Ted smiled. He’d found Lexie’s stash of pot in an old cigar box up in the attic. He lit up a joint, and together, we smoked it sitting on the old bench in the gazebo. I hadn’t smoked pot since college. He asked me, “Do you think you’ll keep Dracula’s castle?”

“My and Lexie’s summers here were such a huge part of growing up. I feel like they shaped the person I turned out to be. This house and I… we’re bound. I don’t feel like I can sell it,” I said honestly. “Gram wanted it to stay in the family. I feel like I owe it to her, to me, and Lexie, too, to keep it.”

“Will you move out here? Pick up and leave your life in Tacoma? Your practice?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I looked at him. “What do you think I should do?”

He barked out a laugh. “You’re asking me for advice?”

I laughed with him, but then said, “Yeah, I guess I am.”

It was funny, here was this man I’d spent years trying to change. And now, sitting here with him like this, I realized he was exactly the way he should be. I really didn’t want him any other way. I felt like we got each other in the way only family could. I trusted him, felt like I could be vulnerable with him. And, crazy as it seemed, I actually wanted his advice, valued his opinion.

He thought a minute. Rubbed his beard in a philosophical kind of way. “A part of you is always going to be here. You, Lexie, your mother, your grandmother and aunts, great-grandparents—you’re all as much a part of this place as this rose garden; as the mortar that holds the stones of that old house together.” He looked at me. “Does that make any sense at all?”

I nodded and hugged him.

We went into the house and raided the kitchen, then went into the living room, where I put on one of my sister’s old-time records, Fats Domino. I closed my eyes, floating from the pot. A part of you is always going to be here. I knew he was right. He was right about Lexie, too. I felt her here—her presence was so strong.

She used to say we were two halves that made a whole, the yin and the yang. For better or for worse, the times that I’d felt most whole, most like myself, I’d been with my sister.

When I went up to my room, I grabbed the binders I’d bought and pulled the boxes over to the bed. I started with the ones Terri had been going through.

She was just looking for a photo, I told myself.

But what if she’d been looking for something else? And the photo was just a cover-up?

Stop it, I told myself. You’re being paranoid.

I began pulling things out of the boxes and sorting them: more journal pages, which went into the red binder, sorted by date as best I could. There was one that I found particularly unsettling:

June 2

Something was in the house last night. There was water on the floor. Wet puddles leading from the open door and up the stairs.

Had there really been an intruder? If so, who? Or what?

Something was in the house last night.

I kept digging through the box and came across the birth certificates of my mother, Rita, and Diane. Obituaries for Rita and my mother, and prayer cards from their funerals. I put each of these into plastic sleeves and into the binder I’d dedicated to family documents.

I opened up an old leather-bound diary with a cracked spine. The pages were wrinkled and mildewed, like the book had gotten wet. The ink was blurred, washed away in places. I made out a name on the front cover: Mrs. Ethel O’Shay Monroe. My great-grandmother. I flipped through it, but could only read bits and pieces: a trip my great-grandparents took to the Brandenburg Springs Hotel, a woman named Myrtle with a sick husband, a sick baby, the building of Sparrow Crest. Most of the diary was illegible.

I set the diary aside, continued digging. At last, I came to a worn blue envelope—one I was sure Terri had pulled out and set aside. I opened the envelope and found several newspaper clippings, the first about the hotel fire.

Samuel Claiborne, a bellboy at the hotel, was first to see the flames and has stated that he witnessed recently widowed Mr. Harding in the halls with a can of kerosene shortly before. Claiborne broke down the door to the Harding suite, and was able to rescue the Hardings’ infant daughter.

The Hardings had a daughter! A girl who lived. Why hadn’t Shirley told me about her?

There was another short article clipped from a yellowed newspaper:

Flemming family takes out-of-state doctor to court in dispute over the Brandenburg Springs property

Walter Flemming of Lord’s Hill is legally contesting the sale of the Brandenburg Springs property, which was the site of the Brandenburg Springs Hotel and Resort. The property was apparently deeded to Dr. William Monroe of Lanesborough, New Hampshire, after winning a poker game with the former owner of the hotel, Mr. Benson Harding. Flemming, whose daughter Eliza was married to Mr. Harding before her tragic drowning at the hotel, contests that the land should legally belong to the child of Benson and Eliza Harding, Shirley Harding, now just one year old.

“It’s all she has left of her parents,” Mr. Flemming stated. “The property should stay in the family.”

Mr. Benson Harding took his own life shortly after turning over the hotel property to Dr. Monroe.

Shirley Harding is being raised by her grandparents, Walter and Eureka Flemming of Lord’s Hill.

The final newspaper clipping was a wedding announcement from June 21, 1951:

Miss Shirley Harding, granddaughter of Mr. Walter Flemming and his wife, Eureka, of Brandenburg, was married to Mr. Christopher Dufrense of Chickopee, Mass., on June 17. The ceremony took place at the Brandenburg Methodist Church and was officiated by Reverend David Thorn. The bride was given away by her grandfather, Mr. Walter Flemming. Best Man was Mr. Stephen Dickerson of Chickopee, Mass., and Maid of Honor was Miss Margaret Monroe of Brandenburg.

My mind whirled. Shirley, Ryan’s grandmother, was the daughter of Benson and Eliza Harding, the owners of the Brandenburg Springs Hotel. And their family had contested the sale to my great-grandparents.

Shirley must have known who her parents had been and what had happened to them.

Did she also believe the springs and land were wrongly sold? That Sparrow Crest should be hers? Did she grow up believing that everything my grandmother had should all rightly belong to her? Was that why she couldn’t stay away from Sparrow Crest, the springs, and my grandmother?