Chapter 6

The inn needed repairs.

The dining room wall was still open where I had pried the dumbwaiter panel away. The steel door hung crooked on its hinges. Plaster dust had settled into every corner, and the smell of the hidden room-antiseptic and sweat and old fear-had seeped into the wood.

I hired a contractor to seal the tunnel and board up the shaft. But before they started, I went into the hidden room one last time.

The room was small, maybe eight feet by ten. There was a cot in the corner with a thin mattress and a pile of blankets. A bucket served as a toilet. A single bulb hung from the ceiling, but the fixture was broken-Cora had probably smashed it months ago. The walls were covered in wallpaper, old and peeling, the pattern faded to gray.

And written on the wallpaper, in pencil and ink and something that looked like blood, were pages and pages of words.

I stood in the doorway with a flashlight and read.

Day 1: She says I can't see Bea. She says I'm dangerous. But I'm not dangerous. I'm her mother. I have rights.

Day 17: The food comes through the dumbwaiter. Cold soup. Stale bread. I hear them upstairs. I hear Bea laughing. I hear Miles talking. They don't know I'm here. They don't know I'm alive.

Day 43: I found the speaking tube. If I talk into it, Bea can hear me. She thinks I'm a ghost. She thinks I'm a dream. But she hears me. She knows my voice.

Day 92: She's been humming the river song. My song. My daughter remembers me.

Day 156: I told Bea to ask Priscilla about Grandma. I told her to ask why Grandma fell down the stairs. Priscilla pushed her. I know she did. I saw it. I saw everything.

Day 203: Bea is going to help me. She's going to tell the sheriff what Priscilla did. She's going to tell the truth. And then I'll be free, and Priscilla will be in prison, and Miles will know. He'll know I'm alive. He'll know I never drowned. He'll know I never stopped loving him.

Day 247: The plan is simple. Bea tells the sheriff. Priscilla goes to jail. Miles comes to get me. We leave Natchez. We go somewhere no one knows us. We start over. Just me and Miles and Bea. The way it was always supposed to be.

Day 264: I'm going to kill her.

The last entry was written in a different hand-larger, angrier, the pencil dug so deep it had torn the wallpaper.

I'm going to kill Priscilla. And then I'm going to take Bea. And then I'm going to find Miles. He'll understand. He'll forgive me. He always forgives me.

I stood in the hidden room for a long time, reading and rereading the words. The diary of a madwoman. The plan of a predator. The proof I hadn't wanted to believe.

Priscilla had been right about everything. Cora had manipulated Bea from the beginning-not out of love, but out of obsession. The lullaby, the speaking tube, the whispered secrets-all of it had been part of a scheme to destroy Priscilla and take Bea. Cora had never wanted to be a family. She had wanted to be the only family. She had wanted to be God.

I took photos of the diary with my phone. I took the original wallpaper, carefully cut from the wall, and sealed it in an evidence bag. Then I called the prosecutor and told her what I had found.

The new evidence didn't change Cora's commitment-she was already in the psychiatric hospital, already diagnosed, already dangerous. But it changed something in me. It erased the last doubt. It closed the door on the woman I had married and buried and mourned.

I drove to the hospital in Baton Rouge and asked to see her.

Cora was in a private room, strapped to a bed for her own protection. She looked small and pale and broken. Her hair had been cut short. Her eyes were dull. She didn't look like the woman who had haunted my dreams for six years. She looked like a stranger.

"You found the diary," she said. It wasn't a question.

"Yes."

"I wrote it for you." Her voice was flat. "I thought you would read it and understand. I thought you would see that I was trying to save us."

"You tried to kill Priscilla."

"I tried to save Bea."

"You tried to drown her."

"The river spirit-"

"There is no river spirit, Cora."

She looked at me then, and for a moment her eyes flickered-something old and knowing, something that might have been the woman I loved.

"There is," she said. "You just can't see it."

I left the hospital and drove home. Priscilla was in the kitchen, making dinner. Bea was at the table, coloring. The inn was quiet. The storm was gone.

"Daddy," Bea said when I walked in. "Can we have a garden?"

"A garden?"

"Priscilla says we can grow tomatoes. And sunflowers. And maybe pumpkins."

I looked at Priscilla, who was watching me with a cautious expression. I looked at Bea, who was watching me with hope.

"Yeah," I said. "We can have a garden."

That night, after Bea was asleep, Priscilla and I sat on the veranda and looked out at the river. The stars were out. The water was black and slow.

"I read Cora's diary," I said.

Priscilla didn't say anything. She just waited.

"She wrote that she was going to kill you. She wrote that she was going to take Bea. She wrote that she would make me understand."

"Miles-"

"I should have believed you from the beginning. I should have seen what she was. I should have-"

"Stop." Priscilla took my hand. "You did see it. Eventually. That's what matters."

"I put you in jail."

"You put me in jail because I broke the law. I did break the law. I knew what I was doing, and I did it anyway, and I would do it again if it meant keeping Bea safe."

I looked at her. Her face was tired, but it was open-no secrets, no lies, no hidden rooms. Just the woman I had married. The woman who had saved my daughter. The woman I was learning to trust again.

"I love you," I said.

"I love you too."

We sat on the veranda until the moon rose, and the river ran past, and the inn creaked with old wood and old bones. And somewhere inside, Bea slept without nightmares for the first night in weeks.