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when she said that he was an abomination, and that his union with our daughter would lead to terrible consequences. She told us that we had to separate them before they could have a child. She was obsessed with that, constantly warning us of what would happen if you were born.”
    Dorothy spoke up, her voice weak. “We tried to pay Irving to leave Marion. He wouldn’t accept the money, but when we finally broke the news that we knew who he was, and that Rebecca had been appearing at our home … well, he disappeared the day after that, without a word of warning. But it was all for nothing. Marion never forgave us, and we lost her so early. It was everything we were trying to avoid when we cooperated with Rebecca.” Dorothy buried her face in her hands. “And now, after seventeen years, she’s come back for you. It’s our worst nightmare. But we won’t ever listen to that despicable creature again. We know now that she was the real enemy all along.”
    “You see, Michele, we have always cared deeply for you,” Walter said softly. “We kept things from you only because we felt we had no choice.”
    Michele reached for her grandparents’ hands.
    “I can’t imagine what these years must have been like for you,” she said. “It kills me to hear what Rebecca did to you and my parents. But we won’t let her win.” Michele’s teeth clenched with anger as she realized that everything in her life would have been different if it hadn’t been for this psychotic time traveler. She would have grown up with both parents and grandparents in her life, Marion wouldn’t have been left alone to raise Michele as a single mother—and most of all, Michele wouldn’t now be an orphan at sixteen.
    “Rebecca broke up my whole family,” she whispered as the horror of it all sank in. She looked up at her grandparents. “What does she want to do to me?”
    There was an agonizing silence as Walter and Dorothy looked at each other, unsure of what to say.
    “She wants me dead, doesn’t she?” Michele said flatly.
    After a pause Walter said, “But remember, she can’t do anything about it just yet. That’s why we have to take you away from here. We know you must miss your old home and your friends, so we’ve booked one-way plane tickets to Los Angeles. We can stay there until the danger has passed.”
    “No,” Michele said firmly. “Rebecca has been terrorizing our family since before I was born—it doesn’t matter where I go. She’ll find me. That’s why I have to be ready when she does. I have to finish this.”
    “But—but how can you?” Dorothy sputtered. “How canyou stay here when she’s haunting the house, and go to school and act normal, when you might only have seven days? At least if we go away—”
    “It won’t change anything,” Michele interrupted. “How do we know she won’t just follow us there? The only solution is for me to find a way to stop her—for good.” As she spoke, Michele couldn’t help marveling at how calm she sounded, despite being thrust into the middle of a real live horror movie. But as she thought of the family Rebecca had stolen from her, fury and determination overrode her fear. Her mind suddenly filled with the image of Philip’s face, and the longing to stay alive, to be with him, was so profound that in this moment she felt as if she could defeat any obstacle in her path.
    Seizing the album, Michele flipped through it until she found the first visual she had ever seen of her father: his business portrait from the year 1900. He was thirty-one in this photograph, though there was a heaviness to his eyes that made him appear older. The cheerful boy of 1887 was barely visible.
    “What I don’t understand is, if Irving and Rebecca’s friendship ended in 1888, then why was he still working for the family so many years later?” Michele wondered.
    “The oddest part is that this photo of Irving was never in the album originally,” Dorothy said in a hushed tone. “It