“Are you going to rebuild?” I moved away from the Gordons as I asked, pretending to help Ben at the stove while really trying to read the body language of the people behind me. “I know how important that greenhouse was to the two of you. Especially you, Basil. I imagine this is difficult for you.”
Basil sighed into his cup of tea. “I should have accounted for flooding when I built it. I won’t make the same mistake when I try again.”
I tasted the sauce Ben was making. “Are you thinking of rebuilding right away?”
“There’s no point,” Basil said. “There’s too much damage right now. We have to haul away the ruined materials from the old greenhouse, but the ground is practically mush. We won’t be able to break ground on a new one until it dries up a little. According to the weather report, that won’t be anytime soon.”
“What about the book?” I asked, hoping I sounded as casual as possible. “Do the two of you have enough material to keep going?”
“We’re going to compile and edit what we already have,” Ben answered for Basil. “But we were centering the book around an experiment Basil was doing in the greenhouse, so that’s ruined.”
“The book is on a back burner for now,” Basil said mournfully. “At least regarding additional material. Ben’s kind enough to entertain me with structure and editing and all that, but I’m not sure how far we’ll get without studying an actual subject.”
“Speaking of subjects,” Della jumped in, “can we change this one? I don’t want to keep thinking about the greenhouse. It’s depressing me.”
“Did you guys hear about the stalker on the loose?” I said and winced. “I guess that’s not much better than the greenhouse, is it?”
Basil looked up from his tea. His brow knitted together, the fine lines of his forehead tracing a maze across his face. “Stalker? What are you talking about?
“Apparently some guy with a penchant for stalking women and children broke out of prison,” I told the room. From the look on everyone’s faces, it was clear none of them had watched the news that morning. “He was spotted in the Falconwood area. Everyone’s freaking out.”
Della grasped Basil’s forearm. Thankfully, she kept her nails trimmed because of all the gardening work she did. Otherwise, they might be embedded in Basil’s skin. “A stalker in Falconwood? What are they doing to catch him? Are we in danger?”
“I think the police are on it,” I said. Ben handed me a spoon and gestured for me to continue stirring the sauce while he worked on something else. “But you know Falconwood. There’s a grand total of three deputies here.”
“This is just what we needed.” Della solemnly shook her head. “First the greenhouse. Now this stalker. Basil, I don’t feel comfortable being in the woods all alone.”
“Me either,” I added, nudging Ben to make sure he was listening to the conversation. “Mason reminded me how popular the mansion used to be with squatters. I’m afraid this guy’s going to look us up, break in, and make himself at home. This place is so big, we’d never know.”
“What about the alarm system?” Basil asked.
“We never armed it,” Ben chimed in. “Everyone told us Falconwood’s crime rate was so low that there was no point.”
Basil harrumphed and crossed his arms. “Oh, please. Sure, Falconwood’s a nice place to live, but there’s crime everywhere. Hell, a man killed himself in your foyer a few days ago.”
Bile rose in the back of my throat at the reminder. Ben caught the look on my face and momentarily abandoned cooking to give me a brief hug. The sauce began to bubble and churn beneath my spoon, so Ben lowered the heat.
“I have an idea,” Ben said. “Basil, you used to work security awhile ago, right? Before you started all the horticulture stuff?”
“I have some experience in surveillance. Why?”
“What if the two of you moved here temporarily?” Ben offered. “We have plenty of room, and we could all look out for each other.”
Della’s eyes went wide. “No, I’m sorry. I don’t think I could live in the mansion. I have an unhealthy relationship with it.”
“Then bring your airstream,” Ben said. “You can park it anywhere you like on the property. Once this stalker is taken care of and your land is a little less waterlogged, you can move back.”
“And,” I added, picking up the pieces Ben was putting down, “if you wanted, Basil, you could restart your project here. We have so much property. You could easily build a greenhouse wherever you wanted.”
It was a good idea, one that solved everyone’s problems at the current moment. If Basil and Della moved their airstream onto our property, we would have two extra pairs of eyes to monitor the mansion. I didn’t know much about Basil’s background in security, but the idea of having him closer to us comforted me. Not to mention, Della maintained a strange relationship with the ghosts inside the house. Sometimes, I wondered if she knew more about Penelope and Alyssa than she let on, but her fragile mental state kept her from sharing intimate details with me.
“We couldn’t do that to you,” Basil said. “It’s too much of a burden.”
“Oh, please.” Ben waved off Basil’s statement. “This house is a burden, not the two of you. Come on, you’ve been so good to us since the moment we arrived in Falconwood. It’s the least we can do.”
Basil turned to his wife. “It’s up to you, honey. Would it bother you to be so close to an old passion project?”
Passion project was an understatement. Della, a photographer like me, had wasted years at the Abram Mansion, taking pictures of the house from every angle and digging up what information was available on the Abrams. When I asked for her research a couple months ago, she claimed to have gotten rid of it. Her selective memory and wishy-washy willingness to help me were getting old, but I didn’t want to push her either. When it came down to it, Alyssa had chosen me to help her and Penelope, not Della.
“It’s fine with me,” Della said.
“That settles it.” Ben lifted his glass of wine for a toast. “You can bring the airstream here tonight if you like. Cheers, roomies.”
As we all clinked our glasses together, I grinned. This felt like the beginning of a great idea.
In the morning, Basil and Della’s cute silver airstream filled up one corner of the vacuous front yard. It was nice to see it there, the sun glinting off the metallic exterior. The older couple had already set up their portable porch, complete with a picnic table and chairs. By the time I woke up, they were already sitting outside to watch the sun as it rose above the trees and into the sky. They had matching e-readers. I’d pegged the Gordons as book collectors at first, but their cramped, nomadic lifestyle couldn’t exactly accommodate a library. If I had to guess, Basil was brushing up on his greenhouse knowledge and Della was cruising through the best and latest sets of nature photography. I made a pot of coffee and went to take some out to them before I realized they had already made their own in a cute little pour over. It rested on the picnic table, looking more like a piece of table art than a coffee maker. As I watched the older couple read, Basil reached across the chairs to take his wife’s hand in his. Their fingers clasped together for a brief moment before they each returned to their own business. It was like a little declaration of their love, shared as a brief reminder between the two of them. It was almost intimate to witness it, and I pushed down an annoying sense of longing as I drew away from the window and returned to the kitchen.
I poured the coffee for myself, sat at the table, and put my feet up in the chair opposite of mine. I suddenly wished I had a life partner, an e-reader, and a pour over coffee maker. Ben and I had never been like Basil and Della. Even at the beginning of our relationship, we were hectic in each other’s presence. I liked it back then. Ben’s sturdy boy-next-door vibes rounded out my rebellious anywhere-but-here attitude. Little did I know that our inherent differences were eventually going to be the cause of our divorce, but before I could go down the rabbit hole of what went wrong in our
relationship, my phone rang.
“Oh boy,” I muttered to myself when I saw the caller ID tag. I took a deep breath and answered. “Hey, Mom!”
“Don’t you ‘hey, mom’ me,” came the reply. “You haven’t called me in days. What’s gotten into you? What if I’d drank too much and died?”
“I’ve been busy,” I said shortly. “Besides, you only call me when you’ve had too much to drink. What was it this time? Gin or bourbon?”
“Hard soda, but I went through two packages before I hit a buzz,” she answered. “The sugar makes you crazy, huh?”
I checked my watch. It was nine in the morning. Either my functioning alcoholic of a mother had started drinking at dawn, or she’d been up all night. “Mom, did you call me for a reason?”
“Yes. No. I don’t remember.”
“Drink some water,” I advised her. “Call me back when you’ve sobered up a bit.”
“I’m not that drunk,” she assured me. “Please don’t hang up. I miss you. Why don’t you come see me sometime?”
I refilled my coffee. It was going to be a long conversation. “You know the deal. I’ll come visit when you go back to AA.”
“That’s a terrible deal. When did we agree to that?”
“Mom—”
“I’m kidding! It was a joke, honey.” She sighed, filling my ear with the whoosh of static. “Can I do anything for you? Buy you something? Send you money? I feel like being a mom.”
I turned the speaker setting on and set my phone on the table. “You’re a mom no matter what, and you don’t have any money to give me.”
Something clinked together on the other end of the line—glass on glass. “I’m trying my best—”
“Actually, there is something you could do for me,” I said, getting an idea. “I want to know more about Andrew Anderson.”
She groaned into the phone. “Ugh, why are you suddenly so obsessed with your grandfather? It must be that damn town. People go to Falconwood and disappear forever.”
“You mean Grandpa, right?” I said. “He left Grandma for a job in Falconwood. What did he do for his job anyway?”
“He was a—what’s it called? The people who arrange art shows.”
“A curator?”
“Yes, that’s it!” The triumph in my mother’s voice rang through the phone. “He was a curator, but he wasn’t stuck to any one museum. He traveled around the country to lesser-known areas, digging up rare art.”
It fleshed with the story I already knew. Andrew Anderson and Percy Abrams had become best friends while they were both in Falconwood. Percy was a collector of fine art while Andrew showed it off. Together, they were perfect partners.
“Did you ever hear of Grandpa’s best friend?” I asked Mom. “Percy Abrams?”
“You mean that guy whose house you’re living in?” Mom said. “Sure, he was all your grandmother could talk about for a while. If there was one man she hated more than her own husband, it was Percy Abram.”
My feet thunked from the chair to the floor. This was news to me. Everyone I’d met—excluding Della—loved Percy Abram to a fault. Why would my grandmother hold a grudge against him unless she’d known what was happening inside the Abram Mansion?
“Why didn’t she like Percy?” I asked.
“Why do you think?” Mom replied. “He was the reason your grandfather stayed in Falconwood. Dad was obsessed with that guy. My mother was convinced they were in love with each other. What a scandal that would’ve been, eh?”
I was less interested in my grandmother’s vaguely homophobic theories than I was in Grandpa’s life in Falconwood. “Did Grandpa have his own business?”
“No,” my mother answered firmly. “He worked for a larger company. Never went solo.”
I pulled the Anderson & Associates business card from where I’d been using it as a bookmark in the novel I was reading. “Are you sure?”
“Who’s to say?” Something crunched in my ear. Cheetos. They were Mom’s hangover food of choice. She was probably leaving orange fingerprints all over her phone. “After he disappeared, your grandmother cut him off. I suppose he could’ve started his own company later, but I doubt it. He was never much of a go-getter.”
“And you never heard from him after he left Grandma?” I asked, speaking slowly to make sure she caught every word. “Ever?”
The crunchy chewing paused. “He sent you birthday cards.”
“He did?”
“Every year,” she went on. “Without fail. They stopped coming when you turned eighteen, but he did send you a congratulations card for your wedding. No idea how he heard about it. In the paper, I guess.”
I kneaded my forehead, trying not to get mad. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“Because I was afraid he would do the same thing to you that he did to me,” Mom replied candidly. “He left me, Peyton. He told me and Mom that he loved us, then packed up his life and left. I didn’t want you to have to go through that kind of pain.”
My heart jumped into my throat. Most days, I forgot my mother’s childhood was one of the reasons for her drinking. Still, she’d managed to raise me without regrets. “Did you keep the cards?”
“I have them in a shoebox in my closet.”
“Can you send them to me?”
“Sure thing, honey,” she said, her voice softening. “Hey, I’m doing something for you!”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Yes, you are.”
A knock interrupted the pleasant moment, and I looked up to see Basil standing on the last step of the kitchen stairs with his knuckles resting against the door frame. He mouthed “Sorry!” and pointed to the phone. I waved off his apology.
“I gotta go, Mom,” I said. “I’ll call you soon, okay? I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Basil stepped all the way into the kitchen as I hung up. “That was my fault. I didn’t see you were on the phone.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Did you need something?”
“Toilet paper,” he admitted, hanging his head sheepishly.
“You don’t make your own?” I joked.
He chuckled. “I did suggest washable clothes to Della once. She almost threw me out the window.”
I went down the hall to the storage closet and came back with a few rolls. “There’s only so much torture you can subject a woman to.”
He bowed in thanks as he took the rolls. “She’ll be forever grateful. Would you like—?”
An ear-splitting crash punctuated the middle of his sentence. It rocked the ceiling overhead so much that it shook loose some sawdust from the renovations. Basil looked up, alarmed.
“What on earth was that?”
I ushered him up the stairs and toward the front door. “It’s an old house. Things go boom more often than you’d think. Let me know if you need anything else! Bye!”
The second I shoved Basil out of the house, someone screamed upstairs. I covered my ears as I ran up the mezzanine and into the east wing. I flung open door after door, searching for the source of the scream, until I finally came to Alyssa’s bedroom.
There she was, standing in the center of the room, her mouth dropped open in a never-ending shriek. Her pink scarf had slipped, revealing the terrible gash beneath it. I ran inside.
“Alyssa!” I shouted. “Hey! Stop screaming!”
But she went on and on, not even pausing to take a breath. I guessed that was one of the advantages to being dead. You could throw the world’s most annoying temper tantrum without ever losing steam.
“I can’t help you if you won’t be quiet!” I waved my hand in front of Alyssa’s vacant eyes, trying to ignore the chill she always inflicted on my skin. “Hello? Can you hear me?”
My phone vibrated in my pocket. I almost ignored it, too preoccupied with Alyssa’s outburst, but when I checked the number, I recognized it as belonging to the elementary school. I plugged one ear, ducked out of Alyssa’s room, and answered.
“Hell
o?”
“Hi, this is Mallory. I’m a front desk secretary at Falconwood Elementary School.”
If Mallory could hear the high-pitched screaming in the background of the phone call, she didn’t let on. “Hi, Mallory. Is this regarding Sammy? Is he okay?”
“He’s fine… physically,” Mallory said. “But he threw quite the fit a few minutes ago. He was escorted to the nurse’s office to calm down, but we think it would be better if he didn’t return to class today. Would you be able to pick him up? I have you listed as his secondary caregiver.”
Half an hour later, Sammy was dead asleep in the back seat of my car. While he napped, I stared off into the distance. We’d stopped at Sammy’s favorite park. I was hoping it would cheer him up and make him comfortable enough to tell me what had happened at school, but he was snoring before we even arrived. The wind pushed the empty swings, like ghostly children had taken advantage of the park’s vacancy. I shuddered at the thought.
Someone rapped on my window. It was Della, holding a paper to-go bag from the local deli. I rolled down the window.
“I saw your car,” she said. “What are you doing here? Why is Sammy out of school early?”
I checked to make sure Sammy was still asleep before getting out of the car and waving Della over to the nearest bench to sit with me. She opened the paper bag and handed me half of a roast beef sandwich.
“Don’t tell Basil,” she said. “But I was dying for a little bit of meat.”
“Your secret’s safe with me.”
“Spill,” she said, nodding toward the unconscious six-year-old boy in my car. “What’s going on with Sammy?”
I bit into the sandwich first. Spicy mustard squirted across my tongue, awakening my senses. My blood sugar was too low. “He went wild in class today. According to the teacher, he started screaming in his seat, rocking back and forth, holding his head. It took them twenty minutes to calm him down.”
The Haunting of Abram Mansion Page 33