We Have Always Lived in the Castle

by Shirley Jackson

“My niece Mary Katherine has been a long time dead, young man. She did not survive the loss of her family; I supposed you knew that.” “What?” Charles turned furiously to Constance. “My niece Mary Katherine died in an orphanage, of neglect, during her sister’s trial for murder. But she is of very little consequence to my book, and so we will have done with her.”