She cocked her head to the side, like she was trying to decide how much to tell us, and I saw Melissa roll her eyes in my peripheral vision.

When she decided she had paused long enough, she continued. “The Wanneberg family owned the apple orchards all around this area.” She drew a circle in the air above the map around almost the entirety of Whispering Farms. “The land was first purchased by Mr. Wanneberg’s father in the early 1800s after they came over from Germany. And then it was passed down to his eldest—and only surviving—son, Joseph.”

She shifted and clasped her hands in front of her. “Joseph married Mavis, who was an immigrant from Ireland. Mavis had come over with her family when she was fifteen and met her husband through, of all things, an ad in the newspaper.”

I lifted my eyebrows. “Mail-order bride?”

Mary Ellen nodded. “Surprisingly, yes. Marriage was a business deal, and the ads were the old social media.”

“I have had a few people ask me out on Instagram,” Jess said.

“They were Russian bots, Jess. Bots with great taste in women, but still bots,” Melissa said. She looked at Mary Ellen. “Please continue. I’m waiting for the horror, other than living in the middle of nowhere with a husband you barely know.”

“Being in the middle of nowhere was part of it, actually. The Wannebergs had two children: a boy and girl. And Mavis was hundreds of miles from her family, who lived in Iowa, and the farmhouse was fairly isolated from anyone.” She pointed down at the map, and we could see that the closest farm was miles from the Wanneberg place.

She continued. “There were reports that Mavis had been mentally unstable long before she arrived at the farm, although the prevailing thought is that it was the farm itself that made her the way she was. That being by herself, with two children, for long periods of time while tending to the farm while her husband worked in the orchards was what changed her.”

“So what happened?” I whispered.

“It’s said that the isolation finally got to her one night, and she snapped. She killed her entire family—her children, husband, even the family dog. She murdered them and buried them in the backyard. They weren’t discovered until nearly a week later.” Mary Ellen leaned forward and steepled her hands together. “She was found behind the house, dead from exposure, next to the grave where she had buried her children and husband and dog.” She leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest, satisfied at our stunned silence.

I thought of Emily’s “friend,” Amelia. “Do you know the names of the children, by chance?”

Mary Ellen twisted her head to the side and then glanced down at the papers, running a finger down the page. “Looks like they were Josiah and Amelia.”