Such A Clever Girl

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Prologue

If forced to choose between living in reality or suffering through a nightmare, sometimes it’s safer to pick the nightmare. That’s true even in Sleepy Hollow, New York, a town steeped in folklore and rich in history. Part of a region that celebrates its haunted heritage with a ferocity usually reserved for festivities focusing on life, not death.

Sitting on the east bank of the Hudson River, where charming homes and bucolic open spaces cover the landscape, the area vibrates in moody fall welcome. Every resident can recite the famous story about a fictional headless horseman and provide detailed descriptions of their own ghostly adventures to the onslaught of tourists that descend in abundance each fall.

The wailing woman of Raven Rock. A phantom ship haunting local waters. The spirits roaming through the nearby Octagon House. Odd encounters in historic taverns.

All harmless stories for believers and nonbelievers alike. But not everything is harmless. Ask any longtime resident about the scariest thing to ever happen here and they’d tell you the same thing—the shocking disappearance of the Tanner family fifteen years ago. Father, mother, and two kids. Vanished. Gone without a trace.

At least that was the scariest event. Until today.

Until the dead refused to stay dead.

Chapter One

Stella

Xavier Tanner died thirty-seven days ago. Most people said his name then immediately whispered about the murders. His role had always been a hot topic and in constant debate, but everyone agreed on one major point. Predator or prey, he’d been a pain in the ass for every minute of his seventy-nine years on earth.

A long, restless life fueled by gaslighting and game playing flamed out in a heart attack on the stone path next to his beloved wildflower garden. The patch of land he forbade anyone to touch, so he lay there, crumpled and alone, until the gardener arrived to fix a broken sprinkler the next morning.

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Medical professionals insisted Xavier’s ending had been quick and likely painless. Whether he deserved either of those blessings would be bandied about at private dinners all over town for years to come.

Even those who mumbled an obligatory rest in peace silently thought, Thank God he’s finally gone. It was as if the town, me included, released a collective, cleansing exhale as it celebrated the burying of the Tanner legacy in the massive family mausoleum in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, which only he occupied.

We had to survive today before the bulk of the rejoicing could begin. A group of us had been called in for an emergency court hearing without a clue as to the reason for the urgency or, in my case, the need to be a part of this circus at all. I doubted I was mentioned in Xavier’s will, which was fine with me, but I still received a summons.

The attendees—all reluctant participants—sat fidgeting in uncomfortable silence in the pews of the Westchester County Surrogate’s Court. All because of him. Even in death, Xavier suffocated people until they itched and clawed to get away from him.

I knew a lot about Xavier, probably more than others, because he was my great-uncle. A man with dark and desperate secrets. With questionable impulses and what could be the worst luck imaginable, but only if you believed a host of horrors happened to him and were not caused by him.

Except for Xavier, members of our family tended to die long before expected. Not from natural causes or the passing of cherished years. No, these were shocking, violent deaths. Unimaginable. Haunting. And that didn’t count those who simply disappeared.

Would I ever escape him or the jagged shadow he cast over those who had the misfortune of being blood-related to him? Sitting trapped in this musty courtroom rather than enjoying the last wink of warmth before the mid-October breeze kicked up to a winter wind suggested the answer was no.

The impromptu hearing should have started ten minutes ago. Instead of a judge appearing and ending the suspense, a clerk peeked into the room and called for the lawyers to meet in private. They slipped in a huddled mass through the door to the judge’s private chambers without a word. Hadn’t been seen since.

Apparently, the universe decided fifteen years of waiting for a concrete finish to the Tanner family saga hadn’t been long enough. We had to endure one more delay. Closure remained elusive no matter how hard I chased it and tried to wrestle it into submission. If an ending waited on the horizon it played an expert game of hide-and-seek.

Rumors about today’s hearing likely raced through every neighborhood the second after the case showed up on the court’s docket. Probate matters rarely kicked off much interest apart from that of the deceased and their heirs. But this wasn’t an ordinary situation. This was about Xavier’s estate. About the family. About their abandoned house.

The Tanner mansion. The three-story home complete with ownership questions, an overgrown yard, a falling-down fence, a buckling roof, and bloodstains on the hardwood floor in the foyer. Long abandoned but hard to ignore. An eyesore even the most imaginative people of Sleepy Hollow who reveled in all things haunted avoided.
Xavier never lived there. Technically, his son still owned the place. Patrick and his wife, Victoria. Xavier had been its reluctant and negligent caretaker ever since the younger generation of Tanners inexplicably disappeared fifteen years ago. Xavier’s son and his family gone, never to be heard from again.

With Xavier dead, the missing Tanners could no longer be ignored. New York estate law demanded closure.
My head pounded as I looked around the room. Isabel Clarke, my mom and the only child of Xavier’s long-dead and much older sister, sat next to me. Almost on top of me, actually. She wore her usual overpriced, tags-tucked-under-her-collar-in-case-she-wanted-to-return-it suit, and she would return it.

That’s how she operated. She collected things and returned things and got credit to buy more things. The purchasing system ensured she never wore the same outfit twice. She recycled the same two thousand dollars’ worth of merchandise for two years at one store before she got caught.

With perfect posture and a sassy pixie haircut, Mom performed the role of wealthy socialite well. Heaven forbid anyone think she needed a job and money, which she did. With Xavier gone so was his agreement to pay for her housing. I would be the one to foot the bill for the rent on her two-bedroom apartment. The settling of his estate might solve that financial issue and save me the expense . . . if this hearing ever started.

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The other attendees formed a patchwork quilt of people who didn’t belong in the same room together. All of them unrelated to Xavier. Marni Richards, an elementary school teacher who chugged along, fueled by an unhealthy mix of unspent energy and overwhelming anxiety. Hanna Sato. The free spirit. The earth mother and the owner of the locals’ favorite coffee place, Sleepy Hollow Coffee. The bland name matched Hanna’s simple taste and lack of imagination.

Both with dark, shiny hair—Hanna’s black strands being a nod to her dead mother’s Japanese ancestry—and both pretty. They viewed the latter characteristic as a burden that made them victims. Of what? Who knew.
That was it for attendees. A ragtag group of people who hadn’t said a word to each other in the ten minutes since the courtroom doors opened. Hanna, Marni, and I had an unspoken pact to stay away from each other and keep quiet. The twisted oath had withstood years of uncertainty and a healthy dose of mistrust. We needed to keep that avoidance streak going.

The room’s tension ratcheted up until it reached the point of explosion. The walls seemed to shift, locking me in an airless trap that stole my breath. I stood up and headed for the hall, hoping to find a space the screaming silence couldn’t reach.

The opening of the courtroom door stopped me. A woman slipped inside. The odd angle blocked my view, but she had shoulder-length straight hair.

Marni’s gasp came first. It bounced around the near-empty room. My gaze shifted from Marni back to the unexpected attendee. During those few seconds, the woman turned.

Holy shit. I might have said the words out loud. My stomach dropped. A terror-filled screech begged for release as the reality of what I was seeing took hold.

That face. She looked just like her mother. The steady stare and unreadable expression. Glasses long gone. The blondish hair now brown. No longer a cute but awkward fifteen-year-old with long legs and stooped shoulders. A grown woman. Tall. Pretty. Rigid and assessing.

Aubrey Tanner. The missing Tanner daughter. Technically, my cousin. Back in Sleepy Hollow after a fifteen-year unexplained absence.

Not missing. Not dead.

A thousand questions bombarded my brain. Where the hell had she been? What had she done . . . and why had she shown up now?

I blinked, trying to stop the buzzing in my head before it stole my balance and sent the room careening into a wild spin. No matter how hard I wished for the invading vision to disappear, it didn’t. The harsh truth finally seeped in.

The dramatic entrance contradicted the pile of evidence pointing to Aubrey’s demise. But she wasn’t another one of the town’s ghosts. She stood there, alive and refusing to be ignored, as if her presence hadn’t just dropped a massive ticking bomb in the middle of all our boring lives.
Aubrey looked around, her gaze hesitating on Hanna, then Marni, and finally landing on me as she scanned the room.

Aubrey smiled. “Looks like I arrived just in time.”

end of excerpt

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