Prologue
If walls could talk, what a story they’d tell—a story of love, betrayal, and murder, the woman thinks as she stands at the top of the stairs watching the newcomer, who is completely unaware of the woman’s ethereal presence. The newcomer is moving around the house with the uncertainty of someone who’s trespassing in someone else’s space, trying it on for size to see if she could make a life for herself there. Many others have passed through the house over the centuries, but this one is different. She’s young, by modern standards, but she’s known the pain of loss and the heartbreak of betrayal. It’s right there in her shadowed eyes and the unhealthy pallor of her face.
Maybe this one will be able to help me, the woman at the top of the stairs thinks. Maybe she’ll succeed where others had failed, and finally set me free so I can fulfill my promise at last.
Chapter 1
Lauren
The Present
The morning was bright and brisk, with wispy clouds racing across the aquamarine sky and playing peek-a-boo with the pale orb of the sun. It was mid-March, but there wasn’t a hint of spring in the air, winter stubbornly clinging on. The roads were clear, but snow still covered much of the ground since the temperature refused to rise above freezing, and the icy breath of the ocean held the shoreline in its thrall.
Lauren peered at the GPS as it instructed her to make a right. The road she turned onto was narrow and surprisingly steep, flanked by ancient trees whose branches moved eerily in the wind. The house was about a mile away, perched on a hill that overlooked Pleasant Bay and the Atlantic Ocean beyond.
Lauren hoped she was going to like this one. She’d seen several potential rentals over the past few weeks, but the ones she liked were too pricy and the ones she could afford were little more than shacks that smelled of mildew and had such low ceilings she could reach up and touch them. She hadn’t planned on leaving Boston, but the desperate need to escape her apartment and spend a few months in a place that held no painful memories overwhelmed her.
In two weeks, it’d be a year since Zack died, killed by a sniper’s bullet during the spring offensive in Afghanistan. It had been his third tour and would have been his last. They’d made plans. They were going to sell their apartment in Brookline and buy a house in the suburbs, start trying for a baby, and live a wonderfully boring life where Lauren didn’t lie awake night after night waiting for him to call from overseas or avoid watching the news for fear of hearing something that would send her into a tailspin.
While Zack was away, she’d concentrated on her work, finally completing the last book of the military romance series she’d been writing. She’d often heard the advice “Write what you know,” and this was something she knew—the heart-wrenching goodbyes followed by tearful reunions, the worry, the fear, and the pure joy of those first few weeks of togetherness after Zack finally returned to her, safe and sound. Those first few days were like a second honeymoon, but more intense, more precious. Zack had joked that the months of separation kept the marriage strong because the romance never fizzled out. It stoked their desire for each other and transformed the mundane details of their lives into something magical. They’d talk nonstop, their words tripping over each other and falling like a waterfall from their parched lips, and the need to touch, to feel, to worship each other’s bodies was so strong, they barely got out of bed.
Zack had often remarked how lucky he’d been in his life, but his luck had run out a year ago on a windswept mountaintop just north of Kabul. Their life was like a record that had screeched to a halt, the song left unsung, the melody interrupted. Suddenly, Lauren was alone, widowed, a status people tended to associate with elderly women who’d lost their husbands to illness or old age, not with someone who was still in her twenties. She couldn’t bring herself to utter the word; it made her loss all too real. The rational part of her brain understood Zack was gone, but the emotional part, the loving part, still looked for him everywhere she went. She still spoke to him, sometimes out loud, and slept on her side of the bed, unable to move to the middle for fear of acknowledging that he’d never sleep next to her again. She needed to have pictures of him, but looking at them tore at her heart. She wanted to be in the place he’d called home, but every piece of furniture, every picture, every item of clothing reminded her of the husband she’d lost. Seeing his favorite mug for the first time after he died had led to a two-day cryfest that resulted in her hiding the cup from view lest she fall apart again.
She’d put off clearing out his side of the closet, unable to get dressed in the morning without touching his shirts and sniffing desperately in the hope that a hint of his smell still clung to the laundered fabric. She’d finally done it a few months ago, but she hadn’t thrown anything away. Getting rid of Zack’s things seemed too final, too real. Despite her valiant efforts to cope, her life became reduced to eating, sleeping, watching TV, and reassuring everyone that she was fine, a lie no one really believed.
She’d stopped writing. She simply couldn’t form an original thought as she sat day after day, staring at the blank screen of her computer. Her agent had been able to get her several ghostwriting gigs. It was much easier to organize someone else’s thoughts and turn them into a narrative than deal with her own. Her clients were happy, and her reputation as a ghostwriter grew, resulting in more commissions. She was glad; it was imperative to keep busy in order to keep the worst of the pain at bay. But after a long, snowy winter spent mostly indoors, she needed to get out. She had to get away from the ghost of Zack, to inhabit a new place, to try to put the pieces of her life back together and come to terms with a truth that had come knocking on her door several months ago and shed a new light on her life as she’d known it. She had to get away, to spend a few months in a place that made her feel peaceful and whole.
Cape Cod had naturally come to mind. She’d loved the place as a child. Her parents had rented a house on the beach for two weeks every August, and they’d spent their days tanning and swimming, followed by burgers and grilled seafood eaten on the deck as they watched the sun sink below the horizon. It was a golden memory of her childhood she still clung to and had hoped to recreate with her own children someday.
The summer season wouldn’t officially start until Memorial Day, but if she found the right place, she’d be ready to move in as soon as the first of April, eager to watch spring arrive in a place that was nearly free of memories—her own rebirth, for lack of a better word. She owed it to Zack. She’d made a promise.
“Promise me you won’t grieve for me should anything happen,” he’d said that last morning at their apartment.
“I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you,” she’d replied, clinging to him amid the rumpled sheets.
Zack had kissed her tenderly and brushed her tangled hair away from her face. “Lauren, promise me you’ll move on. I need to know that you’ll be happy; that’s the only way I can leave and get on with my job. Promise me,” he’d demanded, his gaze anxious and intense. “Promise me.”
And she’d promised, even though she’d been lying through her teeth. “Yes, I promise. I will get on with my life if the worst happens.” But she’d never imagined that anything could be worse than death, or that some secrets lived on, haunting those left behind from beyond the grave.