Page 70 (1/2)

“Well?” the shrink asked, looking at her expectantly

“Sounds like a great idea, Doc,” Jonny said He grabbed Pandy’s hand and gave it a good, hard squeeze, like the two of them were teammates

And that was how they ended up in Wallis, on the trip that Henry would later dub “Helter-Skelter” As in, “That Helter-Skelter weekend when you tried to kill Jonny”

“I did not try to kill Jonny!” Pandy exploded

But oh, how she would come to wish she had

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE NIGHT before the trip to Wallis, Jonny returned froas in a bad mood

He was still in a badthe two-hour drive, he kept shifting in his seat When Pandy asked if he wanted her to drive instead, he snapped, “Do you want to take that over, too?”

She kept her mouth shut and prayed the weekend wouldn’t be a disaster And it wasn’t just because of Jonny It was nerve-racking for her to bring anyone to Wallis As Henry always pointed out, “Wallis House uest

Wallis House was “complicated”

Indeed, it wasn’t a house at all, but a mansion A rare, once-famous Italianate Victorian built on the top of a two-hundred-acre mountain It featured a clay tennis court, a streah to hold a basketball court, and—because Old Jay, the ancestor who had built the house, had also been eccentric—an actual Victorian theater where he and his New York friends had staged plays

According to the photos, from 1882, when the mansion was completed, to 1929, when the stock market crashed, the house had been a real showplace Unfortunately, it had gone steadily downhill froeneration to another, with each descendant wanting it less and less It as known as a white elephant: too costly to maintain, too expensive to renovate; located in an area too remote and inconvenient to entice a buyer When she and Hellenor were growing up, it had been an e paint, doors that barely opened, and ular basis, the electricity was unreliable at best, and the house was filled with a million dusty family heirlooms

When Pandy was living there people insisted the place was haunted, and the fairls were teased and bullied mercilessly, pa

rtly due to the house and partly due to the fact that they eird kids who didn’t fit in Soym locker and tried to flush thely” Pandy’s irls were known as “the Cootie Kids” Unlike some of the other taunts, this was usually said to their faces

“‘Cootie A slang word of indeterinated with soldiers Also, referring to lice,’” Hellenor had read from the dictionary