Open House: A Novel

by Katie Sise

  Haley let go of a breath as the busyness of the café swirled around her. She knew she was being too quiet; she should seem more enthusiastic about the home with green shutters, and excited about the open house the next morning. “I think it’s a lovely house,” she said.

  The corners of Josie’s mouth lifted into a gentle smile. She seemed empathetic in that way, and Haley wondered if it was one of the things Emma had liked so much about her.

  They all stared at each other. Josie crossed her slim legs, and her wool trousers lifted an inch to expose a red mark where the strap of her stilettos had rubbed against her skin. Haley wasn’t sure what else she was supposed to say; she wasn’t even sure why they had to meet in person when all these homes were online, but Josie had insisted.

  “Hey,” Josie said to the space above Haley’s head, her voice suddenly strained.

  Haley swiveled to see Josie’s brother, Chris. They were stepsiblings, and even though they were unrelated by blood, they had the same piercing light blue eyes, which Haley had plenty of time to study because Chris always seemed to hold her gaze for a beat too long. He swiped a black lock of hair from his eyes and said, “What’s up, Haley?”

  Chris did admin at Josie and Noah’s company, though you wouldn’t know by looking at him. He was always dressed in flannel, and Josie and Noah always seemed a little embarrassed at the sight of him, though Haley couldn’t figure out why. He was handsome enough to get away with wearing whatever he wanted.

  “Nothing,” Haley answered. “You?”

  “Nothin’,” he said. He ran his hand over a thick, short beard.

  “Do you want to sit?” Haley asked, even though there wasn’t a fourth chair. She made a halfhearted attempt to stand. She couldn’t figure out if Chris had come into the coffee shop by chance, or if he’d come for a work-related reason.

  “No, Haley, sit,” Noah said, his voice too hard. He turned to Chris and asked, “Do you have the rest of the brochures?”

  Chris shook his head.

  Noah turned to Haley, barely able to conceal his irritation. “The house on Carrington is well priced, so we should act quickly tomorrow if you’re interested after the open house,” he said.

  Haley sat back and watched as Josie glanced from Chris to Noah. Haley didn’t mind strange family dynamics; she saw so much worse when she worked in the hospital.

  Josie turned to Haley and forced a smile. “Tomorrow you’ll see that the house is filled with unexpected details that make you look twice without being over the top,” she said, “and if I know Dean like I think I do, he’ll absolutely love it.”

  The comment surprised Haley. Josie didn’t really know Dean that well.

  Noah turned to Josie. “How many people are you expecting at the open house?” he asked.

  Josie shrugged, quiet for a moment. A new song came on, filtering through the café with a low beat and indecipherable lyrics. “January is a slow month,” she told Haley, not really answering Noah’s question. “And plus there’s the storm we’re supposed to get, which will deter a lot of the New York City people, even if it never comes to pass.”

  Haley lifted the porcelain mug to her lips. Even the mugs were artwork for sale, these ones with handles carved into the shapes of fish and osprey. She took a big gulp, feeling the coffee warm her from the inside. She was sweating beneath her hoodie, but it was so deathly cold outside she welcomed it. She’d forgotten about the storm in the forecast. They were predicting a half foot of snow. Noah looked down at his phone, and Haley wondered if he was annoyed. Dean did that when he was irritated with her—he looked anywhere but at her, usually at his phone.

  “I’m gonna grab a coffee,” Chris announced. He turned and walked away from them, instantly lost in the swarm of patrons.

  Josie’s phone lit up. She snatched it off the table a little too quickly, her face flushing as she read the incoming text. She tossed it into her bag, and said, “I’m sorry to have to run, Haley. I’ve got a two o’clock appointment.”

  So do I, at the precinct, actually, Haley thought. “I’ll see you at the open house tomorrow, then,” she said.

  “Can’t wait,” Josie said, standing. “Right at eleven? I want you to see it first.”

  Haley nodded, lifting her hand in a wave. “Thanks for the coffee,” she said. She felt a little guilty that Josie and Noah usually treated, but they stood to make a lot of money in commission, and they probably didn’t care too much about the five-dollar lattes. It wasn’t like that with Haley and her friends. Most of them were still in their early twenties or midtwenties and could barely make rent. When she lived in the city, Haley had worked as a research assistant in a lab, but the money wasn’t good enough to afford a New York City apartment and eat at the same time, so she’d supplemented it by bartending three shifts at a dive bar on the Lower East Side. And then Dean proposed, and soon after, he asked her to quit the bartending, telling her he could cover their rent so she could save for medical school. He said he couldn’t sleep, always worrying something would happen to her in the middle of the night.

  Josie wrapped a white scarf around her neck. “Say goodbye to Chris for me,” she said. She belted her trench, and gave Haley one last apologetic smile before turning with a flash of flowing blond hair, her petite figure carving a path among the customers, then disappearing.

  Haley turned to Noah. They hadn’t really had that many one-on-one conversations. He was looking down at his phone, his eyes the tiniest bit sunken, making Haley wonder how hard he still partied. When he looked up, he said, “I’m sure you and Dean will be relieved to find a more permanent situation. Renting is never quite as satisfying as owning a home.”

  Haley didn’t know what to say. She’d only ever rented. “The cottage you and Josie found us to rent is beautiful,” she tried. “But Dean thinks it wouldn’t be safe to raise a family so close to the rough water.” It was one of the only things Dean had ever said about starting a family. He was adamant they could not live on that river, and of course, with Emma disappearing there, Haley agreed.

  “He’s probably right,” Noah said. He looked away, scanning the customers, his eyes landing on Chris ordering at the counter. The girl behind the counter looked college-age, and she was blushing at whatever Chris was saying. When Chris tipped back his head and laughed, so did she. Noah frowned as he watched their interaction. “Anyway, those houses on the river are a fortune,” he said.

  Haley inhaled the scent of banana muffins wafting through the café. She needed to get to the precinct, but she didn’t want to dash off the second after Josie had left because something about that felt awkward, and she’d been accused of being awkward before. She was trying to be less so, to be more of a people person, because bedside manner was important no matter what kind of doctor she ended up being. The doctors at the hospital always emphasized how important it was to be present with patients, to try to read everything that appeared on their faces, not just in what they said. And Haley was able to do that in the room with a patient, but too often in the classroom she was distracted, her mind wandering during lectures—a few of her professors had called her out on it. The grief was one thing, but the not knowing was what kept her mind constantly turning.

  “The house with the green shutters, is it private?” Haley asked. “Not a lot of neighbors?”

  “Very private,” Noah said. “I don’t think you’ll even see the neighboring houses. It’s surrounded by woods.”

  Haley nodded, hearing Dean’s voice saying the words. Privacy, Haley, we need a house with privacy. As though they had something to hide.

  FOUR

  Priya

  Sure. I’ll meet. Where? When?

  That was the text Priya had sent to Josie a few minutes ago, and now she was furiously scrubbing her kitchen, waiting for a reply. Her medication had kicked in, and she watched herself scrub the subway-tiled backsplash as though her hand were someone else’s body part. Tears burned Priya’s eyes and blurred her vision until the tiles smudged into
each other, until she couldn’t see them well enough to clean. She stumbled back, blinking, and then turned on the water as hot and fast as it would go, letting the white noise and scorching temperature dull her senses as she rinsed out the sponge. Elliot would be home any moment from the neighbors’ house, and she needed to behave normally, not like someone being chased by skeletons a decade old. She put her soaking hands over her eyes and held them there until they turned cold and her breathing returned to normal.

  Ten years ago, Josie Carmichael and Emma McCullough were Priya’s art students at Yarrow. They were just girls then, really, and Josie always sat at the easel front and center. Sometimes Priya would look up from her own painting and catch Josie staring at her. It was uncomfortable even to remember it.

  Priya wasn’t sure how long she’d been standing at the sink. She’d been losing track of time ever since she started the new antianxiety medication Brad had prescribed, and it seemed to work in both directions: sometimes the minutes lengthened like taffy, and other times they sped up, scurrying together and vanishing before she could make sense of whatever she was supposed to be doing. She’d tried to tell Brad about the side effects at first, but he’d cut her off, asking, Are you saying you’re missing chunks of time? That’s very serious, Priya.

  She’d shaken her head quickly and muttered a soft no because she wanted to stay on the meds, but now she wasn’t so sure.

  The front door opened, and Priya felt herself relax just a bit. She stood up straighter and swiped beneath her eyes to clear any rogue makeup stains. The thunk of Elliot kicking off his shoes was enough to make her exhale fully. Her son was back. Maybe everything could be okay.

  “Elliot,” she called, his name like candy in her mouth.

  “Mama!” he called back, a word he only used when they were alone. In front of his father and his friends he said Mom.

  “I’m in the kitchen,” Priya said, and Elliot loped into the room with a smile tugging at his lips.

  “I’m starving,” he announced.

  “Shocker,” Priya said, smiling back. Elliot was reed thin just like her, but his appetite was endless. Priya held her breath and waited, suspended inside the moment when Elliot would either come close for a hug or keep a cool distance. She wanted to reach forward and pull him to her like she’d done when he was little, but he was ten now, and she respected his big-kid body. She didn’t want to be the kind of mother who overtly needed his physical affection; she wanted to let him guide the terms of their relationship, which seemed to change every year, while staying the same in all the ways that mattered. He loved her, and it was all she needed.

  Elliot stepped toward her as though he might hug her, but when he stopped short, the inches between them felt like a physical presence, like something Priya could wrap her hands around and squeeze the life out of. “So,” she asked quickly, turning to open the fridge. She found the kefir smoothie she’d made earlier and passed it to him. She never directly asked Elliot about school, or how his day was, because that made him clam up. He was unlike his father, who loved talking about his day and seemed affronted when Priya didn’t ask about it. In fact, Brad seemed to enjoy his life twice: once while living it, and then again when telling someone else all about it. But for Elliot, Priya kept her words to a minimum so he’d have room to talk.

  “Thanks,” Elliot said, taking a slug of the smoothie. His eyes were bright brown orbs rimmed with a black circle that made them look like a cat’s eyes. His gorgeous, haphazard curls were courtesy of Brad. “Robby’s helping me fix my science project,” he said, an edge in his voice. Robby was a year older than Elliot, and he and his mother, Alex, were their only real friends on the street. The other neighbors mostly kept to themselves.

  “Oh?” Priya asked, sensing he wanted to say more.

  “Yeah,” Elliot said. “Because it was a flunk this week in school.”

  “A flunk?” she asked. Her hands busied themselves by spinning her hair into a topknot.

  “Yeah, you know, a flunk. It means like a failure.”

  “Hmmm,” Priya said, nodding carefully. She always marveled at the way she could maintain eye contact with Elliot for so much longer than she could with anyone else. “How come?” she finally asked.

  “Because the paper clip fell off the roof of the thing if I didn’t hold the magnet exactly right. You’d think Dad being a doctor would mean I could at least have a science project that didn’t suck,” he said. He blinked at her like he was waiting for her to tell him to be respectful of his father or not say suck, but she really only did that kind of parenting in front of Brad. Elliot was a genuinely kind soul, and Priya had a feeling he was going to stay that way as long as no one got in the way, including her. And anyway, he was right: Brad had hurried through that science project with him, acting like it was a chore. Priya was never less in love with Brad than when he was a mediocre father. There had been a very low point in their marriage when she’d considered leaving him, but she knew if she did her son would change irrevocably. It was a few years ago, when Elliot was seven and sensitive as ever, and as she watched his heart unfurling to the world she knew better than to do something that would close it. Of course, Priya understood why women and men left each other, and there were things Brad could have done that would have made her leave, too. But not that silly checkout girl at the gym, the one with brown curly hair and curves in the places Priya felt sunken.

  Priya’s phone buzzed inside her pocket. Elliot was still standing there, drinking the smoothie. If she’d thought the text was from anyone other than Josie, she would have ignored it, but she didn’t have many friends, and the ones she did have weren’t the kind to text memes all day. She retrieved her phone from the pocket of her jeans, her chest tightening as she read Josie’s words.

  How about tomorrow morning at 11? I’m showing an open house at 35 Carrington Road. Come a few minutes before then, before anyone arrives, so we can talk in private? I’ll be quick.

  Priya started typing before she could think better of it. She vaguely thought of the nor’easter they were predicting, but she lived so close to Carrington Road—it would be fine.

  I’ll be there, she wrote, and pressed send.

  FIVE

  Haley

  Haley’s sneakers squeaked against the linoleum as she crossed the precinct’s lobby, her fingers tap-tap-tapping. A compact man sat at a desk in front of a computer, and he didn’t look up as she approached, which struck her as decidedly un-policeman-like. Weren’t they supposed to be paying attention to every detail?

  Haley cleared her throat. “Help you?” the man finally asked, looking up. His eyes crinkled at the corners in a way that made Haley like him.

  “I’m here to see Detective Rappaport,” she said, and she tried to smile, but she could feel her face messing it up. Why was she here? Had her father made some kind of disturbance again? Sometimes he came up with a new theory about Emma being still alive and out there somewhere, and when Haley and her mom couldn’t calm him, he’d go to the police. The cops had never been anything but good to their family, despite not solving the crime, but part of that was because they didn’t think there’d been one.

  “Have a seat,” the man said, gesturing to an orange plastic chair, the kind Haley hadn’t seen in a waiting room since maybe the nineties at the pediatrician’s office. She sat and watched him disappear through a door, presumably to get Rappaport. She sniffed a few times. She did that, too, when she was nervous. They were compulsions she could mostly control, meaning she didn’t sniff or tap if she was meeting with a professor, or on a first date, or anything like that. She’d started doing the tapping in front of Dean six months or so into their relationship, but it didn’t seem to bother him too much. When Emma disappeared and Haley’s tapping compulsions started, her mom had tried to take her to a therapist, but Haley felt like she knew more than the woman (at least about herself), and it seemed silly trying to explain the OCD; at sixteen, Haley thought she’d read enough medical literature to kno
w what she was doing. The obsessive thoughts about Emma and the tapping weren’t exactly fun, but they weren’t overtaking her life or anything, so what was the harm?

  Haley glanced around the precinct’s lobby. A fern wilted in the corner next to a banged-up water dispenser. The room was too hot, too quiet. Haley couldn’t even imagine how different the life of a police officer was here than a half hour away in New York City. There had only been two major crimes in Waverly since Emma had disappeared: a robbery that went unsolved and a domestic dispute that ended with a shooting. It made Haley think about the different kind of life she had lived in New York City, which depressed her a little, so she tried to shake off the thought.

  The door creaked, and Haley jolted upright. A well-built forty-something man emerged. He was wearing a worn ivory sweater and corduroy pants, and a neat part in his thick, nearly black hair. He looked more Dead Poets Society than detective. “Haley McCullough?” he asked, his voice even raspier than it had been on the phone.

  Haley stood, smiling weakly. She had mentors at school: strong, indomitable female doctors who stood up and looked her in the eye when they spoke. She didn’t understand how they did it.

  “That’s me,” Haley said. She tried to use the sole of her Converse to push down her leggings from where they’d crept up over her ankles, but it was useless. The detective reached out a hand for her to shake. “Hank Rappaport,” he said. He was trying to make her comfortable by leaving off the detective part. She’d seen doctors do it when she shadowed them in the hospital; they’d enter a patient’s room and say only their first and last names without the doctor prefix.