Chapter Seven
Seven
It’s rare to find the house empty. I was meant to get picked up by my mom and Paige after my shift, but the store had been dead for over an hour, so when Nora gave me the out, I took it.
A pink sticky note puts my aunt and Mom at the grocery store; a yellow one tells me Jasper and Margot walked up to the diner for milkshakes, and no, they won’t be bringing one back, because I never finish them anyway.
Which is a bald-faced lie, but I’m so grateful for the peace, I don’t bother texting my opposition.
Even the stereo is uncharacteristically silent.
A tiny voice reminds me I should let my mom and Paige know I won’t be needing a ride home after all, but the emptiness of the house loops around my limbs like a warm blanket. No pretending everything is okay; no faking pleasantries or telling white lies to appease my ever-worried mother.
It’s been weeks since I touched the grand piano, formerly my dad’s and his mom’s before him and on and on in a long line of Stuarts.
Mom kept her maiden name when she married Dad, and though they apparently discussed hyphenation in me and my siblings’ case, we ended up Griffins, too.
Oddly fitting with the way everything turned out.
The open expanse of the house beyond it and the tall windows make privacy impossible, and I barely want to hear myself play these days, let alone pull an audience.
The itch crawling over my skin and making my fingers twitch, the one that started last night and refuses to peel away, gives me a one-track mind. Even the thought of playing one of my own songs—Harper’s and my songs—makes me taste metal, but I spent years on the piano before penning my own note.
I sit on the bench and push up the fallboard, fluttering my fingers over the keys. It’s all second nature, like shrugging into a worn and familiar coat. The cold ivory pushes memories up like water boiling over a pot, but the first notes of Billy Joel’s “Vienna” shove them back down.
I stumble over a note and catch myself, letting muscle memory slide into place. The music pulses with a heartbeat in the room around me, and when I sing the first lyrics, that old comforting fog settles over my head.
I close my eyes, light as air, letting the music mold a bubble around me. There are no dead or gone or missing. Just me and the dark behind my eyes. When I reach the end, I drop my hands to the bench beside me, fingers tingling and brain delightfully fuzzy.
Then a creaking floorboard snaps me back to reality. My head whips around, a warmth telling me someone is standing at my back, but the room is empty.
Whatever peace I’d stumbled into fizzles out. I push to my feet, knowing how ludicrous this is even as I do it. I do a slow traipse around the room, scanning every surface, every crevice.
Paige says older houses have personalities of their own. All the people who lived here have left impressions. Worn now invisible paths in the wood floors and left infinitesimal dents on the doorknobs and light switches. Even I can admit to never truly feeling alone in this house.
That’s all it is. Impressions. Fading melodies of past lives.
And yet, I can’t shake the feeling I’m not the only person in the room.
“Joanna? Joanna, are you here?” My mother’s frantic tone follows the whining of the front door as it bangs open. Two sets of footsteps barrel into the front room. I jump, nearly smashing into the edge of the piano.
Before I can speak, the pair floods into the turret off the entryway, eyes landing on me.
My mom is all rapid blinks and rigid shoulders, and Paige is wound tight enough it’s amazing she hasn’t snapped.
“Oh, thank god,” Paige says.
“What the hell, Joanna?”
“Hi, Jo! How was your day, Jo? Oh, it was fine. What about you?” I ask dryly, another misplaced attempt at levity. I’m too out of practice.
Paige makes a cut it out gesture, slicing her hand back and forth in front of her neck. My mom shoots her sister a look, but in an instant her ferocity returns to me.
“We came to pick you up from the store, but Nora said you left early. You weren’t answering your phone.”
Ah, my phone. Probably still in my bag on the kitchen counter. And on vibrate, like always.
“I’m sorry. I was going to text you as soon as I got home, but I…
” I trail off. I don’t have a great answer, and I don’t want to admit it was the piano that distracted me.
As little as I enjoy an overexaggerated parental response, it’s at least normal.
But mentioning the piano, after so many months avoiding music, would shift the anger to pity.
I prefer the normal parental reaction to the one I’ve been stuck with for months.
“What’s the big deal, anyway? It was like three blocks.
” This is hardly the first time I’ve walked home alone from somewhere, especially this year.
I walked the half mile to and from my old school every day after the accident.
“Big deal?” my mom echoes. Paige, momentarily meeting my eyes, winces. The overdramatics rub me the wrong way.
“I swear, if you mention a sasquatch—” I start.
“That’s not funny, Joanna.”
I hold my hands up in surrender.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was that big of a deal. But I’m fine.” I gesture to myself. “See? Not a scratch.”
Mom deflates. Whether she’s giving in or decided the fight isn’t worth it, I’m unsure. But she looks tired. I hadn’t noticed until now how tired I am, too.
My mom spent years vowing she’d never move back home, back to her tiny town full of tiny people and big beliefs. But this was a last-ditch attempt at keeping me above water. She’d exhausted all her options back in the city. We’re here because of me.
“It won’t happen again,” I say. “I swear, if I even think about leaving work early or whatever, you’ll hear about it.”
“Good,” my mom says.
“That’s all we’re asking,” Paige says. “If I walk into the bookstore and see your face on one of those posters, I don’t know what I’d do.”
I almost call her out on her melodrama. Almost.
But there is a palpable fear in both their eyes. There were traces of it on their faces when I grew up, when we stayed out too late on summer nights or strayed too deep into the woods, but it always seemed overblown.
Now I wonder if there’s something I’m missing. Something both women have gone to great lengths to protect us from.
—
An hour later, I’m doing the dishes and fixated on a piece of cheese crusted onto a plastic plate. Someone charred what may have been nachos and left the evidence for at least two days.
I don’t see my mom come in, popping open the fridge and grabbing a can of cola, until she sidles up beside me. I nearly chuck the plate onto the floor.
“Did you switch that?” she asks, gesturing to the radio.
I frown. I hadn’t even noticed the channel had changed.
Sure enough, the rock station is on. I’ve started to wonder if there’s some glitch in the old thing, if its dial’s default station is this one.
Or if Margot or Paige are playing some long prank on the rest of us.
Maybe they’ve gotten Jasper in on it; he’s small and quick.
I swear I’ve heard conversations through the vents, not loud enough to be discernible.
“I think we need to call time of death on this thing,” I say, stretching over to flick the dial back. A soft guitar and the honey voice of a folk singer replace the harsh rock.
Mom reaches for the dial and I scoff, nudging her hand away. I want her seventies music as much as I want the rock station right now.
“Uh-uh. She who does the chores gets to pick the station,” I say.
“Fine, fine,” she says as she loops her arm through mine and squeezes once before releasing.
As soon as her touch is gone, a familiar tightness returns to my belly. Breathing already feels like a betrayal, and anything more is rubbing dirt onto Harper’s gravestone.
I clear my throat, shifting away. The moment dissipates, and Mom clears her throat, popping the top on her can.
“Thanks for cleaning up,” she says.
Once she’s gone, my shoulders sink, and I give up on the nacho plate, grabbing a glass and shoving it under the hot water.
A figure enters my periphery, reaching for the radio. My mom making another attempt to commandeer the music.
“Hey, leave my station—” I start.
It is not my mom. I drop the glass.
A dark-haired boy stands at the other end of the counter, staring intently at the radio. His fingers curl around the dial, and he flips the station. Back to rock.
The boy looks up, meeting my eyes. He looks about my age, maybe a year or so older. Something about him is familiar.
I curse, only looking away from him when pain sparks up through my feet. On the ground, the glass sits in chunks, a few of them striped in blood.
“Joanna? Are you all right?” My mom rushes back into the room.
I open my mouth to tell her to call the cops, to warn her to stay away from the boy who marched into the kitchen like he lives here, but when my eyes dart to the spot where he was standing, he’s gone.
Like he was never there at all.
But he was there, and real. As real as the glass broken at my feet.
“I’m—I’m sorry. I’ll clean it up. I thought I saw—” I stop. Her face has already taken on that mother-hen expression, and telling her someone essentially appeared out of thin air won’t help the situation. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
Mom meets me at the sink, stepping around the glass, lifting my hands to inspect them. Once she’s come to the same conclusion I did, that we won’t be climbing into the car for an ER visit, she gently lowers my hands.
“No, no, leave it,” she says, gesturing to the glass. “You go upstairs and clean up. You know where the first aid kit is?”
I nod, but I can’t bring my feet to move. My eyes keep flicking to the spot the boy was standing in, like I’ll blink and he’ll be there. Like my mom will see him, and we’ll panic together.
It doesn’t happen. Instead, my mom says my name again, a little hesitant.
I nod again and force myself to turn, making my way to the stairs.
“Hey,” a whisper calls after me. Masculine, far too deep to belong to anyone who lives here.
I don’t look back.
I’ve heard of grief hallucinations—I know they’re rare but real, but the stories are always of loved ones hearing or seeing their dearly departed. Not some random teenage boy.
Maybe it isn’t grief. Maybe I’m finally losing it.
I hear the voice again and cover my ears. “STOP!”
I run up the stairs, heart thundering.
The voice sounds once more, but I’m basically racing down the hall. I shove into the bathroom and slam the door shut behind me. I punch the lock button.
I’m almost hesitant to flick the lights on. But when I do, the only face in the mirror is mine. I look like a weary survivor in a horror movie. Feel like one, too.
I take another breath. Reach for the cabinet under the sink. Drag out the first aid kit and lose myself in the monotony of tending to my little wounds. Clean, disinfect, apply the nasty-smelling ointment, bandage the cuts.
I shouldn’t be surprised I’m seeing things.
Nightmares wake me up a few times a week, so it’s not like I’m operating at full power.
And being surrounded by a bunch of die-hard paranormal believers must have infected my subconscious.
My grief and my family’s superstitions coming together to mess with me.
By the time I exit the bathroom, I’ve convinced myself I saw nothing at all. Despite that, I’m relieved to find an empty room. I cross to my bed, dropping onto the mattress and flopping onto my back. I squeeze my eyes shut.
It wasn’t real.