Page 1 of The House on Forgotten Hill

1

My name is Olivia Nightingale, and this is my story.

My maiden name is Caraway, but we’ll get to that later.

It has been one month since my mother, Naomi Caraway, died.

I never imagined that by age thirty-two, I would have lost both of my parents and found myself all alone in the world. I’ve had other people in my life, of course. Friends and coworkers, and a few relatives I spoke to every now and then.

But they weren’t my parents.

My father, Julian Caraway, died when I was twelve years old. I remember the day it happened with a clarity that has never faded, although there are many other bits and pieces of my childhood I can’t recall at all.

It was in the middle of the night, and it was raining outside. The rain was beating so hard against my window, I hadn’t gotten much sleep.

There was a knock at the front door, and then I heard my mother’s slippers shuffling along the hardwood floor.

A moment later, the front door opened.

A man said, “Mrs. Caraway?”

Curious, I crept downstairs to see why a man had stopped by the house so late at night. There were two police officers standing on the porch. One was older, with thinning gray hair and a mustache. The other appeared much younger. His gaze drifted past my mother and settled on me before moving back to her again.

Even at twelve, I understood what it meant when police officers came to your house. It meant something terrible had happened. My mother must have understood too, because she reached for the doorframe as though she needed it to remain standing.

“What is it?” she asked. “What’s happened?”

The older officer removed his hat.

There are moments in life when time seems to slow, stretching a few seconds into something far longer. I remember the officer’s mouth moving, and I remember hearing the words car accident. My mother said my father’s name, and then her legs gave way.

She sagged to the floor, and the younger officer stepped forward, trying to catch her before she struck the hardwood. I remained frozen on the last step of the stairs, refusing to believe what I’d just heard.

My father was dead.

He’d returned home from work that evening wearing a blue button-down shirt and a striped tie. As soon as he entered the kitchen, he kissed my mother, then bent to kiss the top of my head. A few hours later, he read me a bedtime story and said, “See you in the morning, sweetheart.”

But I never saw him again.

For the next several months, my mother almost never left her bedroom. Some mornings, I would pause outside her closed door and listen for movement. If I heard nothing, I would knock, then let myself in where I’d often find her beneath the covers, staring at the wall.

I brought her toast she didn’t eat and tea she allowed to grow cold. I reminded her when she needed to take a shower. I washed our clothes, heated canned soup for dinner, and learned how to write checks when bills arrived in the mail.

At the age of twelve, I didn’t know how to care for a grieving woman.

I barely knew how to care for myself.

Still, I tried.

At night, I lay in bed, my tears soft and quiet because I feared if she heard me and the pain I was in, it would make things even worse. Sometimes I pressed my face into a pillow to muffle the sound. Other times, I stared at the ceiling and wondered what would happen if my mother never got better.

Then one day, she did.

Or perhaps she only learned how to function again.

One morning, I came downstairs and found her standing at the stove, making scrambled eggs. Her hair was brushed, and she was dressed in jeans and a pale-yellow sweater. Although she looked thinner than she had before my father died, there was more life in her face.

“Morning, dear,” she said. “Are you hungry?”