Hudson’s gaze drifted to Lilah, who’d gotten a cookie and was dunking it in a glass of milk. Now was not the time for an interrogation.

17 MORGAN

Morgan brushed crumbs off her desk. She’d swiped two Linzer cookies and brought them down to her basement lair, before her mom delivered them all to Silver Maple, the assisted living center where Grandma Daisy had spent her final days and where Grandpa Teddy still, as far as her parents knew, played cribbage twice a week.

Earlier this evening, the kitchen had been invaded by piles of sugar cookies and gingerbread men, peanut-butter blossoms, thumbprint cookies with orange marmalade, snowballs, fudge, and her mom’s famous Linzers. Carved with Grandma Daisy’s biscuit cutter, a primitive heart cutout in the top of the cookie to show off the bright raspberry preserves, and dusted with powdered sugar, Lynette Mori’s Linzer cookies were the stuff of legends. They were Morgan’s favorite, and had been the centerpiece of her mother’s bakery, Lynette’s Linzers. Now, her mom’s baking had evolved into a black-market operation in her kitchen. Some residences in Black Harbor sold cocaine out the back door. The Moris’ sold cookies.

Morgan peeled her eyes from her computer to look at her money, which she’d separated into two equal stacks, one on each side of her keyboard. Her trip to the Reynolds estate had panned out better than anticipated. Not only did she get to keep the money from the Christmas party, she had now gotten another inside look at the lives of Black Harbor’s most mysterious family.

On the floor beside her was a large Rubbermaid filled with loose photographs and albums whose floral covers were faded like old wallpaper. Eleanor had been storing them for years, protecting them from oxygen and light in this forest-green tub. Now, she wanted Morgan to immortalize them—scan them onto a USB drive that she could keep forever. Some of the photos could use some restorative edits, Morgan diagnosed when looking over Eleanor’s shoulder at the collection, but for the most part, they just needed to be scanned and organized into the appropriate folders: family vacations, parties, sporting events, etc. All things that Morgan had never had. She couldn’t help but feel a little taunted.

An eerie thought wormed its way into Morgan’s brain, then, as she considered how quickly Eleanor had pivoted from the lost Christmas photos to this project. What if the photos had been saved for her? What if Eleanor wanted Morgan to study them and learn her family’s secrets?

Morgan crawled under her desk and plugged in her new toy: a scanner. Upon leaving the Reynolds estate, she’d mustered up her courage to venture to Walmart on Christmas Eve and purchase the only scanner on the shelf. The checkout lines were obnoxious. It had taken her almost an hour to get what she needed and leave. By the time she returned home, her mother had already begun her cookie delivery, Grandpa Teddy was asleep in his chair, and her dad was working overtime.