The hotel closed briefly when a child drowned shortly after opening. Seven-year-old Martha Woodcock of Claremont, New Hampshire, apparently wandered out to the springs on her own, fell in, and drowned. Benson Harding closed the hotel, installed gates around the springs, put up lifesaving buoys, hired lifeguards, and only allowed guests to visit the springs during daylight hours.

But despite these precautions, in the fall of 1929, Benson Harding’s wife, Eliza, drowned in the springs. Two weeks later, the hotel burned to the ground. Fifteen of the twenty-four guests were killed. All that remained of the property was a gaping cellar hole flooded from the pipes that had been installed to route the springs into the hotel. Benson Harding returned to Saratoga a ruined, haunted man. He shot himself later that year.

Are the springs cursed? Look at the history and judge for yourself.

*Please note: The springs are now privately owned. They are not open to the public!

My head spun. I reread the article. The little girl who fell in and drowned—seven years old. I said her name out loud, “Martha.”

Martha W.

Rita’s imaginary friend.

The little girl who lived in the pool and came out sometimes. The little girl no one but Rita could see.

But I’d seen her once, too. Hadn’t I?

I shoved my phone back into my bag, looked down at my father’s drawing of Lexie on my bed. She grinned up at me.

“You knew,” I said. “You figured it out.”

I went back to the boxes, tore through the papers until I found the one I was looking for. The list Lexie had made:

Nelson Dewitt

Martha W.

Eliza Harding

Rita Harkness

They were all people who had drowned in the springs.

I put my finger on the next line, the one under Rita’s, thinking I should write Lexie’s name in there.

Listen to me, I heard my sister say, clear as could be. I held my breath, listening. I was losing my mind. Lexie’s death, being here, back at Sparrow Crest—it was unraveling me.

I made out my father’s voice through the propped-open window. “Please,” he was saying. I stood up, pulled open the screen, leaned out the window, craning my neck, trying to see the pool. My mother, when she was a child in this very room, wondered who her sister Rita was talking to—if Martha was just imaginary or an actual flesh-and-blood person.

Rita’s drawing in the lid of the board game, of the little girl in the blue dress: Martha W. 7 years old.

My father said something else I couldn’t catch, and then I heard a woman say, “Shh. Mum’s the word.”

I’d know that voice anywhere.

It was Lexie.

I jerked up and back, slamming my head against the window sash, hitting it hard enough to see stars. “Shit!” I ran out into the hall and straight into Diane, who was wearing Lexie’s old Nirvana T-shirt and a pair of her running shorts.

I jumped when I saw her.

Ghosts were everywhere.

“I thought I heard something,” Diane said. “Your father’s gone. He’s not in his room or the bathroom.”

“He’s down at the pool!” I said, rushing past her.

And Lexie is with him! She’s come back!

Diane was right behind me as I took the stairs two at a time, got down to the front hall to find the door open. My feet hit the stone floor and I slid, caught myself on the wall before falling. There were puddles of water everywhere.

Footprints, my brain told me. Wet footprints.

Her footprints.

“It’s wet, be careful,” I called back to Diane, as if my near wipeout wasn’t caution enough. I turned to see Pig crouched farther down the hall, eyes on the open door, his back arched and fur raised.

Outside, my father yelled, “Please!”

I ran through the open front door and across the driveway, along the flagstone path to the gate, which also stood open. I could not understand what I was seeing: only my father. No Lexie.

“Ted?” I called, taking care not to slip on the wet stone.

My father was at the far end of the pool, holding something in his hands. I willed my eyes to adjust, to see what he was struggling with. Trying to open.

“What are you doing, Ted?” Diane yelled, hurrying toward him.

My father was holding the plastic urn that contained Lexie’s ashes. He’d gotten the top off, pulled out the plastic bag inside and opened it. Now he was holding it over the pool while he looked down into the dark water as if waiting for a sign.

“No!” Diane cried, flying toward him. “Ted! What are you doing? Stop!”

We watched in horror as my father dumped all that was left of my sister’s physical body into the inky black water. No words of goodbye. No sentimental ceremony or talk of how much we loved her. My father’s movements were quick and jerky—like watching someone dump the contents of a Dustbuster into the trash.

“No!” Diane wailed.

“It’s what she wants,” he said. “She told me.”

“Jesus!” Diane said. She’d stopped, just a few feet away from him. “Ted! What have you done?” She looked at the empty plastic bag in my father’s hands, then down at the water, where there was a thin skim of fine gray ash resting on the top. And she began to cry. She collapsed into a nearby chair, put her head in her hands, and wept harder than I had ever seen her weep.

My father looked at me, eyes widening. “Don’t you see,” he said, frantic. “This is what she wants. She told me! It’ll help her come back. Come back and stay!”

I watched the pale ashes floating, sinking, mixing with the black water.

“Look,” my father said, pointing. “There she is! Look!”

I lifted my gaze from the sinking ashes to where he was pointing: the dark heart at the center of the pool.

It couldn’t be…

I held my breath.

There was movement, a ripple in the still surface of the water.

Squinting, I stepped forward, too close to the edge, teetering dangerously. The water smelled like blood.

I was sure, for a half second, that I did see something: a flash of white in darkness.

A pale hand and arm rising up out of the black water.

“Lex?” my mouth made the shape of her name, but no sound came.

I blinked, and she was gone.

chapter twenty-six

August 20, 1930