Aggie gave a deep sigh. “Oh, sure. I guess everyone around here knows just about every gruesome detail…Sam was an alcoholic, for one. And the farm was going under. It was the family farm and it fell to him to keep it going, but he couldn’t manage. He’d sold off most of the cows, even subdivided the back acreage and sold some off, but he still wasn’t able to pay the bills. Not that those are excuses for what he did, but they provide the background.”

She’d moved over to a desk and was neatening a pile of old photographs now—sepia-toned portraits of people no one could name.

“It was a murder-suicide, right? Did it happen in the house?”

Aggie nodded. “He shot his wife, then himself. Right in the living room. She was an odd one, his wife. Some said she was crazy. And of course it didn’t help that she went around calling herself a witch.”

“A witch?” Helen practically shouted. “Really?”

Aggie nodded. “She actually made a little business out of it, you know. People would come visit her in her parlor and she’d read their tea leaves, palms, do spells to help them with love or money. She even self-published a little book about the spirit world and divination. If only she’d been able to see her own future, to know what was coming and find a way to stop it.”

“Maybe it doesn’t work that way,” Helen mused. Maybe it’s like everything else, she thought; it’s hardest to see what’s right in front of us.

“I guess not. A shame, though. Just terrible. He shot her right in front of their kids.”

“Do you know what happened to them? The kids?” Helen stepped closer to Aggie. “Are they around here still?”

“The poor things—neither of them could have been much older than ten when it happened. Jason. That was the son’s name. And the daughter, let’s see, I can’t say I recall her name. They didn’t stick around. Went off to live with relatives.”

“Do you know where?”

She shook her head. “Afraid not. Out of state, I think, but I’m not sure.” There was a pause. “You know, it’s a funny coincidence, but that mantel you noticed when you first came in? It came from the Gray farmhouse.”

“You’re kidding.”

“My husband and I managed to salvage a few things out of it before the contractors tore it down—some shelves, all the doors, and the mantel. We’ve got a set of shelves and a couple of doors left, too.”

Helen went back to the mantel, touched the wood.

Right in the living room, Aggie had said.

Shot right in front of the mantel, Helen imagined.