Page 51 of She Haunts Me Still

Saskia’s eyebrows pinch together. “What’s not possible?”

“Go back to the purchase of the cemetery.” Mallory’s heart pounds as Saskia flips the pages. “There. Stop.”

She leans over, barely noticing the brush of Saskia’s shoulders against hers this time.

Because she’s staring at a signature that readsVictor Pierce.

She thinks of the man in the chapel. His black leather gloves. His fingers on her throat.

I built this school.

The way he was tall with dark hair and light eyes, just like—

Ezra.

“Saskia,” she says, pointing. “You know Ezra Pierce, right? You did theater together? In Boston?”

“Yeah, why do you—” Saskia’s eyes widen. “Oh my god.”

“Tell me this is a coincidence,” Mallory begs. “Please.”

She shakes her head. “It’s not.”

“This can’t be true.” Mallory closes her eyes. “He’s not—”

“Victor,” Saskia says, “is Ezra’s father.”

13

Instead of going to Ezra’s dorm that night, Mallory sits in the theater lighting booth and stares at the ghost light until her eyes burn.

At the library, Saskia had tried to offer an explanation.From what I remember,Ezra’s dad is pretty old,she shared.But he looks much younger. Ezra once said his grandfather lived past a hundred. Good genes, I guess.

Mallory only felt foolish as she picked at a thread on her tights and asked,Why didn’t he tell me his dad’s company built Shore?

Maybe,Saskia said,he wanted to be around someone who didn’t know about his family. Or his past. Sometimes that can be freeing, you know?

Mallory did know, but it didn’t ease the sense of betrayal bubbling inside her. As she sits on the counter in the lighting booth now, she can’t help but replay every word Ezra has ever spoken through a new lens of deceit. How he blinked with practiced confusion when she told him about Lily’s grave. The way he stared at her in the chapel today, like she was someone he didn’t want to lose.

Gazing into the haloed glow of the ghost light, Mallory wonders if more than one thing can be true at once. If ugly truths and beautiful ones can coexist, tangled and mismatched, a tapestry of things that shouldn’t fit—and yet.

Her phone buzzes inside her bag. She grinds her teeth, expecting a text from Ezra, but finds a message from Penelope instead.

Answering her question from earlier, when she’d asked how her grandmother died.

This is not a conversation for texting, Penelope’s message reads, and Mallory narrows her eyes.

Why?She pauses, mustering her courage.Was it suicide? Like my mom?

Her phone buzzes immediately with Penelope’s reply.Let’s talk in person after my retreat.

Mallory stares at the message so long it blurs. Penelope’s evasiveness feels loaded. Does this mean her grandmotheralsodied by suicide? Could it be the same way her mother did? The same way Lily’s corpse was mutilated after her death?

Perhaps it’s true. A genetic curse, woven into her bloodline. How far does it go back? And whyherfamily?

Mallory shoves her phone into her bag, just as the door clicks open.

Ezra enters the lighting booth, long coat on, collar upturned.