Praise for The Curse of Misty Wayfair
“Wright creates an inspirational mystery with thrilling finesse, blending chilling supernatural elements with the raw interiority of mental illness, and taking readers on Heidi’s haunting search for identity, which is sure to keep them up at night.”
—Booklist
“The past and present collide in this time-slip suspense, weaving the lives of two women together in a high-intensity thriller. . . . Prepare for a mystery transpiring through time that will stimulate the senses.”
—Hope by the Book
“With a masterful dual narrative, subtle romance and spine-tingling suspense, Jaime Jo Wright navigates the lives of two young women seeking a sense of identity.”
—BookPage
“In this thought-provoking novel, the contemporary story and the 1910 threads intertwine to explore the consequences of past sins and the way light can break through the dark. . . . With depth and intelligence, Wright explores the role of faith in life.”
—Christian Retailing
“A pitch-perfect gothic that highlights the extraordinary talent of Jaime Jo Wright. I stayed up past midnight gobbling up this mesmerizing tale and was sorry to see it end.”
—Colleen Coble, author of the ROCK HARBOR series
“Stellar writing combined with stellar storytelling are rare. Wright brings both in abundance to The Curse of Misty Wayfair. The intrigue starts immediately and doesn’t let up until the final pages.”
—James L. Rubart, author of The Man He Never Was
“Two tales twist together into a story that draws the reader in and won’t let go. The Curse of Misty Wayfair is deliciously thrilling, with a resolution steeped in light and hope.”
—Jocelyn Green, author of Between Two Shores
The Reckoning at Gossamer Pond
“The movements between time periods are perfectly done to heighten the intrigue of each unraveling mystery. . . . A complex story with sympathetic characters and many surprises.”
—Historical Novels Review
“Brilliantly atmospheric and underscored by a harrowing romance, The Reckoning at Gossamer Pond pairs danger with redemption and features not only two heroines of great agency but one of the most compelling, unlikely, and memorable heroes I have met in an age.”
—Rachel McMillan, author of Murder at the Flamingo
“Intoxicating and wonderfully authentic . . . delightfully shadowed with mystery that will keep readers poring over the story, but what makes it memorable is the powerful light that burst through every darkened corner in this novel—hope.”
—Joanna Davidson Politano, author of Lady Jane Disappears
“The Reckoning at Gossamer Pond is true to Wright’s unique style and voice. Multilayered characters who intrigue the reader and a story the threads of which are unpredictable and well woven together make this a must-read for anyone who enjoys suspense.”
—Sarah Varland, author of Mountain Refuge
The House on Foster Hill
“Jaime Jo Wright’s The House on Foster Hill blends the past and present in a gripping mystery that explores faith and the sins of ancestors.”
—Foreword Reviews
“Headed by two strong female protagonists, Wright’s debut is a lushly detailed time-slip novel that transitions seamlessly between past and present. . . . Readers who enjoy Colleen Coble and Dani Pettrey will be intrigued by this suspenseful mystery.”
—Library Journal
“With one mystery encased in another and a century between the two, Wright has written a spellbinding novel.”
—Christian Market
“Jaime Jo Wright is an amazing storyteller who had me on the edge of my seat. . . . The House on Foster Hill is a masterfully told story with layers and layers of mystery and intrigue, with a little romance thrown in for good measure.”
—Tracie Peterson, author of the GOLDEN GATE SECRETS series
© 2020 by Jaime Sundsmo
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
Ebook edition created 2020
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-2811-3
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Jennifer Parker
Author is represented by Books & Such Literary Agency.
To my Buddy Boy
Oh, to always be Wendy to your Peter Pan.
Let’s never grow up.
Let’s always snuggle and laugh, wrestle and karate-chop.
Let’s always make up our own Pokémon names.
Let’s be superheroes and believe we can fly.
My little man.
You will always be Momma’s.
Chase after greatness of heart,
faithfulness of spirit,
and courage of the mind.
Never be afraid to be who God created you to be.
You are not hidden.
He will fight for you.
Contents
Cover
Endorsements
Half Title Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
Author’s Note
Questions for Discussion
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Ads
Back Cover
Chapter One
PIPPA RIPLEY
BLUFF RIVER, WISCONSIN
AUGUST 1928
Life was not unlike the wisp of fog that curled around the base of a grave marker, softly caressing the marble before dissolving into the violet shadows of the night. There was a sweetness in its bitter that left an aftertaste, a vision, a moment of wonderment. Too often it floated away before one could grasp it, retrieve it, hold on to it, savor it, and then bid it farewell with a tear and a reminiscent smile. Instead, the race to capture life was ended before it ever really began, leaving behind the dewdrops of questions, the footprints of unmet needs, and the spirits hovering just out of re
ach—voices lost to the annals of unwritten histories.
It wasn’t Pippa Ripley’s preference, then, to be padding across the damp, leaf-covered earth of the graveyard. Her deformed leg created a lesser footprint impression in the ground as she bore much of her weight on her good leg. She would never have come had it been night or even dusk. She wasn’t brave, she wasn’t assertive, and she would never be disobedient—unless she had to be. This was a had-to-be moment. In the early dawn, whose warmth began to seep through the chilled autumn air as the sun tipped the trees and made their colorful branches glow, Pippa questioned whether any other young women her age still sought to be obedient. Women had, after all, won the vote eight years before and, on occasion, could even be spotted wearing men’s trousers. Short hair bobbed and curled close to their faces. Strands of pearls, dresses that dared to show the knees when these girls spun in a scandalous fox-trot . . . they even imbibed alcohol. Secretly, of course, because Prohibition was very strongly enforced in Bluff River. Still, Pippa knew the rumors. The places where the carefree gathered. Quietly whispered meet-ups. She’d heard the whispers. They swirled around her the entirety of her growing-up years.
Maybe Pippa was just old-fashioned enough. Traditional. Or perhaps it was fear that latched her to her father and created an ingrained sense of respect for his authority. Regardless of its cause, it was why Pippa’s stomach knotted with guilt as her brown pumps sank into the earth that stretched in straight, unending lines between the rows of graves. She wasn’t supposed to be here. She wasn’t supposed to be curious or ask questions. She wasn’t supposed to leave the manor unless her father knew her whereabouts or her mother had stamped her approval on the outing. She was an only child. Alone. She walked in the shadows of an elder brother who had died at age three from polio, and another brother who would have been two years older than she had he not died during childbirth, stillborn and perfect. The Ripleys were not keen on the slightest risk of losing their only surviving child—even if she was a girl, and even if she had been left on their doorstep as an infant, with a twisted leg and a note that clearly defined she was a castoff from the local circus troupe. Too much of a misfit for even their circles.
Now, at the tender age of nineteen, her life was carefully commandeered. She was submissive and dutiful, just as she’d been reared to be.
Yet, here she was. Alone, in a cemetery, in the wee hours of the morning, all because he had summoned her. He had always been there, it seemed, along with the other questions that lingered in the shadows forever following her. Pippa had sensed him as a child, though she hadn’t been able to define the feeling. The feeling of being watched, guarded, looked over.
In past years, Pippa had seen him only a few times. Just a form, a silhouette really. But, when she’d asked if anyone else had seen the man watching her, no one had. At the onset of her sightings—once she’d finally admitted them aloud—her parents worried something was dreadfully wrong with her. That Pippa saw someone when no one else did. Still, Pippa insisted he was there, until her father’s firm command had silenced her. Silenced her out of fear, perhaps, that she was losing her mind. “Possession,” she’d heard her mother mumble worriedly to her father—although Pippa wasn’t entirely certain what she’d meant. A visit from the local priest and a long, dreary interview ended with a swift shake of his head and a shrug of his shoulders. Pippa never saw him again in their home, which made sense, for they weren’t Catholic. She also learned, after that, to keep to herself the things she saw or felt. They were meant for her, after all, and no one else.
Pippa reached with a gloved hand and caressed the cool surface of a grave marker as she passed it. Ahead, in the distance, stood a large crypt, its marbled form impressive and outstanding in the middle of the other markers. A generous plot of earth surrounded it and a black iron fence. From there the graveyard resumed its pattern and rows of stones, some pillars, some flat and facing upward, some carved cherubs, and one, a cross. But it was the crypt her eyes fixated on. The name Ripley was etched along its arched doorframe. The family crypt where her grandparents, her brothers, Uncle Theo and Aunt Ramona lay, and where Father and Mother would someday be interred. Perhaps even she would lie at peace there, if she didn’t marry, which was a fate neither of her parents seemed fond of and had already made moves to rectify.
But he had been more open in the last year. It was here at the family crypt that Pippa found many of his messages. Here or at the circus grounds. Hidden in secret places only she and he knew of. A habit formed after the first summoning a few months ago, cryptically hand-delivered by a messenger.
It created guilt within her. A churning and awful sickening feeling of guilt that she had acted in disobedience and secrecy against her parents. Still, Pippa assuaged that guilt by focusing on the delight she found in meeting dear friends at the circus. Friends she imagined might have been like those ones she would have grown up with had she been acceptable enough to keep as an infant. Clive the dwarf, Benard the smithy, Ernie the elephant trainer, and even the brooding Jake Chapman who worked with the menagerie and refused to speak of his past as a bare-knuckled ring fighter from the wharfs out east.
Yes, the messages were intoxicating. He had connected Pippa to the world she’d been born into and then rejected from. He was the one whose vowed allegiance to her was something Pippa had no desire to share with anyone. She kept his missives tied with a blue ribbon and tucked into a neat pile in a secret place in her room. Short letters that told her nothing and everything all at the same time. Nothing about her past, and everything about her future.
He would always be there.
Watching.
Watching her.
He was her Watchman. But more than that, she belonged to him.
Chapter Two
CHANDLER FAULK
BLUFF RIVER, WISCONSIN
PRESENT DAY
The transition from life to death was a metamorphosis of the soul. A conjuring up of courage to release your last breath and allow your spirit to drift away into new life. Unless, one could argue, it was taken from you. Strangled from you. Your eyes drilling into your killer’s as their fingers bruised the delicate skin of your neck, as their breath painted your face with the last scent you would ever smell, as your heels kicked the wooden floorboards in an effort to sustain life. There was no beautiful metamorphosis in murder. It was simply that. Murder. A deliberate, heinous act that catapulted you into the afterlife, your destiny be damned.
No one had told Chandler Faulk before she’d recommended the purchase that the abandoned train depot her uncle had invested in was likely the site of an old murder. No one had suggested that local lore claimed a woman’s body had once hung from a rope where the depot’s chandelier used to light the main ticket room. Or maybe she hadn’t hung there, the realtor finally admitted after the purchase had been completed. No one knew for sure. Some stated the woman—a circus seamstress by day and prostitute by night—had been found in one of the now-dilapidated circus buildings. The zebra house, or maybe the tack building, the blacksmith’s shop, the wagon barn? It was all a muddled story of many opinions, and as it grew, so did Chandler’s concern that she might have made a poor recommendation to her uncle. She bore the sole responsibility of this massive financial investment—to flip the historic building into something lucrative or else demolish it in exchange for the standard housing that was guaranteed to bring in revenue.
Chandler jammed the padlock key into her jeans’ pocket and unwrapped the chain from its intertwined tangle through the iron door latch. When she tugged on the heavy door, the air, like a finally released breath that had been held in for decades, assaulted her senses. The old circus train depot was musty and unused. Over twenty years of silence entombed behind padlocks, cement-filled windows, and rumors of spirits no one locally born and raised wished to tangle with.
The two-story, rectangular brick building had once been home to a bustling hub of traveling and mayhem. Business mixed with pleasure, mingling with the tempt
ing smattering of colorful humanity. Al Capone, they said, had been no stranger, lingering nearby in a local inn that was more of an underground brewery and brothel than it was a place to sleep for the night. But then there were the more unknowns but no less magnanimous, which graced the train station platform and left old echoes of footsteps across its marbled floor. They were the acrobats and costume makers of the circus. Lion handlers and blacksmiths. Tattooed men and elephant trainers. Both the mob and the circus had ridden these rails and, in their wake, left the ancient echoes of laughter and charade.
“Hello.” Chandler’s murmured voice echoed through the aged air, bounced off the elaborate wood walls she could barely make out in the darkness of the night, and dissipated as the remaining tones floated upward into the vaulted ceiling. She greeted the old ghosts as one might a friend. Chandler hoped, if such a thing really existed, that they would be friendly spirits. Like Casper the Ghost. Cute. Almost cuddly. Avoiding poltergeists would be preferred.
Arriving at the depot at eleven at night wasn’t Chandler’s preference for a first real tour since she’d visited the site a month prior. It had been daytime then. The depot was impressive and unimpressive at the same time. Just an old brick shell of had-beens. But now? Only thirty minutes ago, Chandler was readying for bed when she’d received the phone call. Whispered. Warning. A nighttime call of goodwill mixed with suspicion.
“I think someone is in your building,” Lottie Dobson had hissed. Lottie was a local real-estate agent turned paranormal groupie. “I see a light.”
Why Lottie was outside the train depot hadn’t been important. She was Lottie. Chandler had already deduced that Lottie was very fascinated with the other world but also respectfully aware that others were not. It was probably why she’d withheld the information of the supposed hauntings of the old depot. It made the building’s sale less palatable. Few people wished to purchase haunted grounds unless they were either nonbelievers or purely unconcerned. Now Lottie was acting as the depot’s Good Samaritan bodyguard, of sorts. Or maybe Chandler’s bodyguard.
Regardless, it was Lottie’s call announcing a potential trespasser that reminded Chandler that this entire project—this historic restoration—rested on her shoulders. Chandler Neale Faulk’s very determined and very exhausted shoulders.
The Haunting at Bonaventure Circus Page 1
