Chapter 6
ADAM
The van lurched to a stop, bumping my knee into the steering column, and I killed the engine.
I sat there for a second, hands white-knuckled on the wheel, staring at the place I’d once called home, if you could even call it that anymore.
The paint on the trim had surrendered to sun and wind years ago, leaving the window frames flaking with splinters, and tufts of dry grass poked through the cracks in the concrete like the world’s saddest birthday candles.
The porch railing leaned to one side, giving the place a sad look of perpetual apology.
I half expected a tumbleweed to roll by to sell the effect.
It looked more like the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland than my childhood home.
Maybe I’d convinced myself that, after twenty years, the house would have faded into something smaller and easier to face.
Instead, it seemed to have grown around the negatives of all my old ghosts, every memory standing taller and more ragged than I remembered.
All the things I’d left behind had taken root and burrowed in, stretching into something wild and unrecognizable, like a nightmare come to life.
I scanned the street for signs of life. My eyes slid, by force of habit, to the house next door, the Bliss house.
It looked familiar, only brighter, as if someone had taken the time to actually care about the place.
The hedges were trimmed, and wildflowers flanked the stone path to the porch.
Children’s voices came from the backyard, the kind of giddy, high-pitched screaming that could mean someone had broken a bone or they were just having fun, it was hard to tell.
The engine ticked itself cool, and I braced myself with a few deep breaths before I swung open the door and slid one leg out, my work boot went down and landed on a tuft of crabgrass.
The air outside hit me with an unusual cocktail of early spring heat and dryness, not exactly the mild temperatures I remembered in the city.
I shut the van door with a hollow slam and made my way up the driveway, dodging a patchwork of oil stains and bottle caps that looked like they’d been there longer than I’d been gone.
The garage door was still the original, the kind that required more muscle than finesse.
I shouldered into it, pulling on the warped handle until the lock popped and the bottom edge scraped up with a metallic and wooden groan.
The stale air inside brought back a rush of memories, not the sentimental kind, but the heavy scent of old oil, rust, and whatever rodents had taken up residence over the years.
I didn’t bother to look around. I just propped the door open and padded back down the drive, feeling that old, familiar chill of being watched from one of the side windows.
Just as I reached the curb, a high-pitched chorus erupted somewhere behind the hedge next door. I heard it first as a shriek, then as a chant, “Truck! Big truck! Big truck!”
The voices belonged to three boys who looked to be around the girls’ age and came charging out from the Bliss house.
Two were identical in nearly every way—same brown hair, blue eyes, and freckles, followed by a curly-headed dark haired boy with a huge smile, all regarding the van like it was an alien ship.
One of the twins, the slightly taller of the two, took off running up the sidewalk, arms windmilling for balance.
He skidded to a stop right at the property line, hesitated, and then called out again, “Truck!” as though maybe I hadn’t heard him the first time.
The other two hung back, peeking over the top of the hedge.
I caught myself smiling, despite my exhaustion, but the feeling vanished as quickly as it came when I remembered the work I had in front of me.
I was heading to the back of the truck when I realized I didn’t know who lived in the Bliss house anymore.
I knew that Billie’s grandparents had both passed on.
I’d wanted to go to the service. If I were in the States, I would have been there, but I’d been deployed at the time, and there’d been no way of getting back.
I wondered who lived there now. It was going to be strange to live next door to anyone other than Billie and her sisters. They’d been more of a family to me than my own father. I wondered where the Bliss sisters were now.
The first time I saw Billie Bliss was seared into my memory forever. I was walking up my driveway coming home from school, and Billie was sitting on the porch, she was a tiny little thing, just four years old. I just lifted my eyes, and…holy shit.
She was there. She was standing in the doorway. She was not a four-year-old. She was an adult and…fuck.
Billie Bliss was standing in the doorway, sunlight slicing across her hair like a movie spotlight.
For one insane moment, I half expected to see her as a kid—scabbed knees, hair in a lopsided ponytail, grinning as she dared me to jump the fence after her.
But she wasn’t four anymore or even sixteen.
She was a grown woman and the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life.
The truth was, I’d tried to look her up online, several times, okay hundreds, but there were hardly any photos of her to be found.
Her sisters posted the occasional group shot, but Billie was always half-turned away or ducking out of the frame.
It was like she’d mastered the art of being present without ever really being seen.
And yet, from this distance, I could see her more clearly than ever.
Her chestnut hair was longer, wavy and wild, and I’d swear even from fifty yards away I could see the gold flecks in her gorgeous emerald green eyes, it looked like she’d swallowed the sun, and it radiated out of her.
Her full lips were naturally the shade of ruby red but gave the illusion that she’d sucked on cherries.
Her jaw was set just the way I remembered, a line of stubbornness and maybe a little anger.
She was a woman, but I could still see my friend. The girl I’d spent all night talking to on a walkie-talkie. The girl I’d go worm and ladybug hunting with. The girl I’d told my deepest fears and insecurities to.
I thought there was a chance I’d run into her.
More than that, I’d planned on going to see her once I got settled, once I got the girls settled, once I figured out how to apologize for the night of my father’s wedding, for leaving without saying goodbye, for not replying to her texts or calls or writing during basic, for the years of silence that followed.
But I hadn’t had the time to figure any of that out before she was gone. She turned and vanished inside, leaving behind nothing but the memory of her shadow and the regret of what could have been.
My heart sank. I hadn’t prepared for any of this. I hadn’t prepared to see her again like this, to feel like every mistake I’d ever made playing out in slow motion on the lawn.
Not wanting to dwell on it, I continued making my way into the garage, only to be stopped when I heard my name.
“Adam Knight!” A familiar voice called out from across the street, sharp as a garden trowel and about as forgiving.
I turned just in time to see the formidable Mrs. Edith Cable, track-suited in a blinding shade of lime green, hobbling across the street with the determined shuffle of someone who had long ago declared war on mortality and was, by all evidence, winning.
If you’d asked me to describe the neighborhood watch and biggest menace, I’d have sketched you Edith Cable: steely blue hair, eyes like beady sapphires, and a smoker’s laugh that could strip varnish.
The woman had eyes in the back, side, front, and top of her head, nothing happened in the neighborhood without her knowing.
She was also a firm believer that karma had enough on her plate, so she handled all her own retaliations personally.
Every neighbor who got on Mrs. Cable’s bad side typically put their house up for sale within one to two years.
As a kid, she terrified me. As a teenager, I’d mowed her lawn for precisely one summer, after which I’d vowed to never again work for a woman who thought “tips” came in the form of unsolicited life advice and expired Nilla wafers.
Now, as an adult, she regarded me with the sort of wary suspicion usually reserved for returning war criminals and bad cable installers.
“Mrs. Cable.” I forced a smile as I met her at the edge of the cracked sidewalk. “How are you?”
She planted her cane between two slabs of buckled concrete and sniffed, her nostrils flaring. “My friends are all dead, Adam. I’ve outlived every single one. They say only the good die young, but as you can see, I’m proving everyone wrong.”
I laughed because that was what was expected when Edith Cable spoke. “Yes, you are.”
“Look at you! I never thought I’d see you here again. What brings you back?”
“Some circumstances have changed.”
She eyed me, that sharp Cable gaze, and sucked her teeth. “Sounds mysterious.”
“It’s not really. I’ve got girls now. Twins. I decided this would be the best place to raise them.” I hesitated, glancing back at the house. “Didn’t realize the place had gotten so… haunted.”
“‘Ran into the shitter’ is the phrase you’re looking for.” She leaned in, lowering her voice to a stage whisper. “Your father let this place go. The last two really bled him dry.”
“Last two?”
She snorted. “Hussies, brides, wives, homewreckers. Take your pick. The last one, the one with those little yappy dogs. She left him in the middle of the night, took the car, the dogs, and all the jewelry. Dr. Patel, down the street, said the moving truck was in and out in under an hour. Slick as a whistle. Your father was so mad he just sat on the porch and drank for a week. That drinking was what killed him.”