Open House: A Novel

by Katie Sise

  The security guard waved Haley past, and she sped through the hospital, breathing in the familiar stench of cleaning products. In the ICU, she didn’t need to ask which room was Josie’s; she headed toward the one with a uniformed cop posted outside the sliding door. She didn’t recognize him from the station. “Hi, I’m one of Josie’s friends,” she said when she reached him, and then she held up her hospital badge. “And also . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she prayed the cop wouldn’t look too close and see that she was only a student.

  The officer rose from his chair. “You can go in,” he said, glancing at the badge. Haley shoved open the door. Her breathing had quickened, and her cheeks felt warm, and she felt eternally grateful when the cop didn’t follow her inside the room.

  “Josie,” Haley said in a whisper. Josie’s blue eyes were open and blinking, her head slightly inclined.

  “Hi,” Josie croaked out.

  Haley sat carefully on the edge of the bed.

  Josie looked so thin beneath the bedsheets. “The cops have been here all day, asking me questions and freaking me out,” she said, tears spilling over her cheeks. “I don’t remember what happened, Haley. I just don’t.”

  “That’s normal,” Haley said. “Do you want to talk about it? What you do remember?”

  Josie shook her head gently like she was trying hard to piece things together. When she finally spoke, her speech was slow and filled with doubt. “I remember being at the open house setting up,” she said, “and then Noah came to switch cars with me because of the snow. I remember that. And I remember talking with Chris because he came to help shovel the walkway, and I remember putting the flowers out in the foyer . . .”

  Haley wanted to ask if Noah and Chris had been to the hospital yet—if the cops had even been able to get ahold of them. But she didn’t know how to ask without upsetting Josie, and wouldn’t they be here if the cops had gotten through?

  “I don’t even remember going into the kitchen,” Josie said, “and that’s where the cops said they . . . where they said you guys found me.” She began to sob, losing her breath to the heaving of her chest, and Haley knew she’d made a mistake. She took Josie’s hand, trying to calm her down. “Josie, shhhh,” she said, “it’s all right. Just try to relax. It’ll help you get better faster, okay?” Josie kept crying, and after a few beats Haley put her arms around her as gently as she could. She hadn’t hugged another woman besides her mom in a long time, and Josie’s bones felt like they were made of nothing at all. “It’s okay,” Haley kept saying, even though everything felt far from it.

  They sat together in silence as Josie caught her breath, the only sounds coming from the monitors beeping and the radiator humming. When a nurse entered the room, she took one look at Josie and her mascara-ridden cheeks and red-rimmed eyes, and then she turned to glare at Haley. “I hope you’re not upsetting my patient,” she said, making her way to the bed. “I’ve had just about enough of that today with the police and such.” She spotted Haley’s badge. “You’re a student?”

  Haley nodded, embarrassed. She prayed she wouldn’t get in trouble for coming to the hospital for non-school purposes and using her badge. Josie shifted her weight, and a warning beep sounded from the pulse oximeter. The nurse lowered her gray-haired head, readjusted the oximeter on Josie’s index finger, and then patted her shoulder. “Remember what I said,” she warned Haley, and then she left the room.

  Haley turned to catch Josie studying her, and it made her blush. The door opened again, and in came Detective Rappaport. “What are you doing here?” he asked Haley. There wasn’t reproach in his voice, only what sounded like genuine concern for both of them.

  “Visiting my friend,” Haley said.

  Rappaport was wearing plain clothes, just like yesterday in his office. He put his hands in the pockets of his corduroys. He nodded and looked around the room. “I’d like to talk to Josie now, alone,” he said.

  “I understand. I’ll wait,” Haley said.

  “I’m asking you to leave, Haley,” Rappaport said. “I’m prepared to wait here with Mrs. Carmichael for a few hours, if she’ll let me stay.” He exchanged a glance with Josie, his brown eyes gentle. “I think it’s the safest option for her as of now, to have a police presence inside the room or just outside, as we’ve done since she’s gotten here. And I’d like to be here in a professional capacity if—when—she remembers something about what happened today.”

  Josie looked away, and Haley watched her profile as she stared out the hospital window into the waning storm. “I think that’s probably for the best, Haley,” Josie murmured, her chin trembling.

  Haley was quiet. She didn’t want to leave, but she wasn’t in charge of what happened inside this room. She was never in charge in the hospital, it seemed; there was always someone more senior.

  “Your fiancé’s been released,” Rappaport said, offering that small kernel as he moved closer to Josie. Haley could feel the power shifting; Josie was his now.

  Haley squeezed Josie’s hand, but Josie didn’t squeeze back. “Will you call me and tell me when I can come see you again?” Haley asked.

  “We have Mrs. Carmichael’s phone,” Rappaport said before Josie could answer. “But I can arrange a call to you when she’d like a visitor.”

  Josie sniffed. She was still staring out the window, watching the snow.

  Rappaport shot Haley a tepid smile. “And just as a reminder,” he said. “You and Dean shouldn’t leave town.”

  Josie let out a strangled laugh, and then she turned to Haley and said the oddest thing. “Whatever you do, Haley, please don’t disappear.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  Emma

  Ten years ago

  The night is getting colder. I’ve crept farther into the woods, already regretting that I didn’t just meet Brad in the parking lot with the streetlight and the other cars. I’ve never been in the woods by myself—it was always my dad, Haley, and me when we hiked here—and now I feel foolish for always making fun of Josie for being scared.

  I push through the brush, my mind flashing to Noah. I can see his deep hazel eyes and the sweep of golden stubble along his jaw. I can see his strong shoulders and the way his body looks without anything covering it. I start to calm down a little, but then, uninvited, I see Josie in my mind, too. I stop moving and squeeze my eyes shut. Get out, I try to say to the image of her in our room wearing only her bra, staring at Noah and me. My hands go to my cold cheeks and press hard against the skin, as if I can shake the memory free, and then I start to wonder if I’ve really lost it. I open my eyes and keep moving, picking up my pace. The evergreens along the trail seem to snake closer to my skin like a too-tight sweater. Pointy, jagged branches claw at my jacket, and I imagine painting this place when I finally get out of here. I can practically feel my fingers gripping a brush, and the way it will feel to drag it across the canvas with pine-green paint in its wake. I think about the first time Chris saw my paintings, and how, even with a real artist for a sister, he was rendered speechless. Maybe I just need to get out of my head and paint more and forget trying to make every canvas perfect. Or swim more. I used to do that in high school, but I wasn’t good enough to make the team at Yarrow.

  I blink. My eyes don’t seem to be adjusting properly—there’s a full moon, but every time the clouds get in the way it’s too dark. I stumble over a rock and catch myself. Is this even the right way toward marker two? The clouds clear, and I press onward, hugging my arms over my chest, thinking about my dad and the weird text he just sent me. He wants to talk to me alone. We always talk as a family when we fight, but this whole thing started over me accusing him of having an affair. So the fact that he wants us to be alone probably means he’s guilty.

  A bird’s cry cuts the night air. The twisting and turning of the path still feels so unfamiliar. I slow for a second to catch my breath, and that’s when I hear the footsteps.

  “Hello?” I call out. The sound of twigs and branches crunching is unmistakab
le. “Hello?” I say once more, but no one answers. Surely they’re close enough to hear me—they should be saying something. I whip out my phone for the flashlight and see a missed call from my dad. With shaking fingers I tap his name on my phone and call him, thinking how much better I’ll feel just to hear his voice, and plus then he can call the police if I get truly lost.

  He doesn’t answer. Call me, Dad, I whisper into the phone. I don’t want to worry you, but I’m in the woods, and I think maybe I’m lost . . . or . . . well, just call me, okay?

  Crack goes a branch, way too close. I freeze and contemplate hiding. But then fear overtakes me, and I start to run.

  THIRTY

  Haley

  Haley sat on a pile of pillows inside her sister’s old bedroom. She checked her phone again for a call or text from Dean, but there wasn’t one.

  The pillows were still stacked next to the bookshelf where Emma had arranged them after their parents said no to a beanbag chair that cost too much. Emma had liked lying on her stomach to read and draw, her body against the pillows and her sketchpad on the hard floor. Haley could still picture her that way, her dark wavy hair falling over her face, and the way she’d look up at Haley with big blue eyes filled with equal parts love and exasperation when Haley interrupted her work.

  Haley snuggled farther into the pillows. She picked up one of her sister’s old stuffed animals and held it against her chest like a child would. She couldn’t bring herself to go back to her and Dean’s house after the hospital visit with Josie. She had needed to go home first.

  Home. Wasn’t it a problem that she thought of her parents’ house as her home instead of the one she shared with Dean? Was it just because that’s where she felt Emma? Haley glanced around the room at all the familiar things: the knickknacks and chipped pottery Emma made in grade school, the toy horse with silky hair that stood midwhinny on her dresser. The bunk beds Haley had sometimes slept in had been replaced with a queen after Emma disappeared, which Haley thought was a huge waste of money when no visitors would ever sleep in Emma’s room. Emma’s posters still lined the pale yellow walls: mostly contemporary art peppered with a surrealist print and one of a femme fatale from a film noir. Her journals, sketchbooks, and art supplies filled the desk drawers. The cops had scrutinized every page of the journals before returning them to Haley’s mom, declaring them unhelpful to the case. And they were, Haley knew that, but it didn’t stop her from reading them every so often, or from flipping through the sketchbooks. The only person she’d ever shown them to was Dean. He’d pored over them, considering each one carefully, just as she’d hoped he would.

  Haley remembered when Emma was in high school and their dad found a series of nude drawings she’d done. He’d lost his mind at their inappropriateness until Liv calmed him down, and Haley could still recall her mom’s words when she’d overhead them from the top of the stairs: There’s nothing subversive about this, Tim; it’s art. He was so conservative, and Haley had sworn she’d never be like him, but sometimes when she looked at the naked drawings, she felt a little nauseous. Maybe it was just in hindsight, knowing that something terrible had happened to her sister, but when Haley looked over the male forms Emma had sketched, she couldn’t help but feel as if Emma had intuited the darkness coming for her. The naked men she’d created were too leering, too subtly dominating over their female scene partners. The final drawing showed a man placing his large hands on a woman’s shoulders, and the way Emma had drawn it made it impossible to tell if they were embracing or struggling. Haley felt a slice of fear every time she thought of whatever her sister was trying to work out.

  Emma’s journals were sunnier. There were entries about day-to-day minutiae, interactions with family and friends—I can’t believe today is the day T.J. and I met one year ago! It feels like we’ve been great friends forever. His art is amazing!

  Emma was only sixteen when she wrote those words, years younger than when she disappeared, but to Haley, it seemed like Emma went to Yarrow and her bright persona took a plunge. Not that clothes meant anything to Haley back then—or now, even—but she couldn’t help noticing the way Emma started wearing black T-shirts because that’s what she thought true artists wore, and how it seemed like, after a few years as an art student, the dark T-shirts started seeping inward, clouding the sunny person she’d once been. Maybe the darkness from Emma’s teenage sketches were inside her even back then when she lived with Haley and her parents, but the safety of living inside a family kept it at bay. Maybe it was percolating, waiting for the right people and place to bring it to the surface, and maybe that place was college.

  The front door slammed downstairs. “Haley?” Liv called out, her footsteps already pounding the steps.

  “I’m up here in Emma’s room!” Haley called back. She held tighter to Emma’s stuffed cat, her fingers finding the spot on its ear where Emma had kissed off all the hair.

  Haley’s mom flew into the room, followed closely by her dad. “What happened?” Liv asked. Her yoga-trained body collapsed onto the pillows with the ease of a teenager. Liv had the same almond-shaped eyes Emma did, and when she looked up from her spot on the pillows Haley saw her sister’s blinking eyes and smooth, pale skin. She imagined the way Emma’s mouth used to lift at the corners whenever she had a secret, and she always had a secret. “I’m sorry I texted you what I did,” Haley said, trying to focus on the fine lines around her mother’s mouth, trying to remind herself that Emma wasn’t here, and that she was truly, irrevocably gone. “I just didn’t know how else to explain it, and I wanted to see you.”

  Her dad’s face was white. “This isn’t about whatever happened in town today?” he surprised her by asking. “There are rumors swirling about an accident.”

  Haley straightened, feeling ridiculous that she was still holding Emma’s stuffed cat, but not wanting to let it go. “It is,” she said. “That’s why I texted you that I was fine. But Dean and I went to that open house today. The house on Carrington Road that Josie was showing. And weirdly my anatomy teacher and his wife were there, too, and we all went into the kitchen and found Josie lying on the floor.”

  Liv covered her mouth. “Was she all right?” she asked.

  “She’d been stabbed,” Haley said, sucking in a breath at the sound of the word coming out of her mouth.

  Her mom gasped. Her dad moved across the room and sat on Emma’s bed. “Oh my God,” he said. “Is she alive?” His eyes were sharp and more focused than Haley had seen them in a long time. She broke his stare and looked down at the blue throw rug between them. “I went to the hospital and saw her,” she said, “and I didn’t talk to the doctor, but I think she’s going to be completely fine.”

  “Could she tell you who did it?” he asked, his voice so hard she barely recognized it.

  “Tim, calm down,” her mom said, putting a hand on Haley’s shoulder. “She’s upset enough.”

  Haley glanced up at her dad. His gaze was still so intense. “No,” Haley said. “She doesn’t remember.”

  Her dad seemed satisfied with this response, but then he made a fist and pounded it against the quilt. He shook his head slowly. “It has to be related,” he said, his light eyes wild. “She was Emma’s best friend. How many women do you think have violent crimes committed against them in this town? How can it be a coincidence?”

  Haley turned to her mom. “I agree with Dad,” she said carefully.

  Liv’s expression looked both scared and hopeful at the same time. “Do the police think so?” she asked.

  “If they do, they didn’t say anything to me,” Haley said. “They questioned all of us—me, Dean, my professor Brad, and his wife, Priya—but at least to me, they didn’t mention anything about how this could be connected to Emma.”

  “Did you say Priya?” Liv asked, sitting up a little straighter.

  Haley nodded.

  “Your sister had an art teacher named Priya at Yarrow.”

  My wife, the artist. How many times had Brad referred
to her that way in class? “This woman is an artist,” Haley blurted. “I don’t know much about her, but I know that.”

  Her dad looked from Liv to Haley. “This is bigger than that stupid bracelet,” he said. “This is something real. And Emma could still be out there.”

  Stop it, Haley thought, sinking farther into Emma’s pillows. Please, just stop saying that.

  “Oh, honey,” Liv said carefully. “She’s not, she’s just not.” But she didn’t look at Haley’s dad—she didn’t comfort him. Haley wanted to pick up the slack, to make her dad feel better, but she couldn’t. He infuriated her when he talked like this. “Don’t you think we want to believe that, too, Dad?” Haley asked.

  “Then why don’t you, dammit?” he asked. He looked so out of place sitting there on the bed among Emma’s stuffed animals. What had been the point of getting rid of Emma’s old bed if they were going to keep the stuffed animals? It was insane. Maybe they all were insane, grasping at straws, believing they could ever make any of this hurt less.

  Haley swiped at the tears running over her cheeks. No—no. She wouldn’t be tricked. “Dad, please. Emma is dead,” she said, and the air suddenly felt too hot and still with the forbidden word between them. “You have to know it,” she went on, her voice softer now. “Please. It’s so much harder to pretend she’s not.”

  “Are you going to tell me what’s harder, Haley?” he asked, his voice choked. “Are you really going to decide that for me? Can you? Can you know what I’ve done?”