**MY 70-YEAR-OLD GRANDMOTHER SCREAMED THAT I HAD PUSHED HER, AND MY FATHER THREW ME TO THE GROUND WITHOUT EVEN HEARING MY SIDE. HE CALLED ME A DISGRACE AND ORDERED ME TO LEAVE—BUT WHEN I FOUND THE HIDDEN CAMERA FOOTAGE, I DISCOVERED THE TERRIFYING SECRET GRANDMA HAD BEEN HIDING... AND WHY SHE NEEDED ME GONE.**

My father threw me off the porch before he asked why his mother was screaming.

I hit the grass shoulder-first. Behind him, my seventy-six-year-old grandmother, Clara Hart, lay tangled in the azalea bushes beneath the railing, calling for help in a voice loud enough to reach the road.

"How could you do that to your own grandmother?" Dad roared.

"I didn't! She grabbed me!"

He was already hauling Clara upright. Her white cardigan was streaked with dirt. One shoe dangled from a branch. I could still feel the place where her fingernails had dug into my wrist.

Five minutes earlier, I'd arrived at our family's summer house on Morrow Lake with groceries and an offer to fix the porch screen. Clara had blocked the front door.

"Your mother left us enough trouble," she'd said. "Don't bring any more."

When I asked why she'd been going through Mom's locked cabinet, she backed toward the railing and caught my arm. I reached to steady her. She twisted away. Then she dropped into the bushes and started screaming.

Now Dad stood between us, breathing hard. His gray hair was damp with sweat. He looked older than his fifty-four years, but his voice still had the power to make me feel sixteen.

"Apologize," he ordered.

"She set me up. Look at my wrist."

Clara folded into his shoulder. "She said she'd finish what her mother started. Thomas, I'm frightened of her."

I waited for Dad to ask what that meant. Instead he pointed to my car. "Leave."

"Dad, please. Mom's things are still in that house."

"Your mother is dead, Emily. Stop using her name as a weapon."

Something in me went quiet. Clara watched over his shoulder, her eyes dry while she kept making sobbing sounds.

I was twenty-four, with an apartment and a job of my own. I should have driven away. Instead I looked back at the porch where Mom used to wave goodbye, and I heard Clara whisper, "Tell her what happens if she comes back."