Haunted

by Lynn Carthage

  “Eglantine,” I repeated. “Can you say it for me?”

  “Phee,” she said.

  I buried my face in my hands. This was too much for me. She missed me. She longed for me, her older sister who had barely paid her any attention when alive. I hadn’t realized how much a part of her small world I was.

  “I miss you, Tabby,” I said. “I love you so much, and I wish I could be there for you. I’m so sorry I left.”

  She nodded.

  “Tabby?” asked Steven.

  “Miss you,” she said.

  My hands uselessly stroked in the air for her. I wanted to hug her, to fix the crazy cowlick of her hair and tuck the wayward strand behind her ears. I wanted to hold her pudgy hands and swing her around and around the room. I’d done that, I remembered. I’d swung her. I’d given her something, a few episodes of hysterical laughter as I made her, like me, completely dizzy.

  “I miss you so much,” I said.

  She burst into tears. The howls of unselfconscious agony only young children are capable of.

  “What is it?” asked Steven. He and Mom were on her now, hugging and trying to soothe. “She just started spacing out, and then this,” he told Mom.

  “Eglantine,” I said. “Say it, Tabby.”

  She couldn’t say anything; she was hyperventilating. “Take some breaths,” said Mom at the exact same time I said it.

  That was a gift. Tabby laughed at the surprise of this synchronicity, and instantly her tears were gone. The thundercloud of the toddler: so quickly storming, so quickly sailing off to someone else’s sky.

  “Eglantine,” I said, although it broke my heart to insist. This was the moment. Everything was going to change. Right now.

  “Eggwantine,” said Tabby.

  Mom drew back from Tabby as if she were a fire that had burned her. “What did you say?” she said, her face an intense, focused machine.

  “Oh, Mom,” I said softly.

  “Eggwantine,” said Tabby.

  Mom looked wildly to Steven. “That doll!” she said, her voice a gurgle of barely controlled hysteria. “Phoebe’s doll. Tabitha wasn’t even born yet!”

  “What are you talking about?” said Steven.

  “I made a … doll … when she was eight, when … Don and I were still—” She could barely get it out, her breath hitching and gasping. She was out of air just as if she had fallen from a tree and had the breath knocked out of her.

  That’s right. Mom was married to my dad back then. Even Steven didn’t know about the doll. Eglantine was the perfect code word for just me and Mom to share.

  “So why is Tabby … ?” asked Steven.

  “Oh my God, my God, my God, my God, my God,” said Mom. “Tabby, what do you know? What do you know?” She grabbed Tabby’s shoulders so hard that Tabby gave a little cry.

  Tabby extracted her left arm enough to point to me. “Phee here,” she said.

  Mom screamed.

  “What the hell?” shouted Steven. “What the hell is going on?”

  “It’s okay, Phoebe, it’s okay,” said Miles to me. “Just let it happen. They’ll be okay.”

  “Tell them I love them,” I said to Tabby. I couldn’t stop crying, but I managed to keep my breath so I could talk. It would be too frustrating to come this far and not be able to communicate. I focused as hard as I could on quelling the emotions that threatened to shred me to nothing.

  But Tabby couldn’t say it. We were still intermittent, like a radio station tuning in and out.

  “Phoebe is here?” Mom asked, when she could speak again. She scanned where Tabby had pointed, but her eyes glossed over me as if I weren’t there.

  “Eggwantine,” she said again. Oh, poor Tabby, she was on stage and no one had handed her a script.

  “Tell them I love them,” I said again. I positioned my face right in front of hers, and it worked: she nodded.

  “Phee love you,” she announced.

  Mom dug her fingernails deep into her own cheeks. When she removed them a moment later, to instead dig them into Steven’s arm, eight little perfect half-moons of blood marked her face.

  “Phoebe!” Mom screamed. “Phoebe!” Her screaming softened to a wail. “I can’t see you!”

  “I forgive you,” I said. This time I said it to her directly. Tabby didn’t pick it up and repeat it. “I forgive you, Mom.”

  “This is crazy,” said Steven. “Anne, she isn’t here. There’s no possible way she’s here.”

  “But she said,” said Mom. “She said—Eglantine.”

  “She must’ve heard about the doll before Phoebe died,” he said.

  “No!” shouted Mom. “That doll was lost eight years ago. This is real, Steven. Phoebe’s here, she’s here … Oh, my sweetheart, I miss you so much.” Her eyes, with large dilated pupils, looked around the room wildly, as if trying to track a fly too fast to catch a glimpse of.

  “I forgive you, Mom,” I said again. I felt Miles’s hand steal back into mine. I glanced over at Eleanor, still sitting on the sofa, watching with compassionate eyes. “Can you tell her, Tabby?” I prompted.

  “Phee say forgive,” said Tabby finally. She crawled into Mom’s lap, throwing her arms around her neck. Mom broke down, sobbing into Tabby’s hair.

  “I can’t see you, I can’t see you,” she kept saying.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “It’s okay,” Tabby repeated.

  “I forgive you,” I coached.

  “Forgive,” said Tabby.

  Mom rocked back and forth with Tabby, sobbing. Steven sat there with his mouth open, shaking his head over and over. “This isn’t happening,” he said in a voice so low I wouldn’t have caught it if I hadn’t happened to be looking at him right then.

  A long time later, Mom lifted her head again. Her face was as blotchy as a map rendered only in shades and tones of red. Her eyes were so bloodshot they made her green irises a weird and intense stained-glass rose window.

  “You forgive me?” she asked the air plaintively. She had heard, then.

  “Yes,” I said simply.

  “I’m so sorry, Phoebe,” she said. “I should have listened to you. I’ve wanted to kill myself a hundred times over that I didn’t listen. I’ve wished I were … like you.” She couldn’t say the word dead, I saw.

  “It’s not your fault,” I said. “Tabby, tell her. Not your fault.”

  “Nawfawt,” said Tabby.

  “Not your fault,” I corrected.

  “Naw y’fawt.”

  Mom got it. “How can you say it’s not my fault?” she said despairingly. “They said if you’d been diagnosed, there were medications—” She broke into a fresh batch of crying.

  There was so much I wanted to express, too much to be able to fit through the small funnel of Tabby’s mouth. I felt blame, too; after all, I had been nearly an adult and could’ve made a better argument for seeking medical care.

  I also wanted to tell her about Madame Arnaud, how proud I was that I’d been the one to figure out how to kill her, and that I’d entered the water again to accomplish it. That I’d saved Tabby from a terrible death. There was simply no way to express all that: and maybe it was best for her not to know how close Tabby had come to being Madame Arnaud’s next victim.

  I just needed to let Mom know I was at rest, although I wasn’t.

  And say good-bye forever.

  “My fault, too,” I said, simplifying my language so it would be easy for Tabby to parrot back.

  Tabby looked at me with her eyes full and moist. “Phee’s fawt,” she said.

  Mom moaned, her voice rising in pitch until it was soprano. “It was never, never, never your fault,” she said fiercely. “I am your mom. It was my job to protect you.”

  Steven joined the conversation, pulling himself out of the head-shaking repetition he’d put himself into. “Anne, don’t fight it. Phoebe’s trying to tell you it’s okay. She doesn’t blame you, doesn’t blame us.”

  Mom looked at him, an
d he pulled her and Tabby together into a passionate hug.

  “She’s come back to tell us it’s all right,” he said. “We need to do her the favor of listening.”

  Listening, yes, I rejoiced! All I ever wanted: for them to listen!

  Mom nodded while he used his shirt hem to dry her face. “Okay,” she said in a shaky voice. “You’re right.”

  “Phoebe, we love you and miss you so much,” said Steven. He didn’t bother to try to guess where I might be; he said the words tenderly to Mom as if she were my proxy. “We wish we had done everything differently, but thank you for telling us you forgive us.”

  God bless you, Steven! I thought. I looked into his face for signs that he was my real dad. I had to conclude that even if he wasn’t my biological father, he was still truly, truly my father.

  And now it was time for me to draw the curtain closed. Mom and Steven already had enough to absorb; I couldn’t add more to their list of reality-shaking concepts to contemplate.

  “I have to go,” I said. Eleanor nodded sadly but encouragingly at me.

  “No!” said Tabby.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said to her. “You’re the best little sister I could have ever hoped for. I have to go now, though.”

  I longed to tell her I’d keep an eye out for her, and be there to cheer her on as she grew, but I didn’t want to confuse my good-bye. The thought struck me, though, that if she continued to hone her skills at detecting me, she might know I was there anyway.

  Who knows what the future holds, I thought. I can’t control it. All I can do is try to make it so my family hurts the least amount possible.

  “Good-bye, sweetheart,” I said.

  “No! Phee stay!” she said in her voice that threatened of a coming tantrum.

  “Oh no, no, Tabby,” I said warningly. I almost cracked a smile at the idea I was scolding her from the other side. “Be a good girl. Don’t get upset. I have to go. Say good-bye to mom and your dad for me.”

  It didn’t work. She started to make the huffy chorts of a fit. Damn! This was hardly the elegant, poignant way I wanted to withdraw from my family forever.

  “Tabby! Sh!” I said.

  Miles looked at me and started laughing.

  “Is Phoebe leaving?” Mom asked her. “Phoebe, no, stay!” She looked as stricken as she had the day the coroner told her my disease had been preventable.

  This was all falling apart.

  “Let her go,” said Steven, the voice of reason. “You want her to go to a place of peace, don’t you? Don’t force her to stay.”

  Great thinking, Steven. Except that there is no peace for me. Not yet. Not that I know of.

  “Noooo,” wailed Tabby. She crawled out of Mom’s lap. Her hands formed into fists and she beat them against her puzzle board on the floor. The pieces that had already been placed—unwitting chickens and piglets who had been minding their own business—sprang into the air.

  Argh! Why did she have to ruin such a touching moment?

  But then I swallowed. She wasn’t upset because she wasn’t getting her way. She was upset because she thought she’d never see me again. And that realization was enough to send me somewhere else momentarily.

  The blue water, the Grenshire pool, the lanes defined by bobbing buoys, shouts of kids echoing off the high ceiling …

  No.

  I pulled myself back. I had to see this through.

  Why was I lying to Tabby? I wasn’t saying good-bye forever. How hard would it be for me to tell her—and only her—the truth? She could handle it better than Mom and Steven.

  I came back to the living room to the pure, loud melee of Tabby’s tantrum, and Mom and Steven’s bewildered, confused attempts to control it.

  “Okay, Tabby, here’s what’s going to happen,” I said, squatting down next to her. “You can sense me. They can’t. I’ll keep coming to see you … but Mom and Steven can’t know.”

  She stopped sobbing abruptly.

  “It hurts them too much to know I’m here,” I said. “I’ll explain it better when you’re older. But you’ll still sense me, Tabby. I’ll still be here.”

  “Okay,” she said. She ran her fist under her nose to wipe away the gunk.

  “What’s okay?” asked Mom. “Tell us what she said.”

  “Phee go bye,” said Tabby.

  My eyes narrowed. Toddlers tell lies! They do!

  I walked around the room, bending to give kisses to each of them. Only Tabby raised her head for hers.

  “All right,” I said. “We should go.”

  “Good-bye, my sweet, my love, my girl. My firstborn,” said Mom.

  “Good-bye, my mom, my love, the person I love best in the whole world,” I said. She didn’t hear me, but on her face I saw the smallest indication of a smile. She’d known that in the pause after she spoke, I would have said some loving words in return.

  “Good-bye, dear Phoebe,” said Steven. “I love you as if you were my own daughter.”

  “You, too, Steven. And in every way that matters, you are my dad,” I said.

  “Bye,” said Tabby offhandedly when it was her turn. She was already okay with the idea, knowing I’d be back.

  “You’re special,” I told her. “I protected you from Madame Arnaud, and I’ll protect you as best I can in the years to come.”

  Eleanor and Miles came to me. “You did very well,” Eleanor said to me.

  “You did great,” said Miles.

  With our arms intertangled in one another’s, in a triad of a hug, we left. For now.

  We left as my mom’s skin burned from all her hot tears, and she took ragged breaths to calm herself down, alternating between fresh tears and huge, tremulous smiles of incredulity. We left as Steven replayed the entire disjointed conversation in his mind, dissecting it like a scientist. There’d be many, many discussions in the future, with he and Mom polishing the words that traveled from my mouth to Tabby’s, remembering them, savoring them. Figuring them out. My last glance, however, was for Tabby, sitting back down to her puzzle with all the nonchalance of infancy.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks for a wide variety of reasons to Alan Howard, Jenny Phillips, Nikisha Vashee, Abby Heiser, Joe Quirk, Ki Longfellow, Traci Foust, Jessy and Deborah Krant and Tamim Ansary, Cinda Meister and Brad Jones, Kelly Young, Marly Rusoff and Michael Radulescu, Julie Mosow, Ariana Rosado-Fernández, James Davie, Kathryn L. Rizqallah, Susan Spann, Jenny D. Williams, Alison McMahan, and Michelle Gagnon. Sometimes you are lucky enough to make a writing friend who will read your novel not just once or twice, but three times: huge thanks to Jordan Rosenfeld. Finally, thanks to Michaela Hamilton, Randie Lipkin, and the wonderful team at Kensington.

  Don’t miss the next novel in the Arnaud Legacy series

  by Lynn Carthage

  BETRAYED

  Coming from Kensington in 2016!

  Photo by Belle Photography

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  L YNN CARTHAGE is the pseudonym of an acclaimed fiction writer who has been a Yaddo fellow and a Bram Stoker Award finalist. She lives in California and teaches novel writing. Her website is www.lynncarthage.com.

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2015 Erika Mailman

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  KENSINGTON and the K logo are Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-1-6177-3626-1

  First Trade Paperback Printing: March 2015

  First electronic edition: March 2015

  ISBN-13: 978-1-61773-629-2

  ISBN-10: 1-61773-629-5

 

 

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