Don't Tell a Soul

by Kirsten Miller

  Bernice Hughes, a professor of maritime history at Columbia, had been chosen to curate a new museum to be built near the Hudson River in upstate New York. That’s why she and her family had been in Louth. I enlarged the picture. April’s parents looked like college professors. Her little sister had a grin like a Cheshire cat. And despite her terrifying 1980s outfit, April appeared perfectly ordinary. What could have happened to a girl like her?

  I knew that the six-digit passcode on Lark’s phone might be all that stood between me and the answer. But I didn’t dare have a go at guessing. I had no idea how many attempts I could make before the phone locked for good. Instead I tucked the phone under my pillow, closed my eyes, and tried to get a few hours of sleep. That night, I planned to finally meet Lark.

  * * *

  —

  I opened my eyes to pitch black. I lay still for a moment and listened to the house. The clock said it was a quarter past one, and everything was quiet. I couldn’t help smiling as I climbed out of bed. I slid Lark’s phone into the pocket of my robe and imagined the two of us coming face to face. I couldn’t wait to learn what had happened on the night of the fire—or to find out what she knew about April. Together, we could go to the sheriff with our discoveries. And I hoped, more than anything else, it would be my last day in Louth. I didn’t know where I’d go, but in my daydream, Lark was welcome to join me. We’d live by our wits until I turned eighteen and my mother could no longer have me committed.

  I continued to fantasize as I walked through the manor. Then I entered the empty black rooms of the north wing, where the wind whistled as it forced its way between the boards that covered the windows. Shards of glass and fallen plaster crunched beneath my shoes, and I felt my excitement draining away. This was the place where Lark’s mother had died, and the girl I was searching for was still trapped there, reliving the very worst day of her life.

  When I didn’t find her upstairs, I summoned the courage to go down to the basement. Afraid I might scare Lark away if I turned on the lights, I navigated using the dim glow from her phone. The basement felt vast in the dark, like one wrong turn might leave me lost forever. I could only see a few feet ahead of me, and I trailed my fingers against the wall. I walked without knowing what might be waiting for me up ahead. I could sense that someone else was down there, and the farther I went, the more certain I grew that it wasn’t Lark.

  I turned and hurried back the way I’d come. I’d made it as far as the kitchen when the heavy thud of footsteps on the stairs stopped me in my tracks. As they came closer, I heard a man’s breathing, and a surge of terror freed a memory I’d kept locked away for a very long time.

  Hide! urged a desperate voice in my head. It wasn’t mine, but I knew it as well as my own, though its owner had been dead for five years.

  I opened a narrow door to my right and ducked into a pantry.

  Hide, and don’t come out until I get you! the voice whispered, and I did just as I was told. The cold doorknob felt familiar. So did the darkness that surrounded me when the door softly clicked shut.

  I found myself transported to a night five years earlier. My aunt Sarah and I had come home from a day of shopping and movies. My uncle was away on a business trip, and Sarah and I were alone together in their massive town house. Stuffed and exhausted, I’d fallen asleep on her bed.

  At some point in the early hours, Sarah shook me out of a deep sleep and told me to hide in the hall closet. Disoriented from sleep, I did as she’d directed. I burrowed between coats and shawls until I could crouch against the back wall. I breathed in the scent of my aunt’s perfume on the scarf she’d worn to the movies earlier that evening. I could hear the muffled sound of someone large coming up the stairs and stomping past my hiding place. A monster was going to murder me and my aunt, I thought. Then I heard him growl, “Where is he?”

  It was James. Relief washed over me, and I slid down the back wall of the closet until I landed on my butt. We weren’t going to die. Still, I stayed in my hiding place, just like Sarah had told me. I didn’t enjoy being around James anymore. Sometimes he frightened me. And though she wouldn’t admit it, I knew he scared Sarah, too.

  The man Sarah married had been charming and carefree. Over the years he’d gone cold. I knew from my mother that James’s business was on the brink of collapse. And I knew from experience that a fiery temper bubbled below his icy surface. I’d heard him shouting at employees over the phone. Once he flung his laptop out of a third-story window. When he was in one of his moods, Sarah did her best to make sure everyone kept their distance. Only she was able to calm him down.

  I woke up the following morning under Sarah’s down coat. When I emerged, my aunt pretended she’d been looking all over for me. She claimed I must have been sleepwalking when I lay down in the closet. But Sarah was a terrible liar, and I wasn’t a sleepwalker. Downstairs I saw James’s crumpled-up airplane ticket on the kitchen counter, and I knew I hadn’t imagined his voice. He’d come home. I looked up at my aunt, who didn’t appear to have slept the previous night. There was a bruise on her forearm that hadn’t been there when we’d gone to the movies. I had no idea what it all meant.

  “Promise me, Bram,” she said. “Don’t tell anyone.”

  But I did. I told my dad.

  * * *

  —

  I stood in the kitchen pantry with tears streaming down my face, too terrified to move an inch. The footsteps passed by my hiding space. Only two inches of wood stood between me and my monster.

  “Sarah told you to sleep in a closet?” my father had asked after I’d told him about my bizarre experience.

  We were riding down the West Side Highway in the backseat of his Mercedes. As his driver slipped through afternoon traffic, I looked out the window at the patches of ice floating down the Hudson River. Five years later, I could still hear my father’s voice. He’d sounded more amused than concerned.

  “Why on earth would she do that?” he’d asked. Now that I was older, I knew he’d kept his questions lighthearted on purpose. He’d been trying not to scare me.

  “I don’t know,” I’d told him. But was that really true? Had I not figured it out? I may have been twelve, but I wasn’t a fool. Neither was my father. He knew there was only one reason why Sarah would put me in a closet when she heard James come home. She’d been terrified of what her own husband might do.

  “Sounds like Sarah may need a day to herself,” my dad said, giving me a pat on the knee. “Why don’t you go straight home after school today. I’ll stop by her house later and make sure everything is okay.”

  “She won’t be there,” I told him. “She decided to go to a spa. She said she’ll be back in a week.”

  “Great!” I remember he sounded so relieved. “That’s probably just what she needs. I’ll pop in and say hi to her as soon as she’s back.”

  “Bram? What’s happened?” my mother croaked.

  “Nothing’s happened,” I lied. “I just want to talk.”

  I heard her roll over in bed to check the clock on her nightstand. “It’s seven o’clock in the morning. I don’t talk until eight.”

  “No,” I said before she could hang up. I’d already been waiting for hours. “I want to talk now.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I need to ask you a question about Dad.”

  “Oh my God. This again? What is it?” she asked.

  “Before they died, did you ever suspect that Dad and Sarah were having an affair?”

  “I am not going to discuss this with you, Bram. You’re a child.”

  “I’ll be an adult in five months. Answer my question, please.”

  “I never suspected a thing,” my mother said. “James told me he thought Sarah was having an affair, but I didn’t believe it. He’d been working himself half to death for months, and he was burnt out and tired. I told him his mind was playing t
ricks on him. As it turned out, James was right, and I was an idiot.”

  “What exactly did James say? Did he have any proof?”

  She didn’t want to tell me. It was almost as if she had to force the words out. “He said he’d seen signs that another man had been in the house. He even put up new security cameras to catch them, but he never did. He told me that meant that Sarah’s lover had to be someone who knew the house as well as he did. As you may recall, your father’s architecture firm designed the pool in James and Sarah’s basement.”

  “So, James never had evidence of anything.”

  “Bram, your father and Sarah were practically nude when the housekeeper found them.”

  “Who told you that?” I asked.

  “The police!”

  “Let’s say for argument’s sake that they were wrong. Can you think of any other reason why Dad might have gone to see Sarah that day?”

  “Good God. Where is this all going?” my mother demanded.

  “I remembered something new.”

  “You’re remembering new things from five years ago? I’m sorry, Bram, but I find that very hard to swallow.”

  “Don’t you want to know what it is?”

  “Quite frankly, I have no interest in revisiting the most painful period of my life. I’m not quite sure why you’ve chosen to spend the past five years torturing me.”

  “Torturing you?” It wasn’t funny, but I almost laughed. “Do you want to know what’s torture? Being forced to walk by the house where you found your father’s dead body. Having your mother call you a liar when you tell her about the horrible things you’ve seen. And being convinced, deep down inside, that you were responsible.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line. “What are you talking about, Bram? You were twelve years old when your father died. Why would you think you were responsible?”

  “I thought you didn’t want to know,” I said. Then I hung up the phone.

  * * *

  —

  I was pulling on my coat in the entryway when Miriam made her way down the stairs.

  “Any news?” she asked hopefully.

  “No,” I told her. I hadn’t heard a peep from Lark. “Is he up?”

  “Not yet,” she said softly. “He had another late night.”

  “I’m going out. I’ll be back in a bit.”

  Miriam’s eyes widened. “James will be furious. Are you sure it’s a good idea?” she whispered.

  “It’s the only idea I have,” I replied.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “You don’t want to know,” I told her.

  Twenty minutes later, I was standing at the end of Ruben Bellinger’s drive. The warning signs he’d posted screamed through the snow-covered trees. Ruben himself had told me not to come back. Sam had warned me not to go see him. My uncle swore Lark’s father was dangerous. And I knew for a fact that Ruben kept animal heads on his dining room table. But none of that was going to stop me. I had to find Lark and give her the phone. However she was getting in, it was far too dangerous for her to keep coming back to the manor.

  I took a step onto the Bellinger property. Then I waited and listened. I heard branches cracking in the distance. There was a caw of a crow from the canopy overhead. Another answered from a nearby tree. The woods looked empty, but they were filled with creatures and their noises. It was the ones who knew how to stay silent that worried me most. I cautiously took another step forward—the second on a journey that would probably take thousands. The Bellinger house lay deep in the woods. I pulled in a long breath and kept walking down the snowy drive.

  I didn’t even see Ruben when I passed him.

  “Miss Howland.” I spun around and immediately questioned the wisdom of coming. Ruben was wearing head-to-toe winter-white camouflage and holding a hunting rifle in his hands. It wasn’t pointed at me, but I knew it could be in a split second. He reached up and removed the white ski mask that had concealed his face. “I thought I told you to stay off my property.”

  “Hello, Mr. Bellinger.” I tried not to stammer. If I was wrong about Ruben, what I was about to say might get me killed. “I’m looking for Lark. I know that she’s here.”

  Ruben snorted. “You don’t know anything, Miss Howland. Now please, go on back up the road before I call the sheriff to come get you.”

  “If you call Sheriff Lee, I’ll have to tell her that Lark’s in Louth.”

  “Knock yourself out,” Ruben said with a snort, and I realized that meant the sheriff already knew.

  “Does she know that Lark’s been breaking into my house at night?”

  Ruben cocked his head and looked at me quizzically. “You’re from the city, Miss Howland, so let me give you a few tips about how things work around here. You are on posted property, and you are speaking to a man who is holding a gun. You are not in a very good position to be asking questions. Get off my property before something bad happens.”

  “Lark lost her phone the night of the fire,” I said. “That’s why she keeps coming back to the manor, isn’t it? She needs it to fill in the gaps in her memory.”

  Ruben didn’t respond. He just turned around and headed off toward his cabin.

  “If you don’t let me help her, she might get worse,” I called after him.

  Ruben stopped and looked over his shoulder. “My daughter is not crazy, if that’s what you’re thinking. She hit her head. Her memory’s a bit fuzzy. That’s all.”

  We’d arrived at a subject on which I was an expert. “I know what it’s like to have gaps in your memory. They’re like sinkholes, Mr. Bellinger. If you don’t fill them, they can swallow the rest of your life.”

  I could tell how much he loved Lark. I knew he only wanted what was best for his daughter, and he just wasn’t sure what that was. Keeping people away from his home had been easy enough. But saving his daughter would require a leap of faith. My uncle owned the house where Ruben’s ex-wife had died and his daughter had been injured. There was no reason for him to trust me with the life of the person he loved most in the world.

  Ruben nodded as if he’d reached an agreement with himself. I waited when he walked away, and after a minute, he stopped. “You coming or not?” he demanded.

  I jogged down the icy drive and caught up with him just as he unlocked the door of the cabin. He stepped to the side to pull off his snow boots while I stood on the threshold in shock. Ruben was working on a new taxidermy project, and the skins of two tiny lapdogs were laid out flat on his workbench.

  Ruben followed my gaze. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “It’s gruesome as hell, isn’t it? Not the way I’d choose to remember my pets, but the old man who owned them can’t bear to be parted from Fifi and Fluffy. And to be perfectly honest, I need the money.”

  I stepped inside.

  “Take off your boots, if you don’t mind,” Ruben said. “My daughter always yells at me for tracking mud and snow through the place.”

  I reluctantly pulled off my boots. If something happened, I wouldn’t be able to run. “Can I see her?”

  Ruben shook his head. “I wasn’t lying to you, Miss Howland. She’s not here at the house. She’s been gone since yesterday, when she brought you to me half-dead.”

  I couldn’t believe I’d gotten so close to her. “Lark was the one who saved me when I got lost in the woods?”

  “She dragged you a good part of the way. As soon as I heard her calling, I came out and took over. I wasn’t too happy about it, as you can imagine. Truth is, you’ve been a massive pain in the ass. Before you got to Louth, Lark went to the manor a couple of times a week. That was bad enough, considering how your uncle feels about her. Now, thanks to you, she’s up there almost every day. I hardly ever see her.”

  “She’s been going to the manor because of me?” The second surprise hit me
even harder than the first.

  “Bad things have happened in that house over the years. Lark doesn’t want you getting hurt.”

  “Who does she think might hurt me?” I asked.

  Ruben shrugged. Even if she’d told him, he wasn’t going to say.

  “It’s pretty clear that the biggest danger to you is yourself,” he said instead. “You would have frozen to death yesterday if she hadn’t come to your rescue.”

  He was right, of course, but there was still one thing I didn’t get. “If Lark wants to help me, why doesn’t she talk to me?” I took a seat on the sofa across from him.

  “No one knows that Lark’s back in town, and the sheriff wants us to keep it that way. She’s worried someone might have it in for my daughter—and you happen to be related to one of the people she’s been keeping an eye on.”

  “James.”

  “I hope you don’t mind me saying so, but your uncle’s a strange one,” Ruben said.

  “True. Though in his defense, he says the same about you.”

  Ruben started laughing. “You sure are blunt for a kid your age. You and my daughter have that in common.”

  “What do you think is so strange about my uncle?” I was determined to keep digging. It was a relief to be sitting across from someone who was willing to answer my questions—and seemed to be telling the truth.

  “Well, for starters, he got it into his head that I was creeping around his house late at night.”

  “You heard about that?” I asked.

  “Dahlia called and told me. She said she didn’t believe it, but she had to ask.”

  “And was it true?”

  “Hell, no.” Ruben cocked his head toward the taxidermy table. “I don’t go anywhere at night. That’s when I do my best work. Dahlia knew that. We stopped being married a long time ago, but we were still good friends.”