hall with the records, letting them crumple off the hangers. It felt good to destroy this place, to rip open its wounds. It felt good to make the dust billow. If I could have drawn a deep breath, I would have screamed into the silence.
I finished wrecking Beth’s teenage room and walked back out into the hall. The door to the master bedroom was open. I walked to it and looked in.
Everything I’d torn out of the closet was back in its place. The room looked like I’d never touched it.
Fear clenched my stomach, and I understood. This wasn’t Beth’s house; it was Lily’s.
There was a cold breath on the back of my neck, and something smashed me into the wall. I hit the wall hard, the breath rushing out of me in surprise, and icy hands wound into my hair, pulling my head back.
I did scream then, the sound ripping out of me. I was staring at the ceiling, my head pulled back by a hand I couldn’t see. Something was breathing on me, its breath so cold I shuddered in repulsion.
Look, it said.
Still gripping my hair, the hands pushed me down the hall. The door on my right flew open. The door to Beth’s childhood room. I struggled and screamed again, trying to twist out of the thing’s grip, but it was impossible. I was shoved to the doorway, then through it.
And as I stepped over the threshold, I wasn’t in the Greer mansion anymore.
* * *
—
It was freezing. I was standing at the side of a road, looking around in the dark. Gravel crunched under my feet and the wind crept down my collar onto my neck. I could see the road, trees, and between the trees, the distant dark surface of a lake.
I was at the edge of Claire Lake. A few feet from me, a car was pulled over—a blue Pinto. The hood was popped open, and a woman stood in front of it, staring down into the guts of the car. Her blond hair obscured her face. Her hands were in the pockets of her wool coat.
And then I knew: It was the night of October 15, 1977, and Lily Knowles was about to kill someone.
“No,” I said, but no one heard me. I wasn’t here; I was in Beth’s old bedroom. But then why could I taste the lake in the air, and why did I know exactly what was about to happen?
There was the sound of a motor, the sweep of headlights, and the crunch of gravel. A man’s voice called out: “Need some help?”
“No,” I said again, but even though I saw my breath plume into the night air, no one heard me. Lily looked up, and a smile flashed across her face as she saw the man. She was the girl from the Christmas photo, only now she was a grown woman, her face filled out and her body curved beneath her coat. Her blond hair was soft and gleaming, and her smile was on the edge of flirtatious. She was irresistible.
Ransom Wells had said Lily made him want to crawl out of his skin, and right now, I could see it. There was nothing behind Lily’s eyes—nothing at all.
“Sure,” Lily said. “I’d love some help.”