Chapter Twenty-Nine
twenty-nine
AUGUST PRESENT DAY
DAY 6 IN THE HOUSE
MADELINE carefully poured the kettle of boiling water over the loose-leaf tea. “Sometimes it feels like we’re the only two people staying in this house.” The steam warmed her cheeks. She held it out to Nora. “Careful, it’s hot.”
Nora lifted it to her lips anyway and flinched. “Fuck.”
“What did I just tell you?”
“I’m bad at taking other people’s advice,” Nora said. “Personal flaw.”
“At least there’s self-awareness.”
Nora set her mug on the counter. “Everyone keeps locking themselves in their rooms. I haven’t seen my mom in twenty-four hours.”
“Is she okay?”
Nora sighed and pushed up the sleeves of her flannel shirt. Her short hair was up in a blunt ponytail. Nora was taciturn with her thoughts, so Madeline focused on her expressions. The way her jaw would set, the way her voice lowered. What made her eyes narrow. Her perfectly controlled eyebrow raise. But despite so much observation, Madeline still was unsure what Nora was thinking most of the time. “I think so. I’ll check on her again tomorrow morning.”
“My mother hasn’t spoken to me,” Madeline said. “Ever since I asked about Ada. I tried looking her up, but cell service sucks. And I couldn’t find anything.”
Nora glanced her way. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t. I wanted to know.” Madeline fixed her eyes on the refrigerator across the kitchen. “It explains a lot, actually.” Mā had a twin sister who died. She had always thought that it was Mā’s stepfather’s death that splintered the family, but it had been two deaths, that same summer, in catastrophic succession. A double tragedy.
Richard Lowell existed on the internet. Madeline had found him. She could read about him. Actor, director, producer. Died of an overdose. But Ada was a ghost everywhere. Nothing about her, on her, from her. Madeline only heard herself say, faintly, “There’s so much I didn’t know about my family. Ada lived here. I keep believing that maybe if I stay here, I can understand what happened.”
Nora faced the door that led into the gardens.
Madeline cleared her throat and reached out. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t pointed, I promise.”
“But you’re right. The house shouldn’t be ours.”
“My grandmother gave it to your mom for a reason, though. Didn’t she?”
Nora exhaled and turned. “And what would that reason be?”
Madeline shrugged. “A footnote in the will would have been nice.”
“A clarification.”
“A sign from beyond, maybe. It would make our lives a lot easier. I’ll even take messages in tea leaves.” Madeline glanced up. “Maybe 外婆 will give us a sign right now.”
Nothing shifted, though they both looked around the kitchen warily.
Nora finally laughed. “What are we doing, a séance?”
“Worth a shot.”
“Not that I’m an expert on communing with the deceased, but I’m pretty sure you need more people for this. You can’t do it with someone you barely know.”
“Oh, so we’re strangers?” Madeline smirked.
“Well, what would you call us?” Nora peered at her curiously. “Friends?”
Madeline chewed on the inside of her cheek. “I don’t know,” she said. Something like that. “You’re right. Maybe we have to get to know each other better.”
“Hm.” Nora tilted her head.
“Any questions to send through your legal rep?”
“Come on.” Nora laughed. They were standing close now.
Madeline took in Nora’s arched brow, the faint freckles across the bridge of her button nose. “You’re turning red.”
“It’s just the tea,” Nora said faintly. “It’s hot.”
“Too hot?” Madeline said. She was teasing, but it was making Nora blush, and that gave her a thrill. “I thought making a good cup of tea was my only redeeming quality.”
Nora laughed again. Without another thought, Madeline leaned in and kissed her, long and slow. She felt Nora’s fingers brush her waist and heat pool in her chest, then lower, in her stomach. “Let’s go upstairs,” she whispered against Nora’s lips.
Wordlessly they set their mugs in the sink and ascended the stairs and into the hallway. The second Madeline’s door closed behind them, they reached for each other and then Nora was kissing her, urgently. Nora’s fingers found their way under the hem of Madeline’s shirt, ice cold against her flushed skin. Gingerly, she lifted Madeline’s shirt over her head, peeling it away from her wounded arm with care.
Nora reached up and delicately unhooked Madeline’s bra. They stumbled against the dresser, then the bed frame. Nora laughed and Madeline blushed, but it sounded like a conspiratorial laugh. Nora shrugged her shirt off. Madeline leaned forward, her long hair falling around them like a curtain, and kissed Nora again. She finally pushed Nora’s underwear aside, feeling her wetness, teasing her with light touches. Nora let out a soft moan, almost a whimper that lit Madeline’s entire being on fire. Confession and concession, she thought, feeling euphoric. I’ve finally gotten something out of her .
Nora reached up, crushing Madeline’s lips to hers. Madeline let herself be pulled in. They’d spent days in this house slowly circling each other. Madeline wanted to know everything in the world about Nora, and this desire was an extension of that curiosity. There was no other way to express that somehow, in this vast ocean of silence, Nora had become her life raft.
Afterward, Madeline lay her head on Nora’s chest. She could smell the sweet vanilla of Nora’s lotion. She whispered against Nora’s sternum, “Was that okay?”
Nora laughed, and Madeline felt it tremor in her, too. “More than okay, I think.”
There was a long pause. Madeline closed her eyes. Her limbs felt like they were made of softened butter.
“Is this weird?” Nora finally asked.
Madeline looked up. “Why? Do you regret it?”
Nora met her gaze. God, she looked so hot with that slow smile, with those sleepy, half-lidded eyes. “No,” she said. “I don’t.”
“Good. I don’t either.”
Nora’s fingers traced her jawline, and Madeline felt herself dissolving under her touch. She felt the rhythm of Nora’s breath, the steady rise and the fall. “I don’t care if this is weird. I like it,” Madeline said, smiling to herself. “Besides, nothing about this place is normal.”
“Agreed,” Nora said. Madeline saw her reach down to cradle Madeline’s forearm and raise it to the light, so gently that Madeline barely felt it. “Let me change this out. Does this hurt?”
Madeline shook her head. It only ached, and it wasn’t unbearable.
“Okay. Good.”
“Do you remember…” Madeline sighed. “I wish I’d brought this up sooner. But when I was out there, I saw the flowers. And they were strange. Something was coming out of them. It was like they were—”
“Bleeding,” Nora said.
So you saw it too. “I tried looking again the other day. But it wasn’t happening anymore. They were just there.”
She felt Nora tense. “We talked about this. We can’t—”
“I know,” Madeline insisted. “I know we talked about it. Something is fucked-up out there. But things are weird in here, too.” Madeline paused. “Do you see the vines?”
“The what?”
Madeline pushed herself up. “It’s like… vines are coming through the walls. I saw it in the library the other day. Did you?”
Nora frowned. “No. I don’t know? Maybe this house messes with us in different ways.”
Madeline played with a loose thread. “A personalized experience.”
“Did you feel the earthquakes?”
Madeline looked up. “Earthquakes?”
Nora stared back. “The first two nights we were here. But maybe that’s because I’m staying closer to the ground? You haven’t felt them?”
Madeline shook her head. “I don’t feel anything at all up here.”
NORA came down from Madeline’s room eventually. She couldn’t stop thinking about Madeline, the way she laid her head on Nora’s chest and brushed her collarbone with a kiss, the way Madeline looked up at her, full lips pursed into a small, trusting smile.
And Nora didn’t deserve it.
She had become certain of one thing that night: the house shouldn’t be theirs.
Of course she’d wanted it at the beginning. The plan was to sell it and pay for school. It was retribution, wasn’t it, taking this house from them? But now she felt uncomfortable even thinking about it. It was the last piece Madeline had of her family history.
The next morning when Nora woke, she steeled herself and headed across the hallway. She listened to the pacing footsteps from within to confirm that her mother was awake, and then knocked on the door. “Mā.”
The footsteps stopped.
“Can I come in?”
“I’m busy.”
Nora said, “I need to talk to you.”
A pause. The hallway light flickered. Something crumbled down from a jagged crack in the wall. Nora looked up and collected it in her palm. Was that dirt ?
The door opened.
“We can’t have the house,” Nora started. “We can’t be doing this.”
Then Nora saw her mother for the first time in two days.
Mā’s hair hung limp around her face. Her eyes were frenetic. She clutched a leather notebook in one hand and held on to the doorknob in the other.
“What?” her mother asked blankly.
“Let me in. Jesus.” Nora pushed past her. “Listen. We can’t—”
She stopped short. Inside, the room was hot and smelled stale. Plates were stacked high on the dresser and the nightstand. Clothes were strewn across the floor. Nora pried away the notebook her mother was now holding to her chest and opened it. “What’s this?”
Diagrams were scrawled all over the page in bleeding blue ink. Nora made out the outlines of a room. An arc that represented a door.
Before, Mā had had the dulled expression of someone in chronic pain. But she no longer seemed dazed. Her eyes had a feverish light in them. She was flushed. “Do you like them? I haven’t finalized anything yet. But it’s getting somewhere.” She spoke quickly.
“Mā,” Nora whispered. “What are you doing?”
Her mother smiled strangely. Her lips were pulled taut over her teeth. “I’m planning for our house.”
Nora stood still. “This house? What—to flip it? You didn’t even want to keep this place. You wanted to sell it! And donate the money to all your nonprofits, remember?”
“But this is ours ,” Mā said, throwing her arms wide. “Why not keep it? We can make it into whatever we want!”
“What if I don’t want to—live here? What, we’re just going to uproot our lives?”
“What life?” Her mother clutched the notebook back to her chest. “Me driving an hour every day through traffic just to sit in a city government cubicle? Sitting in council meetings and trying to persuade people on policies they don’t care about? Taking money from my retirement account to save for your school?”
“But I thought you wanted to give back? All those—housing organizations? You hated living here.”
Mā shook her head. “Our family comes first. This is our way forward. We deserve this house, Jiā-Jiā.” Mā stepped toward her. “We’ll sell our house back in San Bernardino. It’ll get you through school. We’ll keep this place and make it ours. And when I go, I’ll hand it over to you. You can raise your family here.”
“I don’t want to raise anything here ,” Nora cried out. “This place feels cursed.” She was dizzy. Had she imagined it all? The ground trembling, her mother’s tear-stained face contorted in a silent cry? The roots, pulling Madeline into the ground…
There was something sinister here.
A drop of red fell onto the notebook between them. Nora looked up. “Mā. You have a nosebleed again.”
That meant that her migraines were getting worse. But her mother stared ahead unblinking.
“Are you okay? Do you need water?”
“We’ll remake this place.” Mā wiped the blood from her upper lip and it streaked across her cheeks. “We’ll make it ours. We’ll scrub their poison from it. It could be beautiful.”
“This house isn’t ours, okay?” Nora’s voice rose. “It never was. It belongs to the Yins. They’ve lost so much. We can’t take this away from them too.”
Her mother jolted back. “You’re sympathetic to them?”
Nora stood still.
“You don’t think—” she hissed. “That their family ruined our lives?”
“How?”
“You don’t even know what I lost. You don’t know what they took from me.”
“And what did they take from you?” Nora paused and took a deep breath. This wasn’t going anywhere right now. “Okay. You need to lie down. Let me get you some water. You don’t look good.”
“I’m fine.” Her mother turned away, and blood dripped onto the floor. “My head has never been clearer.”
“You don’t look fine.”
“Go,” her mother demanded. She frowned as if it pained her to look at her own daughter. “Get out.” She advanced and Nora stumbled back, past the threshold. The door swung shut in her face. Nora stood, stunned, as she listened to the lock click into place.
“Mā!” She knocked. “Mā. Let me in.” She wrenched the doorknob and rattled it. “Come on !”
The pacing footsteps started up again.