Starter House A Novel (19 page)

The front door slammed in a meaningful way as Ella Dane left the house to avoid the smell of meat. Sulking. What was it now, apart from the liver? Maybe she was upset because Lacey had called for Eric’s help and not hers.

“Your mom’s got a bee up her butt,” Drew said. Suddenly he was at the foot of her bed, as if he’d always been there, sitting with his knees drawn up to his chin. His light hair flopped over his eyebrows, and she couldn’t see his eyes. He had mosquito bites on his ankles, some of them freshly raised welts, others scratched, scabbed, scratched again. He stuck his left pinky in his ear and rooted for wax, and Lacey marveled again at his persuasive reality. When he moved, the mattress shifted under her.

“Language,” she said.

“I’m just saying.”

“She’s going out because she doesn’t like liver.”

Drew pulled his knees in closer and dropped his face, so all she could see of him was the crown of his head, the flat wavy locks of hair springing like separate leaves from the uneven part, the whorl at the back. He muttered something into his legs.

“Didn’t hear you,” Lacey said.

“I
said
.” He burrowed his face into his knees and shouted through his own body. “I said I was sorry, okay? I only wanted to make you listen.”

“You could have hurt me. You could have hurt the baby.” Outrage and terror sank into the sand of her mind. So exhausting. She’d had this conversation before. Children in classrooms had knocked over desks; they had thrown book bags, pencils, and binders at her; they’d hooked their feet around her ankles trying to trip her; twice, she’d been bitten bloody. Teaching was a perilous art. She coaxed, comforted, and challenged her difficult boys.
Use your words,
she said, and then she taught them better words. She’d never given up on a child, however troubled and strange.

“I said, I know! You have to be careful of babies. I know.”

“Okay. Thank you.” As in a classroom after talking down a tantrum-prone boy, Lacey sat quietly next to Drew and felt peace rising within him. She could do this, keep him calm, keep her baby safe. The heavy scent of liver cooked in bacon grease came under the door, and she swallowed again and again. She was hungry enough to eat the liver half raw, as long as there was a lot of it. But Eric, ever conscientious, would cook it gray, safe and sanitary.

Her door bumped open, and Bibbits trotted in, his nails tapping as he crossed the room. He stood up on his back feet so that he could see up to the bed, and when he looked at Drew, he whimpered and fell back to the floor.

Bibbits could see him, though not all the time. Ella Dane never had, nor CarolAnna at the kitchen table. Ella Dane was sensitive—she
should
have known there was something in the house. As a child, CarolAnna had actually seen Drew. Drew was in control of their awareness, he must be. Drew smiled at Bibbits, and the dog whined in the back of his throat. Eric called from the kitchen, “Almost done!” and Lacey patted the blanket next to her. Bibbits barked once at Drew, then jumped into the bed next to Lacey’s shoulder.

“So,” Lacey said. “Think you can tell me what upset you?” There was always a reason for the tantrum, and children liked to be taken seriously.

“You know.” Drew plucked at the blanket. He raised his chin up to his knees and peered at her under the fall of hair. “I don’t want you to talk to her.”

“Who?”

“That lady. The one whose name you found out.”

Greeley Honeywick. “Why?”

“She’ll tell you bad things.”

“Are there bad things?”

“She’ll tell you I hurt her.”

“Did you hurt her?”

“She was mean to me.”

“What did she do that was mean?”

Bibbits barked, one shrill word. Lacey glanced up at the doorway, and there was Eric, with a tray in his hands. Liver with bacon, hash browns, and a big glass of orange juice. “I heard you talking,” he said.

The weight still pressed at the foot of the bed, but Drew was gone. The weight gradually lifted, leaving her left foot numb. She could still smell his salty hair, the smell of a child who had spent a long day playing in the sun.

“Who were you talking to?” Eric asked.

And she couldn’t say,
Smell that, it smells like a little boy,
because he didn’t know children the way she did, and anyway the room smelled of liver now, also of poodle. Bibbits barked again and pulled at the blanket with his front feet. “Just the dog,” she said.

“I don’t think so.” Eric waited as Lacey pulled herself up against the cushions. He set the tray on her lap and sat next to her, holding Bibbits firmly in spite of the little dog’s growls. “Who got hurt? Who was mean? What’s going on, Lacey?”

Lacey took a bite of liver, for time, and handed a piece to Bibbits, for peace. She took a mouthful of hash browns. Eric had cooked them in the bacon grease and they were wonderful. “There’s something in the house,” she said, “and I know you won’t believe me.” She should stop talking; the teacher voice warned her,
Stop before you say another word,
but it was too late. She had to tell him; she couldn’t do this on her own, and nobody who made such perfect hash browns could be unsympathetic. “There’s something in the house, and it’s dangerous.”

“Something?” Eric said.

“Somebody.” She still couldn’t say
ghost
. The weight on the bed, the part in his hair. He was too real. “A person. He’s angry about something.” A thought came to her. “Angry, or maybe sad.” She gave a little bounce, and Bibbits took advantage of the motion to lunge for her plate and snatch a piece of bacon. Lacey grabbed the plate, and the liver slid off; she caught it with her right hand, and Eric pulled away from her with a sound of disgust. “Sad,” she said, brandishing the liver at him, “that’s what he is. Being sad makes him angry.”

“So this person, what kind of person is he, and where did he go?”

He wanted to make her say it, but she wouldn’t. Let him ask Ella Dane. “A sad person,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about it.” She closed her face, a trick she had learned from Eric; nobody could slam shut the way he could. He couldn’t make her say,
This house is haunted,
because then she’d be as crazy as her mother, and that was a thing no one could ever say about her. She bit the last piece of liver in two, ate half herself, and held the other half over the side of the bed. Bibbits licked it from her hand.

“Okay.” Eric stood up and took the plate. “You don’t have to tell me. I’m going upstairs to get caught up on my work.” He left, just as she had predicted.

She sighed and rolled over. Bibbits fell asleep next to her. She jiggled her feet, rolled over again, and blew puffs of air on Bibbits’s closed eyes. He wrinkled his little nose with each puff, but didn’t wake up. She was so bored. She wished she could get up and walk around the room, run screaming from the house, drive to a mall, anything. But the baby needed her to stay still and behave. Rock the cradle gently, rock him only with her breath. He turned, and she watched the bulge slide under her skin. What was that—his knee, his whole body? What was going on in there, double Dutch with the umbilical cord?

Her thoughts clattered, what-if chasing maybe-then. If she left the house, where would she go? Her beautiful house with the beautiful furniture Eric had chosen just for her, their first real home; it wasn’t like filling up a couple of old backpacks with clothes and putting the boyfriend-of-the-month’s stereo in a box and walking out toward the next place, the way Ella Dane had done so often, dragging Lacey along. To stand up, walk away, leave—to abandon her own real adult life, like a refugee—she couldn’t.

And even if she left, Drew might follow, as he had followed her to the hospital. No point running, unless she knew she was running to a safe place.
Not a good house for babies:
How bad was it? She had to stop these racing thoughts. She had to rest. She had to give the placenta a chance to heal, to save the baby. She hitched herself up to a sitting position, dragged her laptop from the nightstand, and logged on.

First, she visited her favorite maternity-clothing website and ordered a new dress, dark brown cotton printed with purple flowers, all pintucks and lace, the skirt opening out in long elegant gores. She also bought a pair of amethyst earrings, because they matched. Then she remembered she was stuck here in bed, so Eric would see the mail before she did. He would open the Visa statement, and he would want to know what she needed a new dress for when they hadn’t paid for the furniture yet. So she canceled the order. She’d order them again when she could get out of bed. Now that was motivation.

The room felt empty. “Drew?” she asked. Nothing, so it was safe to search.

Greeley Honeywick wasn’t anywhere near Utah, as her ancient uncle had said. She lived in Vancouver, Washington, where she was a high school gym teacher and triathlete. She smiled out of the computer screen, her auburn hair in shining waves in publicity shots, ponytailed and severe at finish lines. She was a double amputee, having lost her left leg below the knee and her right foot at the ankle in a domestic accident.

A domestic accident. Lacey checked the time. Nine
P.M.
, so it was only six in Washington. Greeley Honeywick was on Facebook, with a pair of six-year-old twins, as smiling and auburn haired as herself, with the confident, well-brushed look of children born to middle-aged parents, and a tall husband who stood behind her in the pictures and looked away to the left or down at one of the twins, never at Greeley herself.
Trouble at home,
the teacher’s eye said, looking at the children’s smiles, so wide and bright. Domestic accident. Greeley Honeywick had taught at Burgoyne Elementary in Greeneburg eighteen years ago.

That was the school Drew must have attended. Greeley couldn’t have taught him, though; CarolAnna had known Drew before Greeley lived in the house. Lacey raised her hands from the keyboard and let her senses spread through the room, feeling for Drew’s weight. Nothing—she was still safe. Maybe he didn’t understand computers.

She found a phone number in the Vancouver, Washington, telephone book, attached to Honeywick Auto Repair. Lacey called, and within minutes she was talking with the tall husband. Lacey told him she had been a student of Ms. Honeywick’s at Burgoyne Elementary. “In second grade,” she burbled, “and I loved her so much, she was my favorite teacher! And now I’m a gym teacher myself, and I just wanted to get in touch with Ms. Honeywick and tell her how much she meant to me. She changed my life. She really, really did.”

“Let me give you her number,” the tall husband said, and Lacey noted: not
our
number
. “I’m sure she’ll be happy to hear from you.”

Lacey called the number, and a small girl, one of the auburn-haired twins, answered the telephone. “Can I talk to your mom?” Lacey asked.

“I don’t know,” the little girl said slyly, “
can
you?” She giggled.

“Aren’t you the cutest thing, you.
May
I speak to your mother?”

The little girl handed the phone over, and Greeley Honeywick said, “Who’s this?” She had a PTA-mom voice, no time for nonsense. This was a woman who held a full-time job, kept her house perfect, was active in her children’s school, and ran triathlons, all with no feet.

Lacey heard all that in those three words, so she said briskly, “Ms. Honeywick, I’m calling from Greeneburg, South Carolina, and we’re doing a piece in the newspaper on alums and teachers from Burgoyne Elementary. Your name came up.”

“How?”

“Somebody remembered, and I Googled you. Honeywicks aren’t exactly a dime a dozen. Do you have a minute?”

Greeley launched into a well-practiced lecture on the importance of physical fitness for young people, and an upcoming fund-raising triathlon for the Special Olympics. It was like listening to Ella Dane explain how to sprout wheat. All that sincerity and well-meaningness. Please, no more. Drew could appear any second; there was no time for this. “And I understand you lost both feet?” Lacey interrupted.

“Yes. A domestic accident.”

“Did it happen while you were teaching here at Burgoyne?”

“It happened at home. Domestic, that’s what it means.”

That vertigo, the terror on the stairs. Lacey held her breath for a moment, for courage, and said, “Did you fall down the stairs?”

“You’re not from any paper. Who are you?”

“Did you live at 571 Forrester Lane?” Lacey asked.

Silence, so long that Lacey began to wonder if she’d been cut off, and then Greeley said, “Do
you
?”

“There’s this thing on the stairs, something falling.”

“It’s not me. I mean, I fell down the stairs, but the thing was there when I moved in. It kind of came over me one time; it overtook me and I fell. I never told anyone what happened. The thing on the stairs. Nobody would believe me.”

It was true. It was all true. After everything she’d felt and seen in the house, Lacey was still amazed. Ella Dane believed it, but Ella Dane believed anything. This sane stranger, her faith mattered. Maybe she felt the same about Lacey, maybe she had held her secret for eighteen years, waiting for this call.

“I believe you,” Lacey said. “Was it a little boy?”

“My legs were broken, and then I got this infection in the hospital and lost my feet. And I was pregnant when I fell. Three months. What’s it to you?”

That child should be seventeen. There was no teenager next to the auburn-haired twins in any of the pictures. Also, Greeley had sidestepped the question of Drew. “I’m pregnant,” Lacey said. “Twenty-nine weeks.”

“How’ve you kept it so long?” This question took Lacey’s breath away. Greeley went on, “I did some research on the house after we moved. There hasn’t been a live baby born in that house since 1972. He doesn’t like babies.”

Madison Grey had known the truth:
It eats babies,
she’d said. That meant Drew, when he was angry. Lacey saw Ella Dane’s room smashed. That could be her baby’s room, six months from now. Stuffed animals shredded, cardboard books exploded in confetti, slats of the crib driven like spears into the walls. The corner of a blue blanket showing under the overturned body of the crib—blue satin turning red. And silence. Lacey’s eyes burned. She swallowed and swallowed but could not speak.