“The house. I started painting the house. Priming. You have to prime first. I’ve done Mom’s office, the upstairs hall, and the downstairs hall. I’ve done the cutting in in your old room. Not the kitchen yet, because I think it’s going to be a gut job. And I’m doing wallpaper in the bathroom. Look.” I get out my phone to show her the wallpaper I picked, but she shakes her head and both hands, dropping the menu.

  “I don’t want to see,” she says.

  “You don’t want to see wallpaper?”

  “I’m sorry, Cli. I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself, but I don’t want to think about it.”

  A waiter comes by and saves the day. Daphne chats them up, and the chef sends over oysters and potato chips with caviar and crème fraîche.

  Later, when we’re back at my apartment wearing sheet masks and sipping adaptogen soda through straws, Daphne says, “I didn’t mean to snap at you earlier.”

  “What?”

  “About the wallpaper,” she says, suddenly morose. “I had a dream about the house the other night. A bad one.”

  I don’t know what to say, so I say nothing.

  “I haven’t had an Edgewood nightmare in forever. I used to have them all the time. I’d wake up Amy and she’d make me hot chocolate. Those gross packets with the freeze-dried mini marshmallows. Woof.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” I ask, unreasonably annoyed at her harshing my mellow. “How does this affect your ability to view floral wallpaper.”

  “Because all this trash is coming up again. I was in a good place with everything before Alexandra died. Now you’re at that house, and I’m having nightmares about the time she chased you down the stairs with a knife.”

  A flash. A vision.

  A memory, buried deep, now bursting through the dirt like a zombie.

  My back to my locked bedroom door, bracing it against Mom’s pounding. I will bleed you out! I will bleed you out!

  My breath hitches. I clear my throat and stand up, peel the sheet mask off my face. I toss it in the kitchen garbage, gently pat the remaining serum into my skin.

  “You know I appreciate some dramatic flair, but if you want some woe-is-me hot chocolate, just ask,” I say. “I’d make you some. I’d even go out and get you some real marshmallows. Fresh and gooey.”

  She narrows her eyes at me. “That’s not…”

  “Not what?”

  She seems surprised that I’m being a smidge jerky while she’s trying to be vulnerable and open with me, and I wonder if she knows that she’s being manipulative. She’s typically pretty self-aware.

  “Never mind,” she says, getting up. She goes into the bathroom, shutting the door a little too hard behind her.

  I make up the couch for her to sleep on while she gets ready for bed. The toilet flushes, the faucet runs. I hear the swish of her toothbrush, the spritz of toner. Resentment. How can something silent be so loud?

  When she’s done in the bathroom, she comes over and sits on the edge of my bed. I get under the covers.

  “You love to tell me how you and Leda won’t care if I abandon the house. Won’t hold it against me if I change my mind. But I’m not the one who changed my mind. Just admit you don’t want me there,” I say. “Don’t plant seeds and pretend you’re not. I’m smarter than that.”

  “Okay. You’re right,” she says. “I don’t want you there. I don’t like it. It bothers me. I didn’t think it would, but it does.”

  “You’re having nightmares about the place while I’m there getting finger-banged on the couch by the hot neighbor,” I say, smiling so big it pushes the tension out of the room.

  “Dude. Stop,” she says, shuddering. “And how come this trash always happens to you? It’s so unfair. Where’s my meet-cute?”

  “It wasn’t a meet-cute,” I say. “No meet-cute involves Yuengling and oral.”

  She clicks her tongue. “Mine would.”

  “Yours would be in an orchard, on a beautiful fall day, reaching for the same apple.”

  “Idiot. Yeah, that’s true,” she says. “All right. Show me the wallpaper.”

  “Are you sure?” I ask, pulling up the image on my phone.

  She crawls over to where I am, puts her head on the pillow next to mine. I show her the picture.

  “That’s stunning. Dang.”

  I show her some of the YouTube tutorials I’ve been watching. She falls asleep as we watch time-lapsed kitchen remodels.

  She snores and steals the covers, so I end up on the couch.

  I came back to the city earlier this week for work and for some appointments—facial, personal training session, trim and blowout—and to have dinner with Daphne. But ever since I got here, I’ve been anxious to return to the house. The progress is addicting. And the potential. Looking around at all that raw space. There’s just something about being there.

  What would Daphne say if I told her about waking up on the floor with the bedding all piled up beside me like a soft cairn? If I told her about the sketch that I don’t remember drawing?

  Probably blame emotional distress or lack of sleep or alcohol. Probably be right. Definitely tell Dad and Leda. And they would change the locks and put the house on the market.

  So I won’t tell her, even though it justifies her having concerns about me being there. I won’t tell her because it justifies her concerns.

  I won’t tell her because I’m starting to suspect that part of me wants to believe the house is haunted, wants the place to prove to me that it is.

  How could I forget the bedroom door incident? How is it possible I could just block something like that out? Mom locked outside, holding a knife, trying to get in. Screaming.

  No.

  No, it’s not that I want to believe the house is haunted.

  It’s that part of me wants to believe she wasn’t crazy.

  * * *

  The closest church was St. Ann’s. Catholic. I’d been raised Greek Orthodox, but our family had never been particularly committed to the church. My ex-husband wasn’t religious, and so our girls weren’t brought up in faith.

  Any belief I’d had in the lord as a child had waned over the years. If there was a God, he was at best apathetic, at worst cruel. Why would I worship such a being?

  But after falling from the attic, I was desperate. I needed help and I would seek it anywhere, from anyone.

  I attended mass on a Friday evening while the girls were with their father—he was taking them out to dinner and to the movies because he could afford to do fun things like that with them. They would whine on the weekends they were with me about how bored they were.

  Catholic mass was a solemn affair, but I found something soothing about it. A peace I hadn’t ever experienced before. I was grateful for that hour, sitting in the mostly empty pews, the divine words echoing through the space.

  The church itself was beautiful. Outside, a statue of the Virgin Mary stood surrounded by flowers. The exterior of the church was simple—white and square with a tall steeple. Inside, the walls were painted pale yellow. There were elaborate stained-glass windows all around. The ceiling was high and curved, and the floors were cherrywood except for the green runner down the aisle. There were statues on either side of the altar, the Virgin Mary again—one with her holding Goodness as an infant, the other her holding him after he died. Beyond the pulpit, Goodness was alone on his cross.

  After mass, I lingered, waiting for an opportunity to speak to the priest, Father John. He was an older man with gray hair and a soft face. Kind eyes.

  “Hello, Father,” I said.

  “Hello,” he said, extending a hand. “I don’t believe we’ve met. Welcome.”

  “I recently moved to the area with my three daughters,” I said. When I slipped my hand in his, a shadow passed across his face. His hand was warm; mine was freezing. He held on to it. He didn’t let me go. He could sense something was wrong, and I think he wanted me to know that I could confide in him. “It’s been a rough start. I…I was wondering if you could come and bless our house.”

  “Of course,” he said. “I would be glad to.”

  I gave him the address, and we settled on the following Wednesday at one o’clock. I told my boss I had a doctor’s appointment, an excuse to leave work early.

  I couldn’t have Father John at the house while my girls were there. They would tell their father, who would ask me why I had a priest at the house. I wouldn’t have a good answer, a good lie, and the truth wasn’t an option. If my ex-husband knew that I suspected there was a presence in the house, he would take it as further proof that I was crazy. It infuriated me how he would revel in my agony. How he would wield my vulnerabilities as weapons against me. Any opportunity he had to exploit my very human weaknesses, he would take.

  I hung my hopes on Father John’s visit. Whatever evil was in the house, I thought he could cast out. It was something.

  I’d read and loved Jane Eyre as a teenager. As a grown woman, my perspective on the novel changed. I was Bertha Mason. Rochester was not a romantic hero; he was a criminal jerk.

  I went to sleep on Tuesday cautiously optimistic.

  I woke up on Wednesday to a sick daughter in my bed.

  “My stomach hurts,” Cici said, and proceeded to vomit all over my sheets.

  She was too sick to go to school. I had to call out of work, my boss suspicious since I’d already taken a half day.

  I stripped my bed and did a load of laundry, set up Cici on the couch with ginger ale and plain toast. She watched cartoons and colored. I was grateful that whatever she had didn’t seem to affect her sisters, who were their usual surly preteen selves.

  Though all my daughters were daddy’s girls, Cici was still my baby. She liked to follow me around, sit in the tub while I did my hair and makeup in the morning, pick out my clothes with me. There was a chance I could get Cici to keep Father John’s visit a secret, but I realized it would likely involve bribery. Cici was clever enough to know when she held the cards.

  “I’m having a visitor come by this afternoon,” I told her after I’d dropped the older girls at school.

  “A boyfriend?” she asked, perking up.

  “No,” I said. “His name is Father John. He’s a priest.”

  She scrunched up her face like she’d just caught a whiff of something rotten. “Why’s a priest coming over?”

  “He’s going to bless the house,” I said. “Make it nice for us to live here.”

  She blew a raspberry. “I don’t know about that.”

  “What don’t you know about?”

  She turned back to her drawing—the sky at sunset. She didn’t give me an answer.

  “Can I have more toast?” she asked.

  “Feeling better?”

  She shrugged.

  “How would you like to go hang out in your sisters’ room?” I asked her. “We don’t have to tell them.”

  She cracked a mischievous grin.

  Father John arrived promptly at one o’clock. I’d made coffee, plugged in the electric kettle in case he wanted tea instead. I’d even bought shortbread cookies from a local bakery.

  I opened the door, my palms sweating. “Hello, Father.”

  He was dressed in all black, save for the white of his clerical collar. He removed his wide-brimmed hat and bowed his head. “Hello, Ms. Barnes. How are you today?”

  “Very well, thank you, Father. Please, call me Alex. Come in.”

  As he stepped over the threshold, he began to cough.

  “Are you all right?” I asked, closing the door. “Some water?”

  He nodded.

  There was a noticeable shift in his demeanor as soon as he set foot in the house.

  He followed me up the stairs, and I asked him to have a seat at the dining table. I went into the kitchen to get him a glass of water and the cookies. But when I came out, he was gone.

  “Father?”

  I set the water and cookies down on the table and repeated his name.

  I heard him coughing. Horrible, violent, hacking coughs. I followed the sound toward the stairs, peering down to the landing. The front door was open. It slowly swung itself wide.

  Had he left?

  “Father?”

  The door slammed shut.

  “Father!” I ran down the stairs and went to open the front door. The knob was hot to the touch, so hot that my hand came away sizzling, steaming. “Ah!”

  “Mom?” I heard. Cici.

  “Go back to your room!” I shouted. I pulled my sleeve down over my hand—which was still burning, throbbing—and twisted the knob. It was hot even through the fabric.

  Father John sat on the front steps, hat in hands, staring straight ahead.

  “Father? What happened?” I asked.

  “Please, sit,” he said, and so I did. I sat on the step beside him, the wood creaking beneath our weight. “Alex. Why did you ask me here?”

  He was white as a ghost and his voice was now hoarse.

  “I…I’m afraid in the house,” I said. “Of the house. I feel…unsafe. I don’t know how to explain it.”

  He nodded. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped the sweat from his brow, then turned it over and dragged it across his tongue, which I thought was strange. “I have a colleague who may be able to help you. He’s more experienced with these…phenomena.”

  “What phenomena? What…why did you leave? What happened?”

  He patted my knee. “I shall put you in touch with him. Father Bernard.”

  “Father,” I said. He wouldn’t look at me. “What is it?”

  He stood up. “I will pass along your address. He will come by at his earliest convenience.”

  “Earliest convenience? Why? Why can’t you bless the house? What’s wrong with it?” He wouldn’t answer. He put his hat on and began to walk briskly toward his car, cutting across the lawn. I was at his heels, begging him to stay. “Please, Father. Don’t leave. Wait. Tell me. Tell me!”

  “I’m sorry,” he mumbled before getting into his car and closing the door. I banged my fists on the driver’s-side window as he started the engine. I could see myself reflected in the glass, my hair a frizzy mess, my eyes bulging. I looked desperate. Exhausted. Deranged.

  “Please!” I said, chasing his car down the driveway.

  It had started to rain, and I just stood there dazed and hopeless.

  When I finally turned to wander back inside, my clothes were soaked.

  I saw it near the foot of the stairs on my way in. Something small and gray and red. A dead mouse. Half a dead mouse. It’d been ripped in two, straight down the middle, its guts spilling out, its little face shriveled. It was wet, covered in mucus. In spit.

  It didn’t occur to me then that Father John had coughed it up. Why would it?

  I went inside and heard Cici softly singing to herself in her room. By dinnertime, she would be cured of whatever ailed her.

  I went to the kitchen and drank the coffee I’d made for Father John. My hand was burned from the doorknob. It had already started to blister.

  I poured the coffee down the drain and poured vodka into a mug. That’s what I drank. I knew I was drinking too much, but everyone copes in their own way. Alcohol was never my problem. It was a response to my problems.

  Over the next few days, the blisters ballooned with yellow puss. They were so painful I worried they would erupt. I had to drain them with sterile needles. Then came the disinfectant. It stung and I cried alone on the bathroom floor. As I applied my own bandages, I ached in my loneliness. I didn’t miss my ex, who wouldn’t have helped me anyway. I missed someone who didn’t exist. An empathetic partner who would take care of me, listen, understand, believe.

  I needed help. And soon, it would come. But it would come at a cost.

  I missed Roy, though I hadn’t met him yet. It’s difficult to regret everything that happened because it led me to him. My great love. I tried to be honest with you girls about what to expect from men. Had I known Roy back then, maybe I would have been less cynical. Maybe. There are exceptions to every rule.

  16

  Austin walks up the driveway toward me, where I rinse paint brushes with the hose. There’s a utility sink in the garage, but I’m avoiding going in there, afraid there will be dead mice stuck to the glue traps.

  “Come to borrow a cup of sugar?” I ask him.

  He waits to reply until he’s right in front of me.

  “Yeah, actually,” he says, kissing me on the lips.

  “Don’t be cute,” I tell him. “It’s a turn-off.”

  “Can’t make any promises,” he says, following me inside. “How you been?”

  “Busy,” I say. “I was hoping you’d come by.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “I need someone to hold the ladder.”

  He laughs. “You’re putting me to work?”

  “The door is behind you,” I say. “Should you choose to use it.”

  He won’t. I’m wearing cutoff jean shorts, tube socks, and a white tank top with a pink bra underneath. I’m covered in paint and sweat. My hair is in space buns. I’m a girl-next-door fantasy.

  He helps me prime the living room, and as a thank-you I order us Thai food.

  “Do you do this for a living?” he asks, gesturing to the house.

  “No,” I say.

  “Really? You seem like a pro.”

  “I’m just good at everything.”

  “I’m gathering that,” he says. “What do you do?”

  “I’m a stylist,” I say. “And a fashion influencer.”

  I expect him to pull a face, like most people do at the word “influencer.” But he doesn’t.

 

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