House of Echoes: A Novel

by Brendan Duffy

  Caroline tried to shake her head clear. She tried to stack her bricks of strength. She and Bub were safe. And Ben would be home soon with Charlie. She would have some tea and share a biscuit with her baby while she waited for them. Sometimes pretending everything was all right made it so. Maybe she would take a bath when Ben came home. She would light some candles. Vanilla made her calm. Maybe she would bake two pies with the pecans they had in the pantry. One for Mrs. White and one for Ben. Ben loved pecan pie, and it would make her happy to make him happy. A happy husband would never spread his wife’s secrets.

  But Caroline wondered why she’d parked here in the middle of the gravel path. She noticed Bub studying her carefully through the rearview mirror. “Boom!” the baby shouted. He slammed his palms together with a noise that startled her.

  Dread began to churn in her chest. She could suddenly feel very clearly that something was wrong. Standing made her light-headed, and she braced herself as she got out of the car.

  “Hello?” she called out to the frozen reaches of the Drop. She must have had a reason for stopping here. Had she seen Mrs. White wandering around? As she turned toward the forest, Caroline thought she saw a flash of movement in the darkness beyond the trees, but she dismissed this as a trick of the wind.

  She began to walk back down the gravel drive, intending to peer into the old outbuilding, but she didn’t get farther than the rear of the car.

  The remnants of the animal were spread over several feet. Split almost perfectly in half lengthwise, it seemed too big to be a raccoon or squirrel. Viscous red sludge filled the treads of the Escape’s left rear tire, and Caroline remembered the sickening lurch that had shaken her from her reverie. Her horror mounted as she realized that the animal had been so crushed that it appeared to have been turned inside out. Shredded intestines and crushed organs were fully on display, but she could hardly see a scrap of fur.

  Caroline had seen roadkill but nothing like this. It was hard to believe it was possible for an animal to be so obliterated by a set of tires. Then Caroline saw the dog collar and nearly fell to her knees.

  “Hudson,” she whispered to the remains. Tears sprang to her eyes again, but she wasn’t sure for whom. The only thing she was sure of was that Ben couldn’t know. No matter what, he could never find out.

  Deciding this gave Caroline strength. She broke the task into manageable parts. First she would get a shovel and put poor Hudson in a plastic bag. Then she would dispose of the bag someplace where Ben would never find it. Ben hadn’t really believed that Hudson had survived the night. He didn’t need to find a body. It was better this way, better for him to remember Hudson as the dog he had been. She’d have to hose down the Escape’s tires.

  Caroline drove up to the Crofts to get started. I can do this, she told herself.

  Then she saw two white trucks drawing slowly up the gravel drive toward her, and all the bricks that she had so carefully collected throughout the afternoon came tumbling down.

  32

  “Whoa,” Ben said when the Crofts loomed into sight. Even Charlie sat up in his seat to get a better look. Two large moving trucks had pulled alongside the house. Dozens of large boxes were piled behind the trucks and along the front of the Crofts. Men in pairs shuttled back and forth on their way to the front door, struggling under their burdens.

  Bub was in the kitchen by himself. He banged his cup against the top of his play parking garage in time to the thump of the delivery men’s boots, which resonated from the floor above.

  “Big commotion, huh?” Ben asked the baby. He scooped Bub off the floor and wiped the beads of water off his chin. Charlie breezed past them to the kitchen stairs.

  “Watch the floors!” he could hear Caroline scream. “And the walls!” The Wolf was in her voice.

  With Bub in his arms, Ben jogged to follow the sound of her shouting. He found her on the second floor, berating a group of men.

  “They’re slamming into every corner they come to,” Caroline told him when she saw him. Her voice trembled with rage, but she looked close to tears. The wildness in her eyes made the bottom drop out of Ben’s stomach.

  “It’s okay,” he told her. “That’s why we kept the extra paint. And, remember, we chose a semigloss for the halls and stairs because we knew they’d get a lot of wear and tear. We planned for this. It’s okay.”

  “And the floors,” she said, closing her eyes.

  “These scuffs?” He bent down to an ugly black mark that arced across several planks of molasses-colored wood. “They’re from the work boots. They’ll rub right off.”

  He stood up to hug her. Her body went rigid when he touched her, but he felt her shoulders relax when Bub, in his other arm, kissed her on the cheek.

  “Just go downstairs and tell them where you want everything. I’ll stay up here to make sure they put everything in the center of the rooms—well away from the walls. Okay?”

  Caroline disengaged herself from his arms and nodded. She brushed past the men and made her way down the main stairs.

  With the help of the foreman, they worked out a system in which Caroline marked each box with a note that told Ben where she wanted it; then he made sure it got there. It was near dusk by the time all the furniture was settled into the correct rooms.

  The pieces for the upstairs rooms remained in their boxes, but the men had assembled the tables and arranged the new couches and chairs that Caroline had purchased for the main floor. There was a grand mahogany table in the dining room with matching buffets and breakfronts. Classic leather and microfiber couches now stood in several of the rooms, and the library had a trio of red settees squaring off in front of the fireplace.

  After Ben had tipped the men and seen them off, he fixed the boys up with something to eat and began cutting the boxes away from the upstairs furniture. He called for Caroline, but she did not answer. After he put Bub in his crib and got Charlie settled, he took the house room by room, looking for her. He found her sitting in the dark, on a large chocolate-colored couch in the room where they hoped to one day add a bar.

  “You okay?” he asked her.

  “How could I not be?” she asked. There was an open bottle of red ice wine on the floor, a glass in her hand.

  “Do you have a glass for me?” he asked. They rarely drank during the week, and they’d been saving that bottle for a special occasion.

  She didn’t answer, so he went to get one from the kitchen. He pulled a glass out of the cabinet and considered whether or not to join her. He wanted to look for Hudson again, but there was something about Caroline that made him not want to leave her alone. When he returned to her, he filled his glass and sat beside her. The room’s huge windows looked out upon the bloody remains of the day’s last light.

  “I love all the couches,” he said. “Comfortable and just the right color.”

  “Sorry about yelling at the men up there,” Caroline said. “Thanks for talking me through it.” Ben never knew what to expect when she was like this. “I don’t know why I got upset. Everything was fine, then…I don’t know. The next thing I know I’m screaming.”

  “There was a lot going on at once, and you were by yourself. It was completely normal to feel stressed out.”

  “I used to run a division that rang up billions of dollars in transactions. I know how to deal with moving pieces. I used to be able to handle all this.” They sat in the dark except for a few candles on the table. The light flickering across her face made her look tired.

  “But this is your money—your home,” Ben said. “It’s natural to be passionate about something you’re so close to.”

  “I hate having to need you. I hate being managed.”

  “We came up here for a new life, Cee, one that we make the rules to. We just have to find our equilibrium. Right now everything is crazy, but we’ll figure it out.”

  “I’m not happy, Ben. And I haven’t been happy in a long time.”

  Ben let this hit him in the face, but it slowed him for o
nly a moment. “Are you keeping up with your pills?”

  “Those goddamn pills.”

  “Do you want to talk to Dr. Hatcher?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “He said that the talk therapy is important. Lot of people who—”

  “I’m not interested in being one of those people.”

  “No, I guess not,” he said. He hadn’t seen his anger coming. Like the night before, it had begun as fear, but now it flamed to fury and it was too late to stop it. “You’re a person who enjoys being miserable. Who wants everyone around her to be just as unhappy, because you’re either too proud or stubborn or stupid to do anything about it. You want to wallow in it. You want to wrap it around yourself like a blanket and twist it tight enough for it to strangle you. You want to martyr yourself with your own misery.” He got to his feet and stood in front of one of the windows. A strand of red clouds scorched the dark sky.

  “When I was twelve, there was this boy, a little older than me, who lived a few houses down,” Caroline said after a few moments. “He had white-blond hair and eyes the color of the Caribbean. One day I paged through one of Mom’s magazines, looking for the perfume samples, and I saw this ad for Aruba. I’d never seen anything like it. White sand and blue water. That was the color of Paul Cole’s eyes. God, I loved him. I didn’t know what it was at the time, but it was like…gravity. I was just drawn to him whenever he was close.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Ben asked.

  “I guess every neighborhood has a dream boy like that. My neighborhood also had a block party on the Fourth of July. Everyone outside, grilling and playing and talking. It’d start in the afternoon and last until after the fireworks. Kids jumped through the sprinklers, and I did, too, even though that summer I was too old for it. And Paul Cole walked down the sidewalk, carrying buns for the burgers his dad was cooking. I remember seeing him there. I couldn’t help myself. I ran up to that boy, got on my tiptoes, put my hands on his chest, and kissed him. Right there on the mouth. In front of half the neighborhood. I hadn’t kissed anyone before. I didn’t know what I was doing. But his incredible eyes opened and his face broke into a shy smile. The best kind of smile I could have hoped for.” She was crying now, the tears rolling from her cheeks to her blouse.

  “Why are you telling me this?” Ben asked again.

  “I thought you should know.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because that was the last time I was happy.”

  Ben looked at the glass in his hand for a moment. He thought about it, then threw his arm back and launched it against the wall. The glass shattered; diamond fragments of it skidded across the floor with the rattle of falling hail. The wine punctuated the wall with the arc and drip of crime-scene evidence.

  He left the room. He wondered if the couch was made of a kind of fabric that got stained by water. He wondered if her tears would ruin the cushions just as his wine had ruined the wall. A matching pair.

  He got a flashlight, put on his coat, and headed back into the night. He made for the lake, to look for Hudson in the parts of the forest that came up against the mountains.

  In the dark, he spoke to his missing dog.

  “You’re going to be okay,” he said. “Just come home.” The freezing air seared his throat and burned his eyes. “You’re going to be okay.”

  December 14, 1777

  Dear Kathy,

  Mother will not leave her bed. Only after coaxing will she take even the smallest bite of flour. Father still does not leave his study. Sometimes, I listen at the door and hear him talking, but I do not know with whom he thinks he speaks.

  The other men have pulled their watch away from the forest. After hearing William Lowell’s account, I cannot blame them for being afraid. Without Jack, our spirits have grown black. Emmett has taken to sleeping in my room. He is fearful, and I try to be brave for him, but the truth is that I am as thankful for his company as he is for mine.

  It is strange how one gets used to things. In Boston, such effort was spent considering the London fashions and the list of households to call upon through the day. Now it is different, but it is also the same. Instead of dresses, we speak of food. How little is left, and how it should be apportioned. In place of soirees and society connections, we track the noises in the night. Sometimes sounds come from the trees, and sometimes they come from somewhere nearer. And the hunger, Kathy. You cannot imagine the terrible hunger.

  More of the tenant families have moved into the Crofts. Few of them leave here, even the men, even during the day. None but little James ventures into the dark of the forest, though this has been forbidden. I’ve seen him go there when he thinks no one watches. The wind wipes aside his footprints as soon as he leaves them. He is like Jack in so many ways, but he, too, has grown quiet.

  I know it is selfish, but I wish you were here. You would know better than I what to do. I do not know how to comfort James and Emmett. I do not know what hope I can give them, when I have none for myself.

  Pray for us.

  Your Bess

  33

  Ben woke to an empty bed: another night of broken sleep. He shuffled down to the kitchen and poured himself coffee from the cooling pot. He already dreaded the day. Hudson was gone, there was no more avoiding the fact. Hudson was gone and Ben did not know what to expect from the Wolf.

  Outside, the slamming of a car door. Caroline entered the kitchen, carrying a bag from Home Depot. It was Saturday, Ben realized.

  “Where were you?” Ben had wanted to punish Caroline for the night before. He’d wanted her to feel what it was like to be made to suffer at the hands of someone you loved. But holding on to anger was not one of his talents.

  “Had to pick something up,” she said.

  “I wish you’d told me. I didn’t know where you were.”

  “Well, you might remember that we’re planning to have a dinner party now that the house is coming together and we finally have some furniture. Just one problem: A deranged individual threw a glass of red wine at one of our walls last night, and we didn’t have enough spare paint in that color to redo the entire wall. So I bought some.”

  “What else do we need to do today?” Ben had been up for ten minutes and he was already exhausted. It was easier to capitulate. It was easier, but it also made him loathe himself. For the first time, he realized that he and Caroline could not go on like this forever.

  But he asked all the right questions about how he could help Caroline realize her vision for Friday’s dinner party.

  “You firm up the guest list and I’ll work on the menu,” she said. “I might want to do a dry run on some of the dishes before the event.”

  He was going to say something about not going overboard with elaborate dishes but knew it would only enrage her. Ben realized that he didn’t care anyway.

  Creaking came from the floor above, which meant Charlie was up there. Ben looked at the clock. Usually, Charlie would have been in the forest for hours by this time.

  The front bell rang, and Ben went to answer it. It was UPS, with a package unwieldy enough that it was difficult to maneuver through the door.

  Ben slit the tape along the edges and yanked out the Styrofoam packing material. It was a picture frame. With some difficulty, he pulled it out of the box. He removed the thin padded sheet that protected the glass.

  It was the quilt of his grandmother’s family tree. Framed and handsomely mounted. He searched for a note but couldn’t find one. It didn’t matter, because he knew who had sent it.

  “Ted sent it back,” Caroline said from the hallway. She appraised the quilt through the glass. “We can definitely find a place for this.”

  “It’ll mean something to the villagers, too,” Ben said. “It means that we’re supposed to be up here.” He ran his eyes down the length of the tree and felt a sudden wrenching sadness.

  He set aside the frame and looked at his wife, who was still looking at him. He tried, but he couldn’t think of anything e
lse to say.

  34

  In the days before the party, Caroline kept Ben’s time filled with tasks. Despite this, he rose early each morning to search the grounds for signs of Hudson, and he stole the odd moment to work on his book. It was good to be busy. Everyone knows it’s a bad idea to slow down while driving through a bad neighborhood.

  Caroline was pulling out all the stops for their dinner. She was serving smoked trout on endive, caviar canapés, and fig and goat cheese crostini as appetizers. The entrée would be game hens stuffed with apricots and wild mushrooms, served with marinated beets and roast potatoes. She wouldn’t give Ben details about the dessert, but earlier in the week he’d signed for a package containing packets of gold leaf. He had a feeling this would be an event to remember.

  In terms of attendees, Walter Harp and Roger Armfield had sent regrets, and he’d heard through Lisbeth that Mrs. White would not be well enough to attend. In addition to Lisbeth, the confirmed guests were Father Cal, the Stantons, and the Bishops.

  “That makes eight,” Caroline said. They were in the dining room, setting the table for tonight’s gathering. “We’ll be spread thin along the table, but if we open the guest list much beyond the Swannhaven Trust, then everyone will expect an invite. I thought these place mats went well with the carpet, but now I think the red is too bright.” Caroline took a place mat and knelt on the ground to compare the reds. She tilted it to test the color in both light and shadow. She was on the floor long enough to make Ben feel uncomfortable.

  “What are you doing? It looks fine. Cee?” She stood up slowly and almost lost her balance in doing so. Ben grabbed her to steady her. “Are you all right? Here, sit down.”