I Haunt It That Way

Chapter 1

Receiving an outrageous inheritance from an eccentric old woman was like something straight out of a Bryony Brooks novel.

And Thora would know; she’d been the bestselling author’s personal assistant for the past five years. In that time, she’d

helped twelve novels leave Bryony’s brain and land on grocery store shelves, across from the greeting cards and next to the

meager offerings of office supplies, where they sold by the hundreds of thousands.

Moving a couple million books a year for more than half a century made Bryony Brooks extraordinarily wealthy. In turn, she

was transforming Thora Williamson from someone who once had to deposit loose change so the rent payment would clear to someone

whose balance was in the millions.

Thora left the lawyer’s office awestruck. In the days since Bryony had died, Thora simply didn’t know what to do with herself. Thankfully, Bryony’s agent, Nnenna, was there to walk her to the train. Otherwise she might have stood on the sidewalk until the pigeons mistook her for a statue.

“Go ahead,” Nnenna said, beaming. “Call your husband. Tell him you’re rich!”

“Can’t,” Thora said blankly. “He’s off in Alberta among the dinosaur bones, no phone signal.”

Chosen for the comparative biology PhD program at the New York Natural History Museum, Cody Briscoe was one of a select few

given access to the biggest collection of fossils, the most intrepid team of mentors, and the research projects all dinosaur-loving

six-year-olds envision their futures will manifest.

“What a fun surprise to come home to,” Nnenna said.

Thora could practically see Cody out on the sun-parched expanse of his dig, coated in dust and sweat, doing whatever it was

he did out there with brushes and chisels. She didn’t know the details. And here she was, on her way back to their Morningside

Heights apartment, where she hadn’t slept in at least three months, as Bryony’s needs slowly escalated from professional,

to personal, to medical. Even if she could reach him, she wasn’t sure what she would say, given how the conversation went

before he left for Alberta.

When they reached the subway station, Nnenna hugged her. “Ding, dong, the witch is dead, Thora,” she said, holding Thora by

the shoulders and peering into her eyes. “This is a good thing. All that money she was sitting on can finally go somewhere

useful. You and I are off to bigger and better things!”

Thora smiled weakly as Nnenna practically floated down the stairs to the downtown side of the train platform. She was right,

but Thora was still wrestling with the number of zeros she had just seen in a row.

She hadn’t maintained such loyalty to her boss hoping for this payout, at least not consciously.

Her salary was quite generous, though a pittance in proportion to the sheer size of Bryony’s coffers.

She made just enough to cover the shockingly steep rent on a two-bedroom in an elevator building and not much more.

Thora half expected her to donate the entirety of her estate to her favorite cause, which, incidentally, was restoring oyster beds in the New York Harbor and lower Hudson River.

“A world without oysters is no world at all,” she told Thora once as she shucked a freshly delivered dozen with her favorite knife.

It was inlaid with mother-of-pearl and sharp enough to cut to the bone if she wasn’t careful. Bryony was always careful.

As Thora skated home from the meeting, scarcely aware of her fellow straphangers on the 1 train, she reached a new level of

detachment. Bryony dying left Thora feeling like a castaway, alone at sea. She had no clue what to do next. But this money

making its way into her bank account was like washing ashore on some island paradise bustling with thriving, happy people.

She could do anything there; she only needed to make a choice.

She ought to talk to Cody about it. The problem was, as she considered herself on this island paradise, he simply wasn’t there.

As she spent more and more time with Bryony, she found herself thinking about Cody less and less. Missing him less. Despite

having been married for over five years, she didn’t know what it was supposed to feel like anymore. This was no surprise to

Cody; she’d told him she was thinking of moving out. He asked her to wait until he was back from Alberta to work through it.

His decision to prioritize summer field work rather than fixing their marriage told her what she needed to know.

Thanks to previous summer trips, he already had everything he needed to write his thesis.

Thora, skeptical of his claims of writer’s block, knew he worked best with an audience.

Writing, famously, was a solitary endeavor.

He was stalling on that like he was stalling on her. Thora didn’t feel like waiting anymore.

When she unlocked the door to her apartment, she found her neighbor Amethyst there, doing laundry. Amethyst’s apartment had

not been updated in ages because she took over the lease from her parents. They owned the neighborhood metaphysical shop,

where she read tarot cards and sold fragrant sticks of palo santo, though her folks now lived in Arizona, where they could

be closer to a “cosmic runway.”

Renovations to Thora and Cody’s apartment immediately before their move-in, however, included the supremely coveted in-unit

laundry. Knowing what a big deal this was in New York, Thora made duplicate keys for her trusted neighbors so they could all

enjoy this amenity. Her neighbors didn’t have to schlep their delicates out into the mean streets of New York; in return,

they filled her nosy ass in on their daily dramas. Win-win.

“How’s it going, Amy?” Thora asked. “Everything good with Lily?” Thora was something of an auntie to Amethyst’s tween daughter,

and there had been some recent drama at school regarding a love note, allegedly written by Lily to a boy she in fact hated.

At the moment, Thora preferred talking about that than processing her newfound riches.

Amethyst flipped her emerald hair—“You gotta keep ’em guessing”—over her shoulder in triumph. “You were right to tell her

to use handwriting analysis. The teacher hung up a bunch of student work on a bulletin board and she and her friends spent

their whole lunchtime cracking the case.”

What a valuable window into the minds of kids this age, the same as the characters Thora would write someday. “Who wrote the

note?”

“Another boy in the class who had some elaborate scheme to swoop in assuming Lily would get rejected. She read him the riot act, and now I have to go meet with the principal because the forger is claiming she bullied him.”

This gossip was almost as good as the money Thora just came into. She was dying to hear the outcome of the meeting. “What

kind of pickup artist nonsense is that? Bet you can’t wait to talk to the principal.”

“We will be prepared. The boy she doesn’t like? He told the forger they can’t be friends until he learns to respect women.”

“What a stand-up little dude!”

“So now Lily does have a crush on this boy she used to hate, can you believe?”

Thora could absolutely believe. Also, she could never be a middle school teacher. She loved shit like this way too much and

would never be able to steer students back on topic when interpersonal drama had them riled. What she could do was write books

for this audience. The more dramatic, the better.

“But how are you doing?” Amethyst asked. “It must be strange to be here after practically living at your boss’ house. I use

this washing machine more than you do.”

Thora had piggybacked onto Bryony’s laundry service, so that was undoubtedly true. “I’m back from her lawyer’s office. She

left me a bunch of money.”

Amethyst clapped her hands together. “I knew she would! I knew all that work would pay off! And not for nothing, I was manifesting

that for you.”

At least Amethyst had been manifesting something.

Thora’s motivation for working with Bryony morphed over time.

Fundamentally, she loved Bryony’s books and wanted to make sure they got to their readers for as long as possible.

Then some amount of pity entered the mix.

She felt bad Bryony didn’t have anyone close to her, so she gradually became the author’s primary confidante.

A few years in, staying at Bryony’s to be both assistant and caregiver felt better than staying in her own apartment as her husband became scarcely more than a handsome and charismatic roommate.

“I think this is my chance to truly chase my dreams, isn’t it?”

“Hell yes, it is. What are you dreaming about? Give it some Bryony Brooks flair.”

Thora thought. “Let’s see, I could use my riches to ruin the life of my greatest enemy. Right before he succumbs to utter

madness, I would make sure he knew I was responsible for all his suffering. I think I would still have enough money left over

to buy myself a new identity and live out my days on a beach in the Mediterranean. It’s a lot of money.”

Amethyst sighed. “I love how you say ‘my greatest enemy’ as if I don’t know it’s that guy Lee from college whose life you

would ruin given the chance. You’re obsessed with him.”

Thora scowled. She was not obsessed with Lee Halliday. Holding a grudge against the person whose harebrained scheme was directly

tied to her biggest family tragedy did not mean she was obsessed with him. She had to hear about him all the time, given that

he was Cody’s best friend. He was somehow all too present in her life, even if he knew better than to set foot in this apartment

while Thora was home. She wasn’t obsessed.

“I’m not obsessed,” she said.

Amethyst gave her a sarcastic thumbs-up. “Nothing even mildly unpleasant has ever happened to Cody in his entire charmed existence,

so it’s going to come as a shock when you leave him. But he’s going to be okay, trust me.”

“Do me a favor and manifest that for him, please, because I’m feeling pretty shitty about the whole thing.”