Ah. That explains it. My mom wouldn’t drive an hour to come to visit me just to have a tea party and play nice. She was in town, so she decided to come lecture me. “Do you want to know why Parsons Manor deserves to be torn down, Adeline?” she asks, her tone dripping with condescension. She sounds like she’s about to school me, and suddenly I feel very wary. “Why?” I ask quietly. “Because a lot of people died in this house.” “You mean the five construction workers in the fire?” I ask, recalling the story Nana told me when I was a child about Parsons Manor catching fire and killing five men. They had to tear down the charred bones and restart. But the ghosts of those men still linger—I just know it. “Yes, but not just them.” She stares at me hard while my hesitance worsens. I turn to look out the window beside me, contemplating if I should just make her leave now. She’s going to tell me something life-changing, and I’m not sure I want to hear it. “Then who else?” I finally ask, my eyes glued to Mom’s shiny black Lexus parked outside. Schmancy. So schmancy that it almost seems mocking. A stark difference to this old house, as if to say I’m better than you. Being a real estate agent pays well. When I was born, she wanted to be a stayat-home mom. But considering the turmoil of our relationship as I got older, that notion soured, so she threw herself into becoming one of the top sellers in Washington. Honestly, ’'m proud of her accomplishments. I just wish she felt the same about mine. “Your great-grandmother, Gigi,” she declares, pulling me out of my thoughts. My head snaps towards her, shock curling through me. “Not only did she die in this house, Addie, but she was murdered here.” I couldn’t keep my mouth from dropping open if I tried. I shoot upward, the rocking chair slamming harshly against the wall behind me. “She did not,” I deny. But if my mother is anything, it’s not a liar. Nana spoke about Gigi often. Her mother was her entire world. But she definitely never told me Gigi was murdered. I had only asked once about her death, and Nana only said that she died too soon. Nana closed down after that and refused to say anything more. At the time, I was too young to give it much thought. I just assumed she was still hurting and left it at that. It hadn’t occurred to me that Gigi’s death was tragic. She sighs. “That’s why your Nana always had this weird... obsession with the manor. She was young when it happened. Her father, John, no longer wanted