“Think Verda will retaliate?”
Addie lifted a shoulder. “Lottie might.”
“This needs to end.”
“I agree,” she said. “But maybe it’s close. I mean, look at us. A Tanner and a Tucker sitting in a dilapidated old house having muffins.”
“We are the future.”
She chuckled, and I stood, picking up my keys and heading for the door. “I’ll see you later. Do you have my number in case you need to reach me today?”
We exchanged phone numbers, and I tried not to feel like a dude at a bar who’d just scored the pretty girl’s digits. Those days were long since past.
16
Sandstorm
Addison
Michael left me with a strange feeling wending through me, one that was not altogether unpleasant, but one that made me wary. It was comfortable, being with him. And sitting in the kitchen of our shared haunted house, eating muffins, had felt very domestic, and normal. It was something I could do every day for the rest of my life and feel content. There were the other things too, the way my stomach leapt when he met my eyes, the way my skin heated when he brushed against me accidentally, the way my mind had gone to very naughty places when he’d held me against his bare chest late at night.
But none of that really mattered.
I was at a decision point in my life, and this interlude was merely that—a way for me to take a breath before getting back to the things I’d chosen. But right now, all those things reminded me of Luke. And a dark chill swept through me when I thought of him. Of how he’d left. Of the fact that I still hadn’t heard a word from him.
Eight years had been easy enough for him to brush away like specks of unwanted dust on his sleeve, so why was I struggling so much to let it go?
The odd thing was, I didn’t feel heartbroken. At first I had, I thought. But in the wild tangle of emotions Luke left in his wake—shock, disappointment, loneliness—it had been hard to pull one thing from another. And there had seemed to be a few feelings that didn’t completely fit the situation too.
Like relief.
Had I persevered in the relationship with Luke mostly because it was habit? Because we’d put in so many years together by the time I might have questioned it that it seemed wasteful to let it all go and move on?
I sighed, picking at the last muffin on my plate as my mind twirled through realities I didn’t want to face. One thing was crystal clear, even if everything else was murky and uncertain: I’d trusted Luke, depended on him. And it had been a mistake. I’d ended up hurt and alone, and that was my own fault as much as his. I should never have given him that power over me. And I’d never do it again.
Which was why I needed to decide what I was doing with my life. Six months, I told myself. And then I’d go back to New York and pick up the pieces. I talked to my manager on the phone the day before, and while he sounded uncertain, he hadn’t said no. So I thought there was a good chance I’d get my job back. If I wanted it. I’d give the situation with Luke time to flush through me, give myself time to think through next steps. We’d sell the house, I’d have some money, and then I’d go back and begin again.
The roofers arrived at nine-thirty, and seemed to need no direction from me at all. They put up ladders and ropes, and soon the whole exterior was swarming with men climbing up and down, dropping things to the ground and pulling things up.
It was reassuring, having them out there. As if the ghosts that inhabited the place couldn’t act if there were witnesses.
While the men outside worked, I moved the scant furniture from the parlor and entryway. Once the rooms were clear, I eyed the big drum sander Michael had brought from somewhere, wondering if this machine and I were going to be able to work together.
“Use it like a vacuum cleaner,” he’d said. “Just go slowly and evenly. Don’t linger in one spot too long.”
“I can do this,” I said, mostly to myself, but I figured the ghosts might appreciate my confidence too. With that, I grabbed the handles and switched the thing on. It hummed to life, vibrating roughly beneath my hands, and I followed Michael’s directions, leaving a dusty wake behind me.
The day passed quickly in a haze of sawdust and hammer sounds, and for the first time in weeks, I felt as if I’d accomplished something. When Michael returned—much later than he’d hoped, since returning the moose turned out to be quite difficult once Verda noticed the Tuckers replacing the sculpture out in her garden and called the police—I’d sanded the two rooms I’d cleared.
“You did a good job,” he said, wandering through the rooms and looking at my work.
“It wasn’t hard with that huge sander, I guess,” I said.
“You’re pretty strong though,” he told me. “That thing tires people out, and you have to be a certain size to handle it.”
I flexed one of my arms, making my bicep bunch up beneath the sleeve of my flannel shirt. “Guess all those gym classes paid off then.”
The men were wrapping up outside, and we went out to talk to the foreman, who said they’d return on Saturday to finish the work. Already, the house looked fresher, with the very top already sporting new slate tiles. The previous tiles, the roofer had said, had lasted more than a century—something he attributed to the durable nature of slate. That had figured into our decision to spend a small fortune to replace the roof with a fresh layer of slate instead of the less expensive wood shingles he offered.
“It’s gonna look good,” Michael said.
“Hey, Dad.” Daniel appeared then, coming around the back of the property past the little one-car garage, wheeling his bike at his side. “Ms. Tanner.”
“Hi Daniel,” I said, feeling awkward for no reason I could discern around the boy. I took a step away from Michael and then wondered what in the world had made me do it. “You can call me Addie,” I added.
“The house is a disaster,” Daniel observed, glancing around the lawn, which was strewn with pieces of old roof tiles.
“They’ll clean up when they’re done,” Michael said. “But watch your step out here, okay?”
Daniel shrugged, leaning his bike against the railing of the back porch and letting himself inside.
Michael offered to cook, but Daniel talked him into ordering pizza, and we ate it around the little table in the kitchen. Daniel told us about school and asked his father a million questions about the moose that had appeared in the town square again.
As the evening wound down, I began to feel awkward—it wasn’t like we could all lounge on the couch in front of the television. We didn’t have a television. Or a couch. And so I excused myself to my room.
“You’ll be okay?” Michael asked me in a way that had Daniel squinting his eyes and looking between us.
“I’ll be fine,” I assured him, not feeling quite as sure as I sounded. I’d go to my room, get into bed, and read a book, I decided. And I took myself upstairs to get ready for bed. I spent more time than necessary brushing my teeth and washing my face, dragging my feet a bit about the idea of closing myself yet again in the room where I’d awoken to screaming and beady little eyes staring at me from the edge of my mattress. I knew it was ridiculous, that it was likely I’d dreamed the eyes and that the “scream” was just some sort of plumbing issue, but it was hard to convince myself of that completely.
As I stepped into the room, which felt chilly and cold compared the warmth of the little kitchen downstairs, Michael appeared in the hallway. “Hey.”
“Hey,” I paused, a hand going to my hair, which I’d just piled atop my head in a bun.
“We’re gonna watch a movie on Dan’s laptop. Wanna join us?”
Relief swept through me. I didn’t have to be brave yet. “Sure.”
“I’ll help you move the air bed so you have somewhere to watch,” he said, and with that, we were moving me into his room again, where Daniel already lay on his stomach on his sleeping bag, flicking through movie options.
“The Ring?” He suggested.
/> “No,” Michael said without a pause.
“Friday the Thirteenth.”
I cringed.
“Definitely not. No ghosts, serial killers, or knife-wielding psychopaths.” Michael peered over Daniel’s shoulder.
“That’s all the good ones,” Daniel complained.
I settled onto my bed as they debated, feeling warm inside and out. I didn’t care what we watched—though I agreed that ghosts and killers were not my preference given our current location—I was just happy not to be alone for now.
In the end, we agreed on one of the Avengers movies none of us had seen, and it was perfect. The house creaked softly around us as we lay on our respective makeshift beds in the darkened upstairs room, and I marveled at how much more at home I felt at this moment than I had in at least the last four years.
My life in New York had consisted of waiting for Luke almost constantly. At first, he was good about calling, about texting when rehearsals ran late or when some of his colleagues were going to go out together for a drink after a performance. And in those days, he always seemed excited to return home to me, happy to have my attention and my questions. We traveled together for his performances across the country when my job could spare me, and I would have said we were happy. He might have even said we were happy.
But then he began neglecting to call. Neglecting to tell me he had travel coming up. Neglecting me.
And I was too blind to see or too stupid to accept that his life had somehow gone on without me, that I had been relegated to the dark corners of our life like his old practice violin—the one he kept for sentimental reasons, but which he’d said held no real value. Not in comparison to its shiny expensive replacement.
I drifted to sleep before the credits rolled on the movie, and it wasn’t until much, much later that I awoke to the sounds of people walking the floors of the attic overhead. At first I wasn’t sure what I was hearing, but as I awoke, I realized something was terribly wrong.
Darkness had enveloped the room, and it took me a moment to realize I was still in Michael’s room. Who was upstairs? Had Daniel and Michael gone up there? But no. There were two sets of steady breaths coming from nearby.
My groggy mind tried to remember how I’d come to sleep here, when I had fully intended to move back down the hall. What would Daniel think, after all?
But I was grateful to Michael for letting me sleep, for leaving me be. He undoubtedly suspected I would be afraid to go back to sleeping in that room alone—even if my reasons were inherently crazy.
Now though, I thought they weren’t crazy. I sat up, squinting my eyes as if it would help my ears better decode what I was hearing. A scuffling noise, followed by silence. Footsteps racing across the floor. More silence. A crash!
A yelp flew from my mouth as I clutched the covers to my chin.
“What was that?” A sleepy voice came from the darkness at my side. Daniel.
“Not sure,” I admitted, trying to sound brave, adultly.
He sat up then—I couldn’t see him clearly but could feel another wakeful presence in the room. The noises overhead continued.
“Ghosts,” he said, and his voice held an edge of fear but also one of awe. “Dad, wake up.”
He must have poked Michael because the next sound was a startled and sleepy, “Ow. What?”
“The ghosts,” Daniel said, as if this explained things.
“There’s no such thing,” Michael said, and I heard him roll over. “Go back to sleep.”
“Let’s go look,” Daniel said, his voice holding equal parts fear and excitement. “I can’t sleep now.” Oh no. I couldn’t let him go look alone and Michael did not sound like he was up for attic exploration.
“No.” Michael said.
I, for one, did not need to go look. Despite my hesitation to believe there was any such thing as ghosts, the point was that I didn’t NOT believe it. And that little edge of possibility was where terror lay.
“I’m going,” Daniel said, and I heard him getting out of his sleeping bag.
“Dan,” Michael moaned. “No.”
“Come on.” At this point, Daniel’s voice was at the door, and it was clear he was not in the mood to be the obedient son tonight.
“I’ll go,” I said, slipping out from beneath the blanket I’d snuggled under as we’d watched the movie. Dread filled my chest and I moved slowly toward the door.
Michael made some kind of grumbling noise and shuffled out of his sleeping bag, lighting our way with the flashlight from his phone. In the tiny arc of light, I noticed he was again shirtless, and again wearing the low-slung PJ pants that sent an unfamiliar wave of lust through me. The fear still bolting around inside me banished it easily enough, though. Lust was not the appropriate feeling for a ghost-hunting expedition.
The attic stairs looked especially creepy in the glare of the phone light, the darkness at the top looming as Michael led us forward. Scarier still, the noises continued as we approached in our socked feet.
At the top, Michael made a motion for us to stop, and I waited just behind Daniel, who seemed to have finally gained an appropriate level of fear about the fact that we were about to confront whatever was making all the noise up here. Michael swung his light around, and I heard him sigh heavily.
“Holy cow,” he said. “No ghosts, I don’t think. They’re gone, if they were here. And they must have been really mad. Or maybe they’re the spirits of messy toddlers. Come look.”
The attic, illuminated in the light of Michael’s phone, was a disaster. The boxes that had been stacked into the bookshelf had been pulled out, their contents flung wildly around the space. The dressmaker’s form, which had stood eerily in one corner, had been knocked over, and a jagged slash now ran the length of its torso.
What was all this? These ghosts weren’t just angry—they were furious! Was the dress form supposed to represent me? My blood iced and my breathing became shallow.
“Creepy,” Daniel said, his voice full of awe.
There was also a smell that permeated the space, something that reminded me of wet dog. I tried to slow my breathing. Hyperventilating would only let me smell more of the fetid perfume the ghosts had left.
“Do ghosts have a smell?” I asked, trying to remember if that was something I’d heard, along the lines of haunted spaces feeling chillier than the rest of a room.
“I guess so,” Michael said.
There were no ghosts here now, but clearly something or someone had been here. We had proof. I wasn’t crazy. But a search of the house revealed—unsurprisingly—nothing at all.
17
Drool Can be Sexy
Michael
Our late night adventures might have led to a late morning sleeping in, only the sun streaming in through the filmy bedroom windows had us stirring at the crack of seven.
I watched Addie for a few minutes, lying on my side on the floor not far from her bed. The morning light was illuminating her golden skin, and her dark hair spread across the pillow. Her dark lashes fanned across her cheeks, and her lips were rosy as she frowned the tiniest bit in her sleep. The tiniest little drizzle of drool left a dark spot on her pillow, and something about that—about seeing something that reminded me that for all of her seeming perfection, she was very human—it made me feel closer to her.
The dark eyes fluttered open as I watched, and I rolled to my back, stretching and trying hard to pretend I hadn’t just been watching her sleep like some kind of creeper.
“Morning,” she said softly, her voice still dreamy.
“Good morning,” I said.
She glanced at Daniel, who lay sprawled, arms flung over his head, one leg kicked free of his sleeping bag.
“He won’t be up for hours,” I told her. “His record is two p.m.”
“Wow.” She chuckled and sat up, stretching her arms overhead in a way that made her long-sleeved T-shirt pull across her chest. I forced my eyes away as she slid from her bed, still in the sweats she’d worn to wat
ch the movie. They were casual and cute, and I had a fleeting feeling that we were playing house, that maybe this is how it would be if we were really together. Not the waking in separate beds part, but waking up together, getting to see one another in those pre-breakfast moments when we are all just human.
“Shall we knock out the rest of the floors?” She asked. “I’ve totally mastered that sander. Made it my bitch yesterday.”
“Oh really?” I asked, laughing at that statement coming out of this particular woman’s mouth.
“Totally.”
“Breakfast first. Coffee,” I said, wishing I could pop out of bed feeling ready to conquer the world. But I was fueled on caffeine, and there wasn’t much to be done about that.
“Meet you in the kitchen in ten,” she said. And the most impressive thing about Addie Tanner? She let me have the bathroom first.
Ten minutes later, I entered the kitchen, embraced by the scent of coffee and the sight of Addie at the sink, holding a mug and gazing out the window at the side yard.
“Those floors look good,” I told her. I’d walked through the parlor and foyer again before coming into the kitchen. Addie had done a good job. “You weren’t kidding about telling that sander what’s up.”
“I never kid about my mastery of power tools. Now I just wish I could master them well enough to get the front porch put back together. I want to drink my coffee out there on a rocking chair.”
I laughed at Addie’s power-tool confidence. “Really? Have you mastered a lot of power tools? In New York City I can’t imagine you were doing a lot of home renovation.”
She turned and leaned against the counter as I sipped my coffee. “No, not really,” she said. “I’m handy with an electric screwdriver if you need me to put up some curtains, though.”
“Might need those to avoid waking at the crack of dawn every weekend.”
“I like being up early,” she said as I joined her in leaning against the counter. “The day feels like it could still go perfectly.”
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