Starter House

by Sonja Condit

  Google would tell her, in seconds. She’d rather talk to a real person, so she would know she wasn’t imagining the whole thing, so she could ask questions, find out what Google couldn’t know. What did it mean, and what could she do? There was no app for that. And every time she logged on, Drew was there, watching where she went.

  Eric had grown up here in Greeneburg; he might know the name. Where was he on this gorgeous Saturday, when she had the doctor’s permission to go outside? Was he enjoying the day with her, mowing the lawn while she sat on the Adirondack lounge and pointed out the spots he missed? No, he was at the office, meeting some rich old people about writing their will, showing them how to leave all their money directly to their grandchildren, bypassing their wastrel children. She missed him and resented his freedom to go where he liked and work as hard as he needed, while she was trapped by her leaky, defective, inadequate womb.

  Harry Rakoczy was mowing the Miszlaks’ yard. Lacey leaned against the cushions. Her bed stank like a swamp. She suspected that Bibbits had wet it. Even if he hadn’t soiled her bed on purpose, he was old and getting weaker. She’d seen him at his business. He dribbled down his leg sometimes, and other times his aim was off and he peed on his chest, and that oily brown smell had grown on him again.

  “I want cookies,” Drew said. He was standing at the door, as if he had just entered the room, though the door hadn’t opened. “You haven’t made cookies for ages.”

  Not again. Not now. Lacey shut her eyes and thought, Go away, don’t be here. Without opening her eyes, she said, “The doctor told me to stay in bed.”

  “You got out of bed yesterday,” Drew said.

  “That was to go see the doctor.”

  “If you can go see the doctor, you can make cookies.”

  Nothing strenuous. After what he’d done the last time he lost his temper, she didn’t dare refuse. She’d never feared a child—but she’d also never taught a child who could kill her. She dragged herself out of bed and took her laptop into the kitchen, where she found black and orange construction paper and set Drew to cutting out pumpkins and hunchbacked cats while she put a batch of sugar cookies in the oven.

  “This is nice,” she said. She poured a glass of milk and sat next to Drew. The smell of warm vanilla filled the room. This wasn’t so bad—maybe she could live with it. It was like having her own private classroom, a class of one.

  He crumpled up the cat he was working on. “I messed up again!”

  “It’s for Halloween. There’s no such thing as messing up; it’s a monster cat.”

  “It’s only got three legs and its ears are weird.”

  “We’ll name it Frankenkitty. Look how ferocious it is.” Lacey smoothed out the crumpled cat and made it dance along the table. “Look at me, I’m big and bad. Oh no!” Frankenkitty bumped against the glass of milk. “Poor Frankenkitty, he can’t see where he’s going, what shall we do?”

  Drew looked sideways at the paper cat. “Make eyes for it?”

  Lacey cut eyeholes in the paper cat’s head: one, two, and then a third, right in the middle. She taped over the eyeholes and then colored the clear tape with red marker, adding a black slit to the center of each eye. “Monster three-eyed cat!”

  “Cool,” Drew said. “What’s that smell?”

  “Cookies!” Lacey lunged for the oven. She got to the cookies just before they burned, and by the time they were cool enough to eat, Drew had lost interest in making Halloween decorations.

  “Bored bored bored bored,” he chanted, kicking the table leg.

  “Stop that.”

  “Don’t have to listen to you. You’re not my mother. Bored bored bored bored.” He slowed down his chant and found a way to make the word even more ugly and irritating: he paused on the r, thrusting his chin forward, curling his tongue, and lifting his upper lip. “I’m borrrrrrrrrrrrrred.”

  Boredom was only a step away from irritation on the noisy-boy emotional scale. Boredom, irritation, petulance, annoyance, anger. Greeley Honeywick fell down the stairs and felt her baby die. Remember Beth Craddock, a name Lacey hadn’t felt safe searching for, with Drew breathing down her neck every time she opened the laptop. Discipline, distract, and redirect. “Let’s play a game,” she said urgently.

  Drew stopped kicking. “What kind of a game?”

  “Chutes and Ladders. It’s in with my school stuff. Eric put it in the attic, in a cardboard box somewhere. Go get it, and we’ll play.”

  Lacey listened to Drew’s feet pounding up the stairs. How would he get into the attic? Would he float up or materialize there? If he just appeared out of nowhere, as he seemed to do so often, could he carry a real thing like the Chutes and Ladders game with him? What about the things he had, the bicycle and his clothes and everything else, did they only exist when he wanted them?

  By the sound of it, Drew was dragging a chair from the master bedroom to the attic hatch. Then came the groan of the attic hatch opening, and the crash of the stairs sliding open. Seconds later, without closing the attic hatch or putting Eric’s chair away, Drew ran into the kitchen with spiderwebs in his hair and the Chutes and Ladders game in his hands. “Can I be green?”

  “Sure. You set it up while I check e-mail.” Lacey logged on as Drew unfolded the Chutes and Ladders board, pausing to eat two more cookies. “You practice rolling the die,” Lacey said. Now was her chance, while Drew was busy with the cookies and the game. She Googled Beth Craddock.

  “Six,” Drew said. He rolled a six. “Four.” He rolled a four.

  “No cheating,” Lacey said. There were three Beth Craddocks. One came up on a genealogy website. She had seventeen children and died in 1783, probably of exhaustion, poor thing. One was an optometrist in Fairbanks, Alaska, offering a free eye exam with purchase of frames. Generous, but unlikely. The third was a South Carolina woman who had murdered her two-year-old son in 1981 by drowning him in the bath. Lacey’s heart stood still and the baby’s pulse beat in her veins like a hummingbird. She remembered the day she had washed Bibbits, how irrationally determined she had been that he must be clean, now; how she had held him underwater as his paddling feet slowed.

  “Did you ever play with a kid called Tyler Craddock?” she asked. She moved her cursor to the minimize button, ready to vanish the page if Drew looked toward her.

  “Three.” Drew rolled a three. “You can’t play with babies. They cry all the time, and they don’t know the rules. Four.” He rolled a four.

  Beth Craddock said she put the baby down for a nap and then lay down herself, and when she woke up, she found him facedown in the tub, still fully dressed. She said someone must have broken into her house and drowned her baby while she slept, but the jury took only forty-five minutes to convict her. She was convicted in 1982 and killed herself in prison in 1986.

  Had Drew done that, killed the baby and destroyed the mother? Greeley Honeywick thought so. Lacey followed the link to the newspaper archives. Beth Craddock looked like anybody’s mother, in the picture from her son’s second birthday party: she stood behind him, laughing, in a pink blouse and a denim skirt, while the dark-haired toddler blew out the candles. Six other toddlers sat at the table, with a smattering of mothers and older siblings in the background. There was a blond boy turning away from the camera, his face blurred. Could Drew appear in pictures?

  “Did you go to Tyler’s birthday party?” Lacey said casually. Drew glanced up at her, and she pulled a smile onto her face.

  Not a good house for babies. The smile hurt, but she held it. She was good with boys. Maybe Beth Craddock had been impatient and careless. Maybe she’d told Drew to go away and leave her alone, she had her own children to take care of; maybe she’d snapped, Leave me in peace for once. Drew wouldn’t take well to that, not at all. She wished she could take back the question about Tyler’s birthday. She didn’t want to raise any bad memories.

  “Stupid baby birthday parties for stupid babies,” Drew muttered. “Like I would even care. Six.” He rolled a six. “N
obody ever makes me a birthday cake,” he said.

  “When’s your birthday?”

  “August seventh.”

  “Oh, honey. You should have told me. We missed it and I didn’t know! I’ll make you a cake next year.”

  “Big deal.”

  The boy in the picture must be some party guest’s big brother. A camera couldn’t capture what CarolAnna and Ella Dane couldn’t see. Lacey closed her laptop. It was too dangerous. Drew needed all her attention now; he was on the edge, ready to tip over into rage. She knew the signs, the muttering and self-pity. He predicted four more rolls.

  He was cheating. If she challenged him, would that push him over the edge, or surprise him into cooperation? She had to put her faith in his sweetness, his desire for connection. Through the ringing in her own ears, she said, “I’m not playing if you cheat.”

  “Whatever. Two.” He rolled a five. “Okay? So can we play?”

  Noisy boys were bad losers, and worse winners. Lacey played games with them all the time, as part of the process of civilizing them. Rainy days with indoor recess were her secret weapon. She urged the die on for every roll, her own or theirs, and she cheered for every ladder and groaned for every chute, no matter whose piece climbed or fell. If she brought enough enthusiasm to the game, the boys surrendered their desire to win, and enjoyed the game itself.

  But it was difficult to play with Drew. For one thing, she saw him mouthing numbers as he rolled, and she was sure he was still controlling the die. Up the ladder, down the chute, her mind circled on Beth and Tyler Craddock. That lovely little boy, dead within weeks of the birthday party; the young woman in the pink blouse, smiling over the cake. Had Drew done that?

  Perhaps he had loved Beth too. Perhaps he had slipped his hand into hers at odd moments, as with Lacey. He had sat at Beth’s kitchen table—different table, same kitchen—watching her decorate Tyler’s birthday cake with green icing and plastic dinosaurs. Nobody made a birthday cake for him, so he killed them. All children wanted to do these things. Children are small psychopaths, her educational psychology professor had told her. If they could do what they wanted, we’d all be dead. This will not be on the test.

  Unlike other children, Drew could do what he wanted, and the Craddocks were dead.

  He won two games in a row, avoiding every chute, landing on every ladder. “See,” Lacey said, forcing her voice into a teacher tone of gentle guidance. “It’s no fun if the game’s not fair. Let’s start over.”

  Drew rolled a four, which took him to the first ladder. He picked up the green piece, looked at Lacey, moved the piece back, and rolled again. He got another four. “I didn’t do it this time,” he said.

  “I believe you. Climb the ladder.”

  The front door opened and closed, and Bibbits raced out of Lacey’s room and down the hall. “Who’s a sweet puppy?” Ella Dane crooned. “Did you miss your mama?”

  Ella Dane came into the kitchen. Lacey rolled a four, and the red piece joined the green one at the top of the ladder. “My sheets reek,” Lacey said. “I think Bibbits had an accident.”

  “Poor little guy. He feels bad about it. Solitaire Chutes and Ladders, really? How bored are you?”

  Lacey took a breath. Now or never. “It’s not solitaire. I’m playing with Drew. You know, the kid who lives here.”

  “You stop that,” Drew said.

  “Oh, you’re playing with Drew.” Ella Dane sat at the table and hoisted Bibbits into her lap. She fed him half a cookie. Lacey thought of mentioning that the cookies contained eggs. “Who’s winning?” Ella Dane said.

  “We’re tied. Drew’s green. It’s his turn.”

  Drew rolled a two and landed on a chute. Lacey provided sound effects as he moved his piece. “Oh no—here I go—I’m falling, I’m falling—aaaaaaah thump!”

  Drew laughed as his piece landed all the way back on the second square. Lacey rolled a three and avoided the chute.

  Ella Dane frowned over the board. “Why doesn’t Drew move his own piece?”

  “He is. Watch. Your turn, kiddo.”

  Drew rolled a six and clicked his piece along the board, square by square. Lacey looked at Ella Dane: What was Ella Dane seeing, if she couldn’t see Drew? Was she seeing the green piece move alone, step by deliberately counted step? She was taking it very calmly; she looked more worried than surprised. Lacey took her turn and landed on another ladder.

  Drew cupped the die in his two hands and shook it hard, the way children did, as if by hard shaking they could change its disposition. Maybe he’d forgotten that he could make it land the way he wanted, or maybe he was just playing along, acting out the game. And what did Ella Dane see: the die rattling in a three-inch globe of air?

  The air was dense and hot, and the smell of sugar nauseated Lacey. Her mouth was sour with fear. She swallowed again and again, choking her sickness down, smiling for Drew. He threw a five, which brought him to a ladder. He and Lacey cheered as his piece climbed. Just as he reached the top step, Ella Dane’s hand flashed out and grabbed his wrist. Lacey felt a sympathetic pain in her own wrist.

  “Ow,” Drew and Lacey cried together, “let go.”

  “Look,” Ella Dane said. “Whose hand is this?”

  “It’s him. Drew.” She saw Ella Dane’s fingers squeeze the child’s fragile wrist, and her own bones ached. “Can’t you see?”

  Ella Dane yanked Drew’s hand in front of Lacey’s face. “Can’t you see? Look!”

  Lacey looked. The hand was too big. Tiny pellets of cookie dough clung to the lifeline and the heart line. The fingernails were coral, and needed a touch-up, since the polish had begun to flake around the tips. . . . And the ring needed cleaning, the big diamond was looking dull.

  Lacey touched the hand. She slid her fingers down to Ella Dane’s hand, still clamped around the wrist. “That’s my hand,” she said blankly. “How did you do that?”

  “I grabbed the hand that was moving the green piece. Your hand. You were shaking the die. It was all you.”

  “No.”

  She could not accept this. Hearing voices, acting on unseen commands—those were things crazy people did. She wasn’t crazy; CarolAnna Grey, Greeley Honeywick, and Beth Craddock had all seen him. Ella Dane couldn’t deny it, after what he’d done to her room.

  “That was Drew. Drew was moving the piece.”

  “Is he still here?”

  Drew’s chair was empty. “He must have left. Let go, you’re hurting me.”

  Ella Dane didn’t let go. “You rolled the die. You moved the pieces.”

  “Drew was here. He ate the cookies.” Lacey felt grease on her lips; she ran her tongue along her teeth, finding smears of chewed cookie. How many cookies had Drew eaten—eight, twelve? She felt bloated with sweetness, and she didn’t even like cookies. “He went up into the attic and got the game.”

  Ella Dane threw Lacey’s hand back to her. “You’ve been climbing ladders? What were you thinking?”

  Lacey bowed her head over the game, rubbing her wrist. There was dirt on her arms and under her fingernails, and a smell of hot baked dust, an attic smell, on her clothes. She flashed to a memory of herself walking on the plywood floor of the attic, dipping her head to avoid the big silvery ducts, searching through four cardboard boxes of her old classroom things. This had not happened. She was on semi bed rest to save the life of her child. She had never been in the attic. Eric took the boxes up there—she didn’t even know what it looked like. “Drew did it,” she insisted.

  “Nothing happened here but what you did,” Ella Dane said.

  No wonder the jury had convicted Beth Craddock so quickly. Probably her clothes were wet. Lacey felt cold all over, as if she had walked from a summer rainstorm into an air-conditioned room. Drew put his hands into Beth’s as into a pair of winter gloves and used her to kill the baby. Because Drew was the child of the house, the only child. What had she known, what had she seen?

  “Mom,” Lacey said. “Does this mean he’s inside me?
He can make me do whatever he wants? What am I going to do?”

  Before Ella Dane could answer, a car horn blared outside, long and continuous. Ella Dane ran outside, and Lacey followed more slowly, careful on the porch steps. Her question would have to wait.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  A BEIGE CHEVROLET bumped over the curb, crossed the sidewalk in front of Harry’s house, crushed an azalea, and stopped with its nose pressed against a dogwood. The dogwood shook its leaves like a thousand agitated hands. The horn stopped, and in its silence came another sound, an alarm cry of, “Oh, oh, oh,” a man’s voice with the intonation of a distraught child. Lacey stepped forward by instinct, ready to hug someone and say It’s okay, but Ella Dane held her back.

  Harry came out of his house, violin tucked under his arm. He took one look at the Chevy, stepped back inside, and came out without the violin. “Lex?” he said, hurrying across the lawn. “Are you okay?”

  A man got out of the car, still crying, “Oh, oh, oh,” like a child. He was almost as tall as Harry but dangerously thin, with a face so drawn it was impossible to tell his age.

  “I know him.” Ella Dane let go of Lacey’s arm. “He’s the produce manager at MacArthur’s.”

  Now it was Lacey’s turn to hold her mother back. “Stay out of it! You don’t know anything about him.”

  “Last week he saved me some really ripe mangoes. Beautiful, like fresh jam. Hey, Mr. Hall—Lex! Are you okay?” Ella Dane ran toward the car, reaching it just as Harry did. “Oh, and thank you again for those gorgeous mangoes.”

  The surprise of this greeting finally stopped that awful wail. The thin man turned his blank, haggard face toward Ella Dane and said, “Mangoes?”

  Lacey began to hear the sound of a crying baby. She turned to look behind her at her own house. Was this some trick of Drew’s, or another voice of the house, little Tyler Craddock? No, it came from Lex Hall’s car.

  “She won’t stop,” Lex said. Harry pulled him away from the car, while Ella Dane opened the back door and lifted out a naked orange baby. “I can’t make her stop.”