And so, before he could even think about it or consider the gravity of his actions, Sebastian summoned all the strength he had, ran at the monster as hard as he could, and pushed.
As his son flew over the cliff and hit the rocks below with a sound that pierced a father’s heart, Sebastian’s chest seized up, a pain worse than he’d ever endured. He turned his eyes toward the star-filled sky. Not the worst place to die. His boy had died there. And so many others.
But no. He didn’t die there and then. He managed to drive back to town, back to La Belle Vie. He made it into the entryway before he fell to the ground.
Serena flew to his side. “Call James,” he whispered, referring to the Bells’ loyal handyman. “The cliff. He needs to hide the bodies.”
Serena understood.
And then, he was gone.
After the ambulance arrived and took his shell away, and she had made the call to the handyman, Serena walked up to her husband’s studio. A calm had overtaken her. Now it was about Sebastian’s legacy and Indigo’s future.
So much blood. It was then she noticed the canvases. One look at them told her all she needed to know. She gathered them up and stacked them in the bathroom—maybe she’d burn them at some other time. Maybe she’d keep them. But she knew one thing. They would never see the light of day. It was then she saw the scratch marks on the door, long scratches, deep in the wood—what had happened there? Grey, what have you done? It was almost as though he had imprisoned Daisy in this room. Was that what had happened when she and Sebastian were away?
Serena hurried out of the studio and shut the door behind her. She made a mental note to have the handyman seal it up entirely when he was finished with that other business. She didn’t want to see the inside of that room ever again.
And the years wrapped themselves around that door, holding it tight, along with the terrible secret, and the demons, it contained. Until the time was right to unleash it.
The End.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book was written during the teeth of the pandemic, although I didn’t set it in this new reality we’re all dealing with. My editors and I thought everyone was pandemic weary, and when you’re reading a novel for an escape, which many of my readers have told me they do with my books, you all didn’t have to curl up with this story and find yourself caught up in this frightening and difficult time again. So I don’t make any references to it, and my characters are not dealing with its aftermath. Maybe I’ll do so in another book, sometime in the future.
If you’re one of those people who reads the acknowledgments first—I have been known to do that—I’m not going to give away any spoilers, but the timeline in this book was a little difficult for me to get my head around. You’ll see what I mean when you read it. So the first people I want to thank are my editors Alicia Clancy and Faith Black Ross. Like we laughed about, sometimes it takes a village to get the past and present lined up correctly. Thank you for making this book better, as you always do. I love working with you to make my books the best they can be.
To everyone at Lake Union, the copy editors, author relations manager Gabriella Dumpit, my publicist Ashley Vanicek: You all are the best. The Best. I am so lucky and grateful for you and all you do on my behalf.
And to my dear friend and agent Jennifer Weltz: I love you. I could go on and on, but that covers it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Wendy Webb is the #1 Amazon Charts and Indie bestselling, multiple award–winning author of seven novels of gothic suspense, including The Keepers of Metsan Valo, The Haunting of Brynn Wilder, Daughters of the Lake, The Vanishing, The Fate of Mercy Alban, The Tale of Halcyon Crane, and The End of Temperance Dare, which has been optioned for both film and television. Her books are sold worldwide and have been translated into more than ten languages. Dubbed “Queen of the Northern Gothic” by reviewers, Wendy sets her stories on the windswept, rocky shores of the Great Lakes. She lives in Minneapolis, where she is at work on her next novel when she’s not walking a good dog along the parkway and lakes near her home. For more information visit her at www.wendykwebb.com.