The Turn of the Key

by Ruth Ware

Maddie is eight, Ellie is five, and the baby, Petra, is just eighteen months, so they’re all in bed.”

“Rhiannon is fourteen going on twenty-four. She’s at boarding school—not

“Don’t come here,” she whispered, still refusing to look at me. “It’s not safe.” “It’s not safe?” I gave a little laugh. “Maddie, what do you mean?” “It’s not safe,” she repeated, with a little angry sob, shaking her head harder so that her words were almost lost. “They wouldn’t like it.”

The ghosts, she had sobbed. The ghosts wouldn’t like it.

Do you understand what it’s like for people who don’t have your money, and your protection, and your privilege?

He was selfish. A selfish, self-centered man who had barely asked me a single personal question—not even how my journey had been. He just didn’t care.

“Achlys—(pronounced ACK-liss)—Greek goddess of death, misery, and poison,” it read.

Because it was the lies that got me here in the first place. And I have to believe that it’s the truth that will get me out.

You know that the reason I would never sleep with Bill Elincourt was because he was my father too.

That, more than anything that came after, was the moment the key turned in the lock. That was when they knew.