Chapter 32
Dodie
“It’s time for me to tell you the truth,” Ethan said. “I’m a Russian spy.”
“Are you?” I leaned against the kitchen wall and twisted the phone cord around one index finger.
I had meant to tidy the kitchen, truly I had, but it was so boring, and I got distracted.
The phone was right there on the wall. I took a chance, calling Ethan in the middle of the day, and he had picked up.
He told me it was his day off. From what, I still had no idea.
“If I’m lying, you’ll never know,” he said.
“Spies get days off?” I asked.
“No one can work all the time.”
“I see. So now that you’ve told me, do you have to kill me?”
“That depends. How many CIA operatives do you know?”
“None, since apparently you aren’t one.”
“Then you’re safe for now. How is the search for your little brother going?”
I leaned my shoulder against the wall, feeling tired. “Ethan, you’re going to think I’m crazy. That we’re all crazy.”
“Dodie,” he replied, his voice oddly gentle, “if I was going to judge you, I would have done it by now.”
“I don’t understand why you’re asking. Why you even want to know.”
“Because you seem sad.”
I stared at my feet.
“That’s the only reason,” Ethan said into the silence.
I thought about Ben in my bed the other night, his warm body against mine, and then…“I think he died a long time ago,” I said. “Even longer than we think, do you understand? Further back in the past.”
There was a beat of silence. “How long ago?” Ethan asked.
I bit my lip. “It depends how old this house is.” The logic rotated slowly through my brain, like an old clock being wound. “He lived in this house—I’m sure of that. He died here. But he didn’t die the day we played hide-and-seek.” I shook my head. “Or maybe he did, but I mean—”
“I understand.”
I laughed softly. “Are you sure about that?”
“Okay, it’s confusing. But I understand what you’re getting at. You think that your life with Ben wasn’t his first life. That he lived another time, before he lived with you.”
I lifted my gaze from my feet as my eyes watered.
Never mind how crazy it was—something about that sounded so inexpressibly beautiful.
To be given more than one life, to never truly die—there was a reason some religions believed it.
Because thinking of it any other way was too hard.
“There’s a bag of marbles in the attic from 1899,” I said, “so it would have been sometime after that. But I don’t know when. ”
“And you don’t know how old the house is?”
“No. If there was something in our mother’s papers about the house, Violet would have seen it. And there are no papers left in our parents’ bedroom.”
“Maybe there are municipal records.”
“Violet went out. She’ll probably find out.
” Violet was out investigating, and Vail was in the attic with the ghost hunter.
My big brother and big sister were taking care of everything, as usual, leaving me to be the useless one.
I had no experience with this like Vail did, no brains like Violet.
All I’d ever had to do in life was look pretty and bite my tongue in public in my best attempt to be charming.
No one expected anything much of me at all.
I ran my palm down the wall, looking at the ugly wallpaper.
“You don’t have to have all the answers right now,” Ethan said, as if reading my mind. “I don’t think that’s what Ben wanted when he called you home.”
“He asked for us to make it right.”
“No, he didn’t. He said, Come home. That isn’t the same thing. Maybe he just wanted you there, Dodie. Maybe he just missed you like you missed him.”
I pressed my palm to the kitchen wall and closed my eyes.
“He told me to find him when he was in bed with me.” I could still hear those words in his familiar little voice.
Dodie. Find me. “What does that mean, then? Something was done wrong, and it has to be made right. That’s the only way this makes any sense. ”
“No,” Ethan said. “It isn’t.”
Ben’s warm body in the bed with me. It was the water that interrupted us, that chased us out of the room. Then, downstairs, something vicious and cold had grabbed Vail and whispered in his ear.
If I could live here, could feel Ben in bed with me every night, would I ever leave? I’d give up anything, everything for that. Wouldn’t I?
Did he want me to?
“Where are you right now?” I asked Ethan.
“In my apartment,” he replied. “In the Lower East Side. It’s tiny, but it’s cheap.
It came with a pullout sofa, so that’s what I sleep on every night.
I sit on it when the sun is up, then lie down on it when the sun goes down.
This thing is so heavy that I don’t think it will ever be moved out of this building.
I don’t even know how anyone got it up the stairs. ”
I smiled to myself, picturing it.
“So I have a single room, a tiny kitchen, and a bathroom. The main room is my bedroom, my living room, my everything room. I own two plates, four forks, and a plastic bowl with a beer logo on the side. I don’t know why a beer company would make a bowl, so don’t ask.
I can hear my upstairs neighbor every time he pees, and my downstairs neighbor smokes a cigarette every hour, on the hour, that comes up through my vents.
The garbage truck arrives, very loudly, at six o’clock every Wednesday morning.
My parents live in a nice house in suburban Maryland and think I’m insane to live here.
They tell me regularly that I’ll regret coming to New York, but it’s been over two years, and I don’t.
I keep waiting for the regret, but it never arrives. ”
At his words, I missed New York with an ache deep in my body, emanating from my bones. “My apartment has faulty fuses,” I said. “You can’t plug in a lamp and a curling iron at the same time.”
“Sounds perfect,” Ethan said.
“It’s sweltering in summer,” I said.
“Oh yes,” he agreed. “I fill a bowl with ice water and put my feet in it. That’s the only thing that helps on the worst days.”
“I do that, too. I can use a fan in summer, but only if I unplug everything else in the apartment.”
We both laughed.
“It’s too quiet here,” I said. “Too quiet and too creepy.”
“You have to be there for a little while,” Ethan said. “Then come back to New York. And when you do, will you have lunch with me?”
“Lunch?” I asked, surprised at how stung I felt. “Don’t you want a second date?”
“I do, but you won’t say yes to a second date.”
“I haven’t said yes to lunch, either.”
“You don’t need to go on a date,” Ethan said reasonably. “But everyone needs to eat lunch sometime.”
—
After I hung up, I looked around the kitchen, feeling useless again. Then I saw the girl out the window.
It was the neighbor girl—Terri, I remembered.
Terri Chatham. An unfortunate name, and the girl had an unfortunate haircut, but otherwise she had seemed sweet.
She was walking along the tree line behind our house, looking like she was woolgathering.
Wasn’t this a school day? Why was she walking around alone?
It was none of my business. I picked up a dusty can of tomatoes—honestly, when had anyone in this house ever eaten canned tomatoes?—and then I saw the second figure.
It was quick, a shadow flitting between the trees behind Terri. Terri didn’t notice. She kept walking. As I watched, the shadow flitted behind her again, as if following her from a distance.
The can banged down on the counter as I grabbed my coat. The hair stood up on the back of my neck. I strode to the back door and was hurrying toward Terri before I formed a complete thought. Get away from her, whoever you are. Whatever you are.
The girl lifted her gaze and caught sight of me approaching, and I remembered to rearrange my face into something approaching pleasant. “Hi there!” I called out to her, an approximation of a friendly, neighborly greeting. “I’m Dodie. Remember me?”
Terri smiled back at me. “Hi.”
“Hi, Terri.” I was close to her now, and I resisted the urge to grab her by the arm or by the shoulders to move her along. Every alarm instinct was clanging in my gut. “Why aren’t you in school right now?”
Her brow crinkled. “It’s Saturday?”
“It is? Well, what do you know.” I looked around, taking note of the trees. I didn’t see the shadow again, but I could feel it. There was definitely a bad smell in the cool air. “I had no idea. But since it isn’t a school day, let’s do something fun.”
Her brow crinkled further, though she looked—pathetically—a little hopeful. “You and me?”
“Sure,” I said. “Anything you want.” Since I was bad at subtlety, I pointed away from the trees, in the direction of the road. “Something that way.”
“Oh, well. Okay?” She didn’t seem convinced that I was telling the truth. “I was walking, but I was thinking maybe I might ride my bike.”
“Bike riding sounds delightful,” I said with more force than was necessary. Something that took place on the road, complete with mode of transportation to escape whatever was in the trees? Yes, indeed. “What fun.”
The look on Terri’s face reminded me that I should never reproduce, something I was already fully convinced of. I was scaring her a little.
“Want to come?” she asked me. She must truly have a dearth of friends.
“I don’t have a bike, dear,” I replied.
“I have an extra,” Terri said. “I got a new bike for Christmas, but I don’t like it as much as my old bike. So now I have both.”
I couldn’t remember the last time I rode a bike.
Vail had taught me to ride when I was six, watching and—of course—laughing every time I fell off.
The only bike we owned was Vail’s, because Violet and I had no interest in physical activity.
When Vail had started teaching Ben to ride on that same bike, he hadn’t laughed at him.
But my gaze flicked to the trees, where something was definitely moving. Something dark that I didn’t like at all. I’d have to make a sacrifice.
“All right, show me this bike of yours,” I said to Terri. “I’d love to take a ride.”