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“I don’t know. Has it solved allyourproblems?” I asked.
He laughed. “Fair point. I mean, given the chance to join this family, my dad ran the other way, so it’s not like you’re the only one.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, stricken.
He looked startled. “Oh, no. Not like that. We’re really close, he’s a great dad, he just doesn’t want anything to do with”—he gestured—“all of this.”
“I don’t understand any of it,” I said, shaking my head. “Leopold didn’t even know me.”
“Yeah, but your mom was his favorite,” Desmond said. I gave him a puzzled look. “Seriously. He doted on her. Caleb and Victoria might as well not have even existed. Absolute golden child, to hear the stories, until...”
“Until I came along,” I said. He shrugged, uncomfortable. “So, what, he felt bad about disowning her? Then why not leave everything to Mom?”
“Because Leopold was a manipulative son of a bitch,” Desmond said.
“He was your grandfather,” I said cautiously.
“Anda son of a bitch,” Desmond responded cheerfully. “Maybe he felt bad about cutting your mom off. But my guess? He wanted to punish her. Force her to come back by dragging you into everything.”
“So she couldn’t escape,” I said.
Desmond grunted. “Grandpa Leopold used to say that Harrow was a spiral.”
“What?” I asked, startled.
“It’s the symbol of Harrow, actually,” Desmond said. He turned the page in his notebook and began to draw—a curve winding inward. “It pulls you around and around, tighter and tighter. You try to escape, but the gravity of it won’t let you go. The only way out is to find the center.” He reached the innermost point of the circle and made a sharp downward slash—a straight line breaking free. “That’s what Harrow feels like. No matter how far away you get, you always get turned back around.”
Harrow was a spiral. Harrow was a spiral, and Leopold was a manipulative son of a bitch. He’d wanted me here. He could have just left me money, left me Harrow, whatever he wanted—but he went further than that. He made sure that if I refused, everyoneelsewould suffer. I didn’t have any idea why. But I knew I couldn’t walk away without knowing the answer.
My grandfather’s hand gripped my shoulder. “There is only one way out of this,” he said.
Desmond kept drawing in his notebook, tracing the spiral again, wearing a deeper groove in the page.
I was dreaming.
“Yes.”
And if I left, I would never wake up. Harrow would always have this hold on me.
“Ah. Now you understand.”
I didn’t. Not really. But I would.
“Helen?” Desmond asked, all curiosity and concern, looking up from his page. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said, aware that I didn’t sound fine at all. “I need to go.”
I was barely aware of my body as I walked back around the side of the house. I followed a curving path as it led me inexorably to the front doors. The sky was growing dim.
Harrow’s gravity pulled at me. I surrendered. I stepped over the threshold, and I thought there should have been some moment of change, some sensation that stole across my skin, but there was nothing except a shift in the light, the electric glow of the chandelier instead of the gray, fading light of evening.
Harrow had haunted me all my life. I’d thought that I could outrun it. But I couldn’t. The ghost—or whatever it was—had told me as much. And so had Desmond, and so had that strange girl in the graveyard.
I couldn’t run from Harrow. Not until I knew what it was and what it was doing to me. The only way out was to find the center.
Find its heart.
“Helen.” Caleb had spotted me, standing there in the center of the foyer, and he strode across the floor. “I’ve got everything arranged. You can head straight—”
