Haunted

by Alexandra Adornetto

  That is why I am leaving home to work as a maid at Grange Hall, the big house on the hill. Maids are seen and not heard and that suits me fine. Without my father’s wages, there is nothing to support us, so I take my new responsibilities seriously. My sisters are only seven and ten; too young to go out to work. So it has fallen to me and I shall not let my family down.

  My employer, Mr Reade, and his new bride are rarely seen in public. What I know of them comes from rumour. I know he spends much of his time in the city on business, and that his younger brother has come to stay after a sojourn in Paris. The girls in the village fall over themselves when they see him out riding. Granted, he is very handsome, with a softer disposition than his brother. I believe his name is Alexander and he is a painter or artist of some kind. Only the wealthy can afford to fritter their time away on art, but it is hard to resent the younger Mr Reade for it. His eyes are too kind and his manner too gentle. He is the only one of the family who ever comes into town and always converses pleasantly with the few girls bold enough to approach him.

  They once tried to convince him to hold a ball at Grange Hall. It is the best, and perhaps only, way for girls in our position to associate with eligible gentlemen. But he only smiled at them and said, “I promise to put it to my brother.” Then he gave a short bow, mounted his horse and rode away. The ball was never spoken of again.

  It is odd to think that soon I shall see the Reade family every day. I have always wondered what secrets exist within the walls of Grange Hall. The family is guarded and mysterious. Why do they never go out? Why do guests never come to stay? What are they hiding?

  I suppose I shall soon find out.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It was midnight when I woke. I lay sprawled across my bed and felt the kiss of cool air on my cheeks from the open window. I was still clutching the antique brooch and my fingers had stiffened around it. I wasn’t surprised I’d dreamed of Becky again; it seemed the brooch was infused with some kind of supernatural power. It had a story to tell and had chosen me as the recipient. I wondered who it had belonged to and how it came to be connected to Becky. It didn’t seem like the sort of thing she’d ever be able to afford given what I knew of her so far. Yet for some reason it insisted on transporting me back to her world.

  Even though it was late, I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I went downstairs in search of a midnight snack. I heard a soft rustling in the kitchen and found my father eating leftover Chinese out of the carton.

  “Hey, kiddo,” he said. “What are you doing up?”

  “I fell asleep way too early and now I’m wide awake.”

  He offered me his carton. “Want some orange chicken? It’s cold but still good.”

  “No, thanks.” I went to the freezer and popped a couple of cinnamon waffles into the toaster.

  “Good move. I lied. The chicken’s not so great.”

  “When did you get in?” I asked, feeling more like the parent than the child.

  “Around eleven thirty,” he said, hearing the note of censure in my voice. “Sorry it was so late. I … got held up.”

  “Were you working late again?”

  “Not exactly.” It was obvious he was avoiding the question, but what he said next took me completely by surprise. “I went out to dinner.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Pretty late dinner.”

  “Well … yeah, I lost track of time, I suppose. We had a few glasses of wine at this great little Italian restaurant, then went for a walk on the Santa Monica pier. I’ll have to take you and Rory there one day.”

  “I’ve been to the Santa Monica pier,” I told him frostily. “And what do you mean we?”

  Silence fell. The only sound was the cheerful pop of my waffles as they shot out of the toaster. I made no move to claim them, still waiting on my father’s answer. There was a nasty taste in my mouth as I watched him hesitate. I already knew what he was going to say and I’d completely lost my appetite.

  He let out a heavy sigh. “There’s no point beating around the bush. I was with a woman. Marcie.”

  “You mean like on a date?” I stared at him, dumbstruck.

  “I wouldn’t exactly call it that.”

  “What would you call it then?”

  “I know this might come as a bit of a shock,” he continued when it became clear I wasn’t budging. “I didn’t want to tell you just now because you have enough on your plate, so I thought … Well, I don’t know what I thought. But Marcie’s a lovely person. I think you’d like her. Please don’t look at me like that, Chloe.”

  My face was frozen in a mask of disgust. I’d never hated my father more than I did in that moment. In fact, I barely even recognised him. He seemed like a stranger sitting in our kitchen and trying to hide the guilt in his eyes.

  “You should be careful,” I said coldly. “Chinese after Italian is asking for trouble.” Then I dropped my waffles into the trash and walked away.

  I was so outraged, I felt tears coursing down my cheeks. The only woman I’d ever imagined my dad with was my mom. Theirs was the kind of bond that was supposed to weather any storm. Was it possible he’d forgotten her so quickly when I was still reeling from the loss? There wasn’t a day when I didn’t come home from school expecting to hear her singing along to some golden oldie as she unpacked groceries, or out the back on her knees adding mulch to her prized herb garden, or in her gym gear coming back from her power walk with Darcy, who was flaked out and panting on the tiles.

  All I wanted to do was punish my father somehow for what he’d done, for betraying my mother like this. I wanted to run to his room and cut up all his suits with scissors, or throw him out and change the locks. But of course I couldn’t do either. Instead, I sat on the floor of my room where I could seethe in private.

  I needed to connect with my mom so I opened the bottom drawer of my chest and pulled out my favourite photo of her, the one I’d packed and taken with me to England. I was still not ready to have it on display.

  In it I’m just a toddler and Mom and I are on a windswept beach. Her hair is swept across her face and her expression is the most carefree I’ve ever seen it. Sometimes when things got too tough to handle I’d cradle this photo and pretend she was there in the room with me, that she could hear me rattle off all my problems. If I concentrated on the photo hard enough, I had the sensation of the scene coming to life. I could hear the waves undulating behind us, hear the rustle of the wind, almost taste the briny air. All my memories of her were precious because they were the only thing I had left of the person I’d loved most in life. I liked to imagine her as still close by, watching over us. It might have been a childish notion, but I clung to it for dear life. And now my dad had decided the time had come to move on.

  How could he? Mom hadn’t been gone six months and he was going on date nights at the Santa Monica pier like some kind of lovestruck teenager. What kind of man would do that? Didn’t he care about keeping our family together? Didn’t he know we were already hanging by a thread? I missed my mother more than anything. I felt her loss every single day, like wounds in my body that refused to heal over. Sometimes I felt like I was merely going through the motions of life. Most of the time I felt nothing at all. I would have given anything to have Mom back.

  All my faith in my dad evaporated. If he thought we could play happy families with his new girlfriend, he was sorely mistaken. I would have no part in it. That was the least I could do to protect my mother’s memory. In hindsight, it wasn’t exactly the most mature reaction. But in that moment I was blinded by emotion; there was no room for reasoning.

  I got to my feet, flung open the closet and dragged out the duffel bag that had been gathering dust since my return from England. I didn’t bother to fold anything; I just hurled items in — some T-shirts, a few pairs of jeans. I made sure to dump my computer and schoolbooks in as well so I wouldn’t have to come back for them. I zipped up the bag, then, as an afterthought, snatched up the brooch from my bedside table and tucked it deep
in my pocket.

  Rory stumbled out onto the landing. “Chloe?” he asked groggily. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. Go back to bed.”

  “Where are you going?”

  My father appeared at the foot of the stairs. He looked up at me and his brow crumpled like an old napkin. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Chloe, what are you doing?”

  “Leaving,” I said as I marched past him. I wanted to seem dignified, but it was hard when the bag I was lugging kept crashing into my knees.

  “Don’t be so childish. Where are you going?”

  It was clear from his tone that he didn’t believe I’d actually go through with it. To him, this was just a teenage temper tantrum. I’d get in the car, drive around for a few blocks until I cooled down, and then come home.

  “Anywhere but here!” I yelled at him.

  “Wait!” Rory ran down the stairs, wide awake now, and sprang hopefully by my side as I reached for the door. “Can I come with you?”

  “No, you can’t go with her,” Dad snapped.

  “Why not?”

  “Because nobody is going anywhere!”

  “There’s nothing you can do about it,” I told him. “I’m eighteen. Legally you can’t stop me.”

  “Chloe …” he began, but I pushed past him out the front door, letting the screen slam shut behind me.

  They both followed me into the balmy California night, where, as per usual, starlight failed to pierce the smog.

  “Chloe,” my father said sternly. “Come back inside right now and stop making such a scene. We can talk about everything in the morning, okay?”

  “No!” Anger overtook me again and I spun around to face him. I couldn’t hold back the hot tears; they came thick and fast and I could barely see through them. “No, it’s not okay! None of this is okay. How can you even think that? You can’t just erase Mom from the picture and replace her with the first person you meet with boobs and hair. It doesn’t work that way!”

  “I’m not trying to replace your mother,” my father said quietly.

  “You have a girlfriend?” Rory asked incredulously. Eyes wide, he took a step back.

  “I haven’t … She’s not … Would everyone just calm down!”

  For the first time in my life I witnessed my father lost for words.

  “You don’t know how hard all this has been on me,” he said eventually.

  I felt that acrid taste creeping up my throat again. Didn’t he know how hard it had been on Rory and me too? I couldn’t look at his face any more, so I flipped open the trunk of my car and tossed the duffel bag inside.

  “I hate you for this,” I said, before getting behind the wheel. “I’ll never forgive you.”

  I slammed the door and reversed aggressively out of the driveway, tyres crunching over gravel. My father watched dejectedly, but didn’t try to stop me. My heart broke for Rory, who was standing there like a bedraggled puppy who didn’t know where he belonged any more.

  I drove aimlessly for a while before pulling over to think. I had no clue where I was going. I could have texted Sam or Natalie and crashed at one of their houses, but I couldn’t do that without lengthy explanations and I just wasn’t up for it.

  I couldn’t call on Alex either. He was off dealing with a crisis of his own, and besides there was no way of reaching him. It wasn’t like at Grange Hall when he’d always sensed when I needed him and just appeared.

  As I scrolled through the contacts in my phone, I realised there was only one person who wouldn’t judge me or give me a hard time. Zac Green. The last time I’d seen him was in the cafeteria when I’d reacted so badly to hearing Alex’s name. Zac had asked if I was alright, and told me he was there for me if I needed him. I remembered too how he’d shared something personal with me before I left for England: he’d told me that his baby sister had died. He didn’t say how it happened, only that he understood what I was going through.

  Zac Green. Just last year I would never have dreamed of asking him for anything. It would have gone against the protocol that governed our teenage world. But things like that didn’t matter any more. I needed help and, unlike the old Chloe, I wasn’t too embarrassed to ask for it. So I called.

  “Hello, Zac?”

  “Hi …” He trailed off uncertainly. Why had I expected him to recognise my voice?

  “It’s Chloe Kennedy.”

  I’d been crying so hard it was impossible to hide it, and Zac clued in right away. “Hey, Chloe, is everything alright?” He sounded genuinely concerned.

  “Sort of,” I began, then realised that lying would defeat the whole purpose of the call. “Actually, not really. Not at all. I just had a huge fight with my dad so I packed my stuff and left. Only now I don’t know where to go or what to do. I realise it’s kind of weird for me to be calling you —”

  He cut me off. “It’s not weird at all. Why don’t you come over? I’ll text you my address.”

  “Are you sure? It’s pretty late. What about your parents?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  Suddenly there was a solid plan in place and it took me by surprise. I’d expected him to suggest a late-night coffee and a heart-to-heart. I’d never spent time with Zac one on one before, yet here I was about to land on his doorstep and bring all my troubles with me.

  His house was in Malibu; a little further than I’d anticipated, but the midnight drive down the Pacific Coast Highway helped me clear my head. The ocean stretched as far as the eye could see, curling along the shore that hugged the rugged cliffs. The waves rushed at the rocks, rearing like an angry wall only to shatter like glass seconds later, exploding through the air and landing quietly back in the sea.

  When I reached the address Zac had given me, I had to double-check that I’d come to the right place. The house, hidden by foliage, stood behind vast mirrored metal gates. I noticed Zac had included an access code in his message so I leaned out the window and entered it on the keypad. An automated voice thanked me and the gate slid noiselessly open.

  As I drove past the trees, the house came into view: a lavish contemporary construction made mostly of glass and steel. It was perched high above the Pacific Ocean, an expanse of blue unfurling as far as the eye could see until it blurred with the horizon. In either direction I could see the muted lights of other houses nestled higher into the cliffs. It was the sort of house you’d find in Architectural Digest. It looked so cutting edge I felt sure cyborgs rather than humans lived there.

  “Hey!” Zac appeared on the driveway. He was wearing sweats and a polo shirt. “You made good time.”

  “There was no one on the road … and I was definitely driving over the limit.”

  He laughed. “Well, I’m glad you made it in one piece.”

  “This place is amazing,” I said.

  “It’s alright.” He shrugged. “A little sterile for my taste.”

  “How did you end up at Sycamore High? It’s not exactly close.”

  “Yeah, that’s why I chose it. There were too many memories at my old school; too many people who looked at me and saw my sister.”

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled. “I should have guessed.”

  “It’s fine. I wanted a fresh start. Why don’t we go round the back?”

  “Good idea. I’d hate to wake your parents.”

  “Actually I live out the back,” Zac said. “I needed my own space, so last year I moved into the pool house.”

  He pointed it out as it came into view. It was a sleek, flat building with glass walls overlooking the pool on one side and the ocean on another. The pool was built to look as if it was pouring off the edge of the cliff. It gave me the feeling of being caught in a strangely modern fairytale.

  Inside, Zac’s bed was hidden behind a long Japanese screen. There were electric guitars hanging on the wall, a huge flatscreen TV and a fully stocked bar. It made me think his parents must be very open-minded. Soft rock music played from speakers I assumed w
ere hidden in the walls.

  “Can I offer you a nightcap?” Zac asked. “You look like you could use one.”

  “Why not? Thanks.”

  “How about an Old-Fashioned?”

  I only smiled rather than admitting I didn’t know what an Old-Fashioned was. “I didn’t know you were a student by day and James Bond by night,” I said as he fixed the drink.

  “Oh God, no.” He shook his head. “I hate all this ostentatious crap.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. Actually, my dad’s super pissed at me right now because I won’t let him buy me a flash car. He said I could choose between a BMW or a Porsche so I got a Prius just to spite him … a used Prius.” He chuckled. “I thought he might have a heart attack when I showed up to dinner driving it. He’s also pushing for me to do commerce at college, but I think I want to be a musician — not a very secure career in my dad’s view.”

  I laughed. “Well, I’m all about hating on fathers right now. I get making your own career choices, but I’m not sure I’d knock back the offer of the car.”

  “What kind of idiot turns down a BMW, right?” Zac smiled. “I was just trying to prove that something doesn’t have to be fancy for it to have value.”

  He pulled a jar from the mini fridge and garnished my drink with a cocktail cherry.

  I raised an eyebrow. “Speaking of fancy …”

  “Hey, if I’m gonna make it, I’m gonna make it right!” he said, pushing the drink across the bar toward me. “Also, I’m a little OCD, so making it without the cherry would be a real problem for me. Do you like it?”

  I took a sip. It tasted classy, like I should be sitting in a library puffing on a cigar.

  “I do,” I told Zac. “More than I expected.”

  “Why don’t we sit outside?” He motioned for me to follow him through the glass doors to the edge of the glittering pool.