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He grapples with it, turning it left and right, and his panic rises with the tide.
I know when that door clicks, an underground drainage system will activate and the ocean swamping me will ebb away. Harlan had told me how this tunnel and chamber system worked during my first week here, like he’d been trying to impress me.
Ironic, that he killed so many down here and now I’ll die the same way.
My greatest fear—drowning—has become a reality.
“Cora, I’m sorry, there’s something wrong with the handle,” Spencer yells, frantically grappling with the wheel, but it continues to spin uselessly.
There’s no life-saving clunk.
No tide draining away.
No time left.
My body convulses as I know this is the end. I claw at the door as my feet leave the chamber floor. I’m floating, out of my depth, out of options.
“Cora, I’m sorry…” Spencer’s cries are lost as I submerge, and the terror shredding my insides consumes me.
This is my payback.
For murdering Harlan.
For killing my daughter.
Because in the split second before I lose consciousness, I finally admit the truth, albeit to myself.
Ava’s complete disregard for what she put me through during our final confrontation triggered something in me and when she turned away like I meant nothing, I wanted to teach her a lesson.
I wanted to scare her.
I wanted her so frightened she’d turn to me.
I wanted her to need me.
Instead, I’d pushed her to her death.
And the one redeeming thought as I drift off is I’ll finally be reunited with my daughter.
Epilogue
LUCY
Cora’s memorial is small. The only people in attendance are Spencer, Daphne, Arcania’s part-time yoga instructor, Nancy, the cleaner Babs, the beautician and massage therapist Moon, and me.
We bury her alongside Harlan and his parents in a tiny private graveyard at the back of the property that overlooks the sea. It seems fitting the burial is at dusk, when Arcania is shadowed in mauve and midnight, with dark colors and shadows that highlight its menace.
Because despite Cora’s revelation to Spencer that she drugged me into hallucinating, I’m not convinced the house itself isn’t evil. I feel it. The walls pulse with an invisible force, a low-level hum that manifests at the oddest of times. Too many have died within Arcania. Who knows what presence haunts it?
I’m not scared with Spencer now sleeping in the room next to me, though I can’t wait to leave. It’s my family's home but I can’t stay. I’m sad because despite what Cora did to harm people over the years, how she murdered her husband and daughter, a small part of me had been grateful to discover I have family beyond Mom and now that’s been taken away from me.
As for my paternal family, Arcania kept lax records—for obvious reasons, considering staff kept disappearing—so there’s no record of my father’s surname and I have no way of tracing his extended family. Mom kept zero mementoes, so that’ll be a dead-end too. It’s a shame, because somewhere out there I may have grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins I’ll never know.
At least I have Spencer. He’s distraught. He blames himself for Cora’s death. His guilt has aged him ten years since the night she got trapped in the tunnel’s chamber. The lines around his eyes and mouth have deepened, his shoulders appear perpetually slumped, and his eyes lose focus at times.
He’s been nothing but kind and protective of me since I first arrived at Arcania and I wish I could make this better for him. But if he stood by my grandmother for decades then couldn’t save her, he must have deep feelings and nothing I can say or do will help.
I hope that over the next few weeks while I stay at Arcania to assist with settling affairs—namely, put the place on the market and hope a realtor can shift it fast—I can support Spencer in whatever way he needs.
