by Skylar Finn
“It’s okay,” said Emily. “They just want to say good-bye.”
Jesse slowly entered the room and came to stand beside her. Emily knew it took a considerable amount of willpower for him not to run screaming into the night. Jesse had never liked anything that couldn’t be explained with a logical explanation, and she imagined it was taking everything he had to accept the scene before them.
Matilda smiled sympathetically, as if she knew how mind-boggling this was for him.
She nudged the youngest children forward. They waved at Emily and Jesse. Matilda reached out for their hands, and they went to stand by her side. Andrea smiled at Emily. She reached up to her neck and touched the necklace there lightly. Emily saw that it looked very much like the one she’d found upstairs and returned to Andrea’s parents in the park.
In the distance, sirens wailed, the sound gradually amplifying as they grew closer and closer to the house. Matilda blew Emily a kiss. Andrea and the children waved. With these final gestures, the four of them faded from sight until the only thing left was the light of the fire behind where they had once stood.
The firefighters used the Jaws of Life to get Cynthia out of the car after they put out the flames. She was unconscious when they took her away in the ambulance, burned beyond recognition. Sheriff Oglethorpe assured them she’d be heavily guarded at the hospital so that when she did regain consciousness, there would be little chance of her escaping. Although, he added, it seemed highly unlikely, in her condition.
Theresa came to just as the police arrived, groaning “Where am I?” from the floor of the parlor. One of Oglethorpe’s deputies, Officer Tapper, cuffed her once the EMTs examined her. He put her in the back of a squad car and gave the roof a sharp slap. The car pulled away from the house with Theresa in the back of it, staring out the back window, her eyes dead and her mouth slack. She looked shell shocked, as if she didn’t fully comprehend what was happening. Emily wouldn’t have been surprised to find that she didn’t, without Cynthia there to tell her what to think and how to feel.
Jesse brought Widget inside from the truck and Emily held her while they sat in front of the fireplace, describing the events of the past twenty-four hours to Sheriff Oglethorpe. Emily gave him the address to the cabin where Richard was locked in the cellar. He sent several officers up into the mountains to retrieve him.
“So, Cynthia Harkness has been alive all this time?” Oglethorpe said to Emily and Jesse. “Do you know what made her swerve right into that tree?”
“No idea,” said Emily, shaking her head. She thought of Matilda and the children. She was glad they’d finally gotten their revenge.
“She was crazy,” added Jesse. “I think she’d lost her mind at that point. She also may have been drunk, or on something.”
The sheriff nodded. “I’ve seen people do some pretty crazy things when they’re under the influence. Wouldn’t surprise me. Sounds like she was crazy enough to begin with, trying to murder her way into owning a house.” He shook his head. “I mean, most people would just take out a loan, y’know what I mean?”
Emily remembered Richard’s story in the cabin. “I think it was about more than that to them. They thought of Matilda as a Have, while they were the Have Nots. It seemed like they wanted to even the score.”
“Money will make people do crazy things,” said the sheriff with a sigh. “I’ve seen some strange things in my time. But rest assured, with your testimony, they’ll be behind bars for a long, long time. I’d be surprised if they ever saw the light of day again.”
“Will you find out what they did with the bodies?” asked Emily. “Matilda and the children, I mean. I would really like to give them a proper funeral.”
“We’ll find them,” said the sheriff. “It’s the least she and those kids deserve. Right now, I want to have the EMTs look you over and take you down to the hospital.” He glanced over at Jesse, whose face had swollen to Quasimodo-like proportions. “You look like you need some medical attention. We’ll get the rest of your story afterwards.” The sheriff went to find a paramedic to take care of Jesse. Emily reached for his hand and he took it.
“Do you think it’s over?” she asked, resting her head on his shoulder.
He squeezed her hand. “The ghosts are at peace. Cynthia has been thoroughly incapacitated. Richard is going from that cellar straight to a cell. And Theresa left here in the back of a police car. So yeah, I think we’re pretty much safe. Don’t you?”
Emily gazed into the fireplace and thought of Matilda.
“Yes,” she said. “I do.”
37
A year had passed since Emily and Jesse moved into the rambling old house on the hill. It had once been a haven of criminal activity when the original Meades lived there. It became a beacon of hope for children with nothing when Matilda took over the home. And for a while, it became the site of a tragedy. Though for many months it had been a place of mystery, dark secrets, and fear, it was finally the place Matilda had always dreamed of it being: a safe haven for the less fortunate, for the kids who otherwise might have nothing.
Emily opened the Matilda Meade Home for Wayward Children two years after the death of her great aunt, and she knew that if Matilda had been there—and that in a way, she still was—it would have been the proudest day of her life. The proudest day of Emily’s life had been seeing her name on the New York Times bestseller list, after her book about the events of the previous year became a bestseller. She’d taken her earnings and the advance on her next book and used it to get out of debt and realize Matilda’s dream. Jesse had built an addition onto the house, and there were now no fewer than ten foster kids there at any given time. Emily and Jesse bought his parents a house nearby and Jesse’s mother, who had always dreamed of him having a large family, came over every day to help them with the kids.
Cynthia, Richard, and Theresa were all doing hard time in federal prison for murder, kidnapping, and assault, among their myriad of other crimes. Watkins was disbarred and landed in a white collar minimum security prision in exchange for the plea deal he struck for providing the details of their conspiracy.
As for Roger and Darla, they’d been driven out of business when Emily posted the video she took of them online, the one she took on her phone of the pair sneaking out of the house after vandalizing the living room. The video quickly went viral, and there was now a class action lawsuit against them, formed on behalf of the numerous outraged homeowners who’d been subject to the same harassment and intimidation tactics that Roger and Darla had inflicted on Emily and Jesse.
Without the money from the property managers pouring into his campaign, Sheriff Oglethorpe lost the election. He lost to one of his own deputies, Jake Tapper, an idealistic young officer whose increasing frustration at Oglethorpe’s lackadaisical style of law enforcement and whiff of corruption had led him to take a stand against his superior in the name of making a change.
Now, Emily sat in the library. She regarded the portrait of Matilda and the children she’d moved to hang above her desk for inspiration. She thought of how much had changed in so short a time. While Emily and Jesse had once been two people struggling on their own, they were now a large and flourishing household, filled with laughter, noise, and love. It happened so quickly and unexpectedly, and she thought of the remarkable series of events that had led them to where they were today.
It had inspired the book she’d written in a frenzy: never had the words and ideas come so quickly and fluidly to her before, and it was as if the writer’s block that had plagued her for so long had never existed. And it hadn’t returned to inhibit her since.
Today, Emily was at work on her next book. It was about the lives of the children who lived at Meade House: the various hardships they experienced, and their future hopes and dreams. She had already written a story about death. Now, she wanted to write one about life—life, and all its endless possibilities.
Emily rolled a fresh, clean sheet of white paper into the typewriter. Now tha
t the ghosts were at rest, the only words she ever wrote on it were her own. Emily closed her eyes, and the first lines came to her as easily as breathing: It was an old house, a house filled with history, whose walls had been witness to many a mystery, hope, and struggle. The house had seen many stories pass through its doors and was now home to the numerous stories of the children who lived there. And while many of those stories were of the tragedies that comprised their pasts, the house was now a vessel that contained the promise of their hopeful futures.
She opened her eyes and began to write.
