Chapters (47)
- Title Page
- Copyright Notice
- Dedication
- Epigraphs
- Prologue
- Part One
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- Part Two
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Newsletter Sign-up
The Shaws’ Marblehead house was eerily familiar to Ann. That fateful summer she’d worked for them on Cape Cod, Maureen had hired a Wellfleet artist to paint a portrait of the house based on a professional photograph. Ann couldn’t understand why someone would pay good money to turn their house into art they hung inside of the place they went to escape their house.
The portrait reminded Ann of the home in The Amityville Horror, a cold-looking barnlike structure with a grand porch set atop large red stones, and winking eyebrow windows peeking out of the slate roof. But Maureen had loved that painting—she loved anything that made things seem better than they were.
Shortly after her parents died, Ann drove up to the Marblehead house and saw it for herself for the first time. She was focused and strangely calm after all the anticipation and anxiety she’d felt about Anthony over the years. That anxiety had been replaced with a loneliness that became more obvious to her now that she couldn’t call her mom twice a day or go for walks with her dad when they visited her in Boston, or when she and Noah spent long weekends with them in Milwaukee. It was strange how losing her parents made her brave. Her grief was without end; what more could happen to her now?
The cement walk that led to the front door was covered in cracks and patches of ice, and dead ivy snaked up the stone walls. When she walked up the steps of the massive porch, she noticed that the slate-blue paint on the stairs was peeling in broad strips, and had worn down entirely in the centers of the treads. A pile of yellowed newspapers sat in a corner, and a faded cushion had fallen off the porch swing. If it weren’t for the name SHAW on the mailbox, she might have thought the family didn’t live there anymore.
She steadied her nerves with a single thought: Noah. Just the thought of him gave her strength. She wanted to be able to sign him up for classes and camps. She wanted Noah to feel special and exceptional the way Toby and Brooks had. Why shouldn’t he get to go to whatever college he wanted without worrying about student loans? As for herself, she wanted a bigger apartment in Boston, and she had her own student loans to pay back. She didn’t worry about Anthony’s threats anymore. She wasn’t a scared teenager. Now she was a scared adult.