Looking for Lucy

A Missing Cousin, a Haunted Estate, and Secrets That Refuse to Stay Buried

Mary Thompson has always preferred the safety of routine. A small-town teacher with a fear of confined spaces, she has never been the adventurous one—that role belonged to her cousin Lucy, whose restless spirit carried her across the world. But when Lucy vanishes after taking a job at the enigmatic Hollingham Hall on Long Island, Mary is forced out of her comfort zone and into a place where nothing is as it seems.

At the sprawling estate, Mary encounters three men—each with their own connection to Lucy—and a history steeped in mystery. Decades earlier, a bride disappeared on the eve of her wedding, leaving behind whispers of scandal, betrayal, and tragedy. As Mary searches for answers, she becomes entangled in a web of hidden passageways, uneasy relationships, and unsettling events that suggest Lucy’s disappearance may not be an isolated incident.

With the looming presence of a ghostly cat said to roam the grounds and a growing sense that danger is closer than it appears, Mary must confront both the secrets of Hollingham Hall and her own deepest fears. The truth, buried within the estate’s shadowed corridors and labyrinthine gardens, may be more chilling than she ever imagined.

A blend of gothic atmosphere, psychological suspense, and layered family drama, Looking for Lucy explores how far someone will go for love, truth, and survival.

Discover the secrets of Hollingham Hall—start reading Looking for Lucy today.

Excerpt from the book

I held my cousin’s letters from earlier this summer that I’d read over a dozen times. They made me realize that Lucy never lost the sense of adventure I lacked but that may have had something to do with her disappearance.

We were closer than sisters. Tighter than friends. As the only children of our aunts on our mother’s side, we bonded naturally. Linda, Lucy’s mom, was older than Margaret, my mother, by a year. It was a convenient coincidence that the sisters, after they married, became neighbors. Linda saw the For Sale signs on both homes when she and Tim were canvassing the houses in the small, upstate New York town where Lucy and I grew up. She called my mother immediately after she got home—had it been today, she would’ve used the cell from her car. It seemed the houses were waiting for them. Linda and Tim’s home was vacated after the woman who lived there moved in with her daughter in Florida. My parents’ house was for sale because the family living there had to relocate to New Jersey for the husband’s new job.

An image of Lucy at six flickered in my mind – Cinnamon-colored pigtails swishing as she squats down in the sandbox in her backyard with her red plastic bucket, trying to build a sandcastle. I’m at her side, taller with curlier hair nearly the same shade and wearing glasses. Lucy needed no vision correction. She had perfect eyesight.

“Can I help?” I’m carrying my own blue bucket. Aunt Linda had picked up the pails from the store where she also bought us candy. My mother accused her of spoiling us, even though she did the same when she babysat Lucy, which was less often because Linda was a stay-at-home mom while my mother worked part-time.

When we were kids, I was the smart one—they would term me a nerd today—with my books and glasses. I was always trying to figure things out, like measuring the wings of different butterflies we caught before releasing them and creating a chart of the ones with the longest wing spans or experimenting with substituting ingredients in the cakes Mom baked to make them tastier. Lucy was the social one who went to all the parties, although she always invited me whether or not I came. She was also the more active one, excelling at sports from swimming to tennis to horseback riding.

In the sandbox, Lucy turned to me, her freckles lit by the sun. I always wished I’d been the one with freckles, but she had them cosmetically removed the year we started college. Lucy wanted to go away, but her parents talked her into attending the local college with me.

“I can do it myself, Mary,” she insisted, pushing the bucket down over the mound of sand she’d gathered. That had been her mantra at six up until we lost touch after graduation when she took off to explore the world to volunteer in a variety of countries while I stayed home and found a job as a teacher at the elementary school that we’d both attended in our small town.