A Heart So Haunted

Chapter 1

Chapter One

I peeked through the front door’s sidelights and watched the woman hobble down the cobblestone path.

If she turned around now, she’d see me with my nose pressed to the glass, counting down the seconds until she reached her car.

The thought made me pull back—or at least until I was looking out the window at an angle.

She teetered onto the driveway, and only once she opened the driver’s side door did I let the stained-glass window covers clatter back into place.

I glared down at the covered dish in my hands. How many meals did someone need? I understood the sentiment—the instinct to provide when someone was in need or experiencing a loss. But this … This was too much.

There was no reason for me to find room for another casserole dish in Aunt Cadence’s—no, my—refrigerator that wasn’t going to get eaten, anyway.

“Why does it smell like that?” Sayer muttered.

I turned beside the grandfather clock to find my friend leaning against the stair railing, the neck of his penny tee pulled over his nose while he stared at his phone.

A search engine reflected in his glasses.

Realtors in Colleton County, it probably read.

I lifted the aluminum foil with a cringe. “Because it’s broccoli.” I crunched it back in place. “And cheese.”

“Not enough cheese, apparently,” he said, voice muffled. “That’s absolutely putrid.”

“It’s the thought that counts, right?” My words were flat, even to my own ears. Sayer’s gaze flitted up to me, then back to his phone.

“Right.” He nodded to the floor. “I think she dropped something.”

I glanced at the entry rug. A little folded slip of paper lay half-open, like a duck bill, an inch from the doorframe. I bent down, dish balanced in one hand, and made a mental note to vacuum up the family of dust bunnies that were huddled by the baseboards later.

“What is it, a ransom note? Give me your house or I’ll get the historical society to revoke it from you?” he teased, brows scrunched.

“You watch too much true crime.”

“Blackmail and hiding a body are two completely different things.”

I unfolded the paper, expecting another Our condolences on your loss message. Instead, it read, Haven’t heard from you! But I found something! Let me know.

I frowned. “Sorry to report, but it’s not a threat.” I crumpled the paper and stuffed it in my pocket. “It was probably—”

A crash echoed from another room.

Both Sayer and I stopped breathing.

Upstairs, a set of heels paused. “Ms. Frederick?”

The realtor. At that moment, I wanted to lean against the closest wall, squeeze my eyes shut, and evaporate into thin air. Today wasn’t my day.

But today had to be the day she did a walk-through. Time was of the essence. And I had little enough patience as it was—with wills and deed transfers and debt payoffs running out of my ears, the last thing I needed to tack onto my list was hunting down another realtor.

Hence: The sooner the better.

Now, however, I regretted my past self’s choices.

Sayer and I stared at each other. I shook my head. Talking to anyone outside my clientele circle didn’t usually make my wrists sweat, but this woman intimidated me. “What do I say? Do you think she heard that?”

“Don’t look at me! I didn’t do anything.” He splayed both hands with wide eyes, phone face up. It did, in fact, have another realtor website pulled up.

“I didn’t either,” I whisper-hissed.

“Tell her something.”

My eyes widened. “Me? You brought her here.”

“You said you needed an experienced realtor to look at the place! My mom recommended her!”

I gestured with the casserole dish toward the stairs in a poor attempt to point, as if to say, Help me.

Sayer shook his head.

My mouth pursed. I narrowed my eyes, stepped closer, and whispered, “You owe me for this.”

“You said you need the house sold,” he said, forehead crinkled. “You owe me.”

I sighed. I inched closer to the bottom of the mahogany stairs. “Yes?” I called.

I didn’t remember the woman’s name. It was something elegant with multiple syllables that started with an E—Evanescence or Evangelina, maybe—but I had as much experience handling a realtor as I did with roofing.

My clients dealt with the realtors; I dealt with the paint colors and fixtures and anything not requiring a permit.

“What was that? I thought you said there was no road noise,” she called down.

Her words sounded nasally and traveled from the left side of the second-floor landing.

I tried not to picture her in Aunt Cadence’s room or one of the multiple guest rooms, examining my aunt’s things, trying to get an idea of the square footage of the house and what might look marketable.

“Sayer closed a door, no worries!” I swallowed around a sandy lump in my throat.

Without a response, her steps faded away. Farther into the second floor. Deeper, peeling away at my childhood memories, marking floorboards and rooms with a price.

Another bang.

It sounded like the heel of a palm against a wall. Or a locked door that made hinges rattle.

I whirled. Sayer stood stick straight now, both hands clutching his phone. The tendons in his forearms stood taut.

“I know you heard that,” he whispered. “That was not me. Obviously.”

Obviously not. But if it wasn’t either of us, and no one else was in the house—

I glared at the foyer floor, waiting. Maybe it would come again?

The stained-glass coverings, which hung over the sidelight panes on either side of the front door, cast ribbons of color onto the rug. A draft brushed over the baby hairs at my temple, the back of my neck, hot and soupy. Typical of Lowcountry, even this early in the summer season.

“Don’t lie,” he urged.

I squeezed my eyes shut. The draft—that had to be it. It must have caught momentum when it slipped through a window and shut a door that hadn’t been latched.

“But what if—” I started.

“Landry.” Sayer’s mouth pinched. “You heard it. You told me nothing would happen. You promised you haven’t seen anything weird. You know how I feel about this kind of … stuff.”

“Okay, okay, I heard it,” I whispered. Still, I didn’t move. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, Sayer was right. I’d promised him as much—he wouldn’t have agreed to help me otherwise.

Suddenly, I was ten again, unwinding the balls of yarn in Aunt Denny’s room, asking why she didn’t let me stay at night.

“Are there ghosts? Amber at school says ghosts live in old houses like this one. She had one in her grandma’s house and didn’t wanna stay at night.

Said that if this one’s haunted, you wouldn’t let me stay, either,” I blurted, swinging the unspooled yarn in two clenched fists.

Aunt Denny folded clothes at the foot of her bed.

Every so often, she’d glance to the door, then at me.

“Is that why I can’t stay? I can handle ghosts.

What if they’re friendly? Would that make it okay for me to stay? ”

“There are no ghosts, Lan.”

“Then why can’t I stay?” I whined. The yarn drooped at my sides.

“Because your momma wouldn’t be happy with me. And you have school.”

“But I’m on break and there’s nothing to do and I only see you sometimes and what if the ghosts need—”

Her eyes grew hard; the T-shirt she held up crinkled at the shoulders, all around her fingers. “Have you seen anything here, Lanny? Anything like that?”

This had made me pause. Seen anything? No.

Sometimes the birds perched by the breakfast table in the little windows.

The sill was extra wide and I liked to watch them there.

Their shadows curved over the glass and the table and sometimes it was like those shadows moved on their own, but never anything else.

“No. Don’t think so.”

“See? No ghosts.”

Sometimes the floors creaked, but Aunt Denny said old houses did that. So I believed her.

“But that story you told me, could it be real? Have you seen anyth—”

She shot me a look down the bridge of her nose. “I have not. You know the nursery rhyme is simply that—a rhyme. For eager little minds and imaginations. Now pick out your yarn so we can make those potholders before your momma comes back.”

She’d promised me. And there had never been any reason not to believe her.

I didn’t realize tears had started to burn the backs of my eyes until Sayer’s voice reeled me to the surface.

“Shouldn’t you … go look?”

I blinked them away. Inhaled a shaky breath. Sayer was gangly, stuck in a perpetual state of adult-adolescence, despite being on the eve of thirty-one and a long-since graduate of USC’s MFA program.

“Don’t tell me all those horror novels finally caught up with you,” he said, looking at me over the frames of his glasses. Still, a tinge of wariness—like I might crack—crinkled around his eyes. I drew my shoulders back and garnered my only line of defense: sarcasm.

“At least I’m well read in all genres,” I said.

“Is that supposed to be an insult? Like I don’t read?”

“No, I’m saying your true crime documentary experience makes you better equipped for the situation.”

Sayer took the casserole dish out of my slowly warming hands and pushed it onto the entryway table. It’d gradually become the catch-all spot. Cards perched in a cluster on one side—all sage-greens and muted blues, wishing love, sympathies, and anything else that might sound remotely comforting.

They weren’t.

“And if it’s not someone trying to break open a door?” he tried. “You would really leave me to deal with an angry ghost?”

“So, you’ll send me instead?”

“It’s your house.”

The words shouldn’t have stung, because he was only telling the truth, but they did. “So what, you’re a believer now?” I said, the edges of my words serrated.

“There’s a reason I couldn’t watch cartoons with ghosts in them as a kid, you know.” I felt Sayer’s eyes weigh me, like a percentage chart or a fates calculator. As if he were debating the value of an argument right now.