“That’s what I was told,” he said, “but I don’t consider anyone I know to be anything of an authority on it. The Foxworths were very private people, and when people are that private, the only way you get to know anything about them is second- or thirdhand. Worthless.”
“Did you really believe that the children’s grandmother wanted her own grandchildren dead and was somehow responsible for the little boy dying?”
“No one as far as I know proved anything like that,” he said. “It’s a nasty story, Kristin. Why harp on it?”
“I know, but probably not much nastier than what they’re showing at the movie theater.”
He nodded. “I’ll give you that.”
“There are lots of stories like it on the news today also, Dad.”
“Look, I’m like most people around here, Kristin. What I know about the Foxworth tragedies I know from little more than gossip, and gossip is just an empty head looking to exercise a fat tongue.”
“Do you think the little boy’s body is buried somewhere on the property? You must have some thought about that.”
“Not going to venture a guess on that, and I’m not going to be one to spread that story, Kristin. You know how hard it is to sell a house in which someone died? People get spooked. Look how long it’s taken to move this property, and there’s no reason for that, even though the house on it burned down twice. It’s prime land.”
“How did it burn the second time? I heard an electric wire problem.”
“That’s it,” he said. “It was abandoned, so no one noticed until it was too late.”
“I also heard the man who lived in it burned it because he believed it had the devil inside it.”
Dad smirked. “There was no proof of arson. All that just adds to the rumor mill.”
“The same house burns down twice?” I said.
He looked at me and then looked ahead and said, “Lightning can strike twice in the same place. No big mystery.”
He made a turn and started us on the now-infamous road to Foxworth, passing cow farms along the way. There had been a number of times when I was tempted to use my new driver’s license and take myself and one or two of my friends out to Foxworth, but somehow the aura of dark terror hovered ahead of me when I considered it, even in broad daylight. And I didn’t want any of my friends to know I had an interest in the Foxworth legends. That would only encourage their insinuations that I might have inherited madness.
“Did Mom ever talk about what happened, Dad?”
“You mean the first fire?”
“No, all of it, especially the children in the attic.”
“Her girlfriends were always trying to bring it up, I know, but she would say something like, ‘It’s not right to talk about the dead,’ as if it was some Grimms’ fairy tale or something, and that would usually end it. But that didn’t mean they didn’t keep trying. A busybody has got to keep busy.”
“Did she talk about it with you?”
He gave me that look again, the expression that told me he was considering my age and what he should say. “I told you, Kristin, it’s all hearsay, even what your mother knew and what we were told years later.”
“I’m all ears,” I replied.
He shook his head. “I’m going to regret this conversation.”
“No, you won’t, Dad. I won’t be the one to tell stories out of school,” I added, which was another one of his favorite expressions. I knew he loved that I used them, remembered them.
“Your uncle Tommy once claimed he had met someone who said he had known one of the servants in the original house at the time the children were supposedly locked in the attic. He went out to Hollywood to pitch the story for a movie, and Tommy heard it. He called us immediately afterward.”
“What did he say?”
“He said the man claimed it was true that they were up there for more than three years, a girl who was about twelve when they were first locked up, a boy who was about fourteen, and the twin boy and girl about four. Their father was killed in a car accident and supposedly didn’t leave them enough money to fix the heels on their shoes. Malcolm Foxworth was pretty sick by then, but he hung on for a few years more. The story was that he wouldn’t put his daughter back in his will if she had children with her husband.”
“Do you know why? Did he say?”
“He was vague about it. Tommy, who hears lots of stories, said he was sure the man was making most of it up as he went along just to season his story enough to sell it for a movie.”