Frankie #2
Wrenching my gaze from his watch—and chest hair—I shove my sunglasses up onto the top of my head, take the phone into my own hands, then tilt the screen until I’m able to make out Ash’s front porch as viewed from his doorbell.
The footage was taken at night, so I can’t see details.
But he has enough yard lighting that I can make out his lawn and the footpath leading through it to his porch’s steps, and the front door above them.
“I’m sorry,” I say, squinting. “What am I looking at?”
He grins.
“Footage from my doorbell camera the night before Mrs. Baumgarten said she was robbed. And what do you think it shows?” He
doesn’t wait for me to answer, he’s so excited to tell me. “I’ve looked through all the footage from the week Mrs. Baumgarten
and her husband were staying there. No one walks up to the house. No one except for them.”
I close my eyes for a second. My pulse is beginning to thump in a way it hasn’t since Richard moved out, even when I’m swimming
above a moderate pace for my heart rate. This conversation has just progressed beyond my wildest fantasies. How dare my brother
imply I have no life? This is living.
“Are you suggesting that Mrs. Baumgarten imagined all of her wine and groceries disappearing?” I open my eyes to ask.
Ash has got on sunglasses as well, the lenses tinted darkly enough that it’s hard to see his own eyes. But I think I notice
them widen.
“No, no,” he insists. “I’m not suggesting that at all! Well, I guess I’m sort of suggesting that, but . . . she’s a pretty old lady, right? Maybe she forgot that she and her husband ate all the groceries.
That happens with age, right? People get forgetful?”
I pass his phone back to him. “Both of them? At the same time?”
“Well.” Ash’s grin fades slightly. “I mean, I’ve heard of—”
“So what you’re saying is that, based on the footage from your doorbell camera, you didn’t see anyone else enter the house
to take the Baumgartens’ wine and food?”
“Well, yeah.” Ash’s grin is still confident as he puts his phone away. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. And that’s good, right?”
“Because—”
“Well, it means our property values won’t go down, because there’s been no crime in the area. Hopefully the Baumgartens will
get the help they need. You know, we put my dad in a nursing home after he had an accident, and it worked out great.” His
smile fades. “Well, maybe not for him. But for the rest of us. He was kind of a hard person to live with.”
This is a shockingly self-aware admission. I’ve had patients who’ve been in therapy for years and still can’t admit that their parents weren’t perfect. “I’m so sorry.”
“Oh, no worries. He had a lot of issues.” But Ash’s smile has returned. Whatever accident befell his father, it doesn’t bother
him that much. “Like I said,” he goes on. “It’s a shame, but a lot better than the alternative.”
“The alternative?”
“Well, didn’t Mrs. Baumgarten try to tell you that she thought it was ghosts?” He tosses his head and laughs, not a care in
the world. He seems younger than his age, which I know from LinkedIn is the same as mine. “I mean, better dementia than that
the house is haunted, right?”
This is it, my heart thumps happily. I’m going to eviscerate him.
“How interesting you would say that. Especially since, if it turns out the house is haunted or that Mrs. Baumgarten does have
dementia, what happened to her can’t be your fault, and you won’t owe her a refund.”
That wipes the grin off his face.
“N-no,” he stammers. “I didn’t mean that. I mean, yes, what happened to her isn’t my fault. But when I said ghosts, I didn’t mean—”
“What did you mean?” This is the most fun I’ve had in weeks. Months, maybe.
“Well, I mean, she said it was ghosts, and we can’t prove it wasn’t ghosts—”
“Oh, but we can.” The smile I give him is my highest wattage, the one I save for my nieces when they’ve done something remarkable,
like a back handspring. “Because ghosts don’t exist. Right?”
“Uh.” He looks almost pained. “Well, I’ve always—”
“Maintained a healthy skepticism about the possible existence of the supernatural?”
“Uh, no.” Ash keeps glancing back toward his own house. I have the feeling he wishes he was safely inside of it, away from
me. “I think it exists. There’s a lot of stuff that can’t be explained any other way.”
“You mean the way people used to think plagues were caused by witches, but now we know they’re caused by bacteria spread through
respiratory droplets?”
“No. Well, yes. But that doesn’t mean those witches didn’t have magical powers.”
“Doesn’t it?” I’m enjoying myself. My last patient for the day texted earlier to reschedule, so now I have nothing but time to decimate my handsome neighbor.
“I can’t say that I agree. There is a rational and scientific explanation for everything on this planet, and that includes so-called ghost sightings.
While it’s true that forty-six percent of the population believes that ghosts exist, what most of them are referring to as ghosts are actually hypnagogic hallucinations caused when a person is in a state between deep sleep and wakefulness.
They most often occur when someone is suffering from excessive stress in their life—for instance, after the death of a loved one—and can seem very realistic. ”
He looks stunned. “Wait . . . really?”
“Yes, really. Those hallucinations are, however, completely harmless and go away as soon as the person gets a full night’s
sleep and is feeling less anxious. That is why so many colleges receive an increase in ‘ghost sightings’ around the dorms
during finals. Students are stressed from studying on very little sleep and so they hallucinate and think they see ‘ghosts.’”
I’m delighted to observe that he’s now staring at me with his mouth slightly ajar.
“So I think we can safely guarantee that what happened to your renters wasn’t because of ghosts,” I say. “And I think we can
also safely rule out dementia, too.”
“We can?”
“Yes, we can. Because I have some footage of my own.” I reach into the pocket of my cutoffs for my phone. “May I show you?”
Ash nods dumbly as I find the video I’m looking for in my photo library and hold my phone screen up close to his face.
“It rained a little earlier this week, but fortunately I took this just a few hours after Mrs. Baumgarten reported the theft
to me. Harbor Hideaways has a copy. I guess Rochelle didn’t mention that to you?”
“Uh,” he says, glancing from me to the phone screen in confusion. “No.”
“I see.” I know exactly why Rochelle kept the information to herself: her bosses told her not to say a word to anyone, in
case of any lawsuits. That’s why I also sent the footage to Jackie.
“What am I looking at here?” Ash has lost all his former swagger.
“This.”
I press Play. My video is probably just as difficult to see in the bright afternoon sunlight as his was. I know by the way his brow has
lowered, the skin at the corners of his eyes crinkling—somewhat attractively—as he squints at the images I’ve studied myself
so many times: the dirt beneath the back deck of his house, the side facing the lake, by one of his basement windows. The
screen to the window is sagging loosely in one corner, the metal rusted everywhere—except the part where it’s been recently
severed.
That’s not the main focus of the video, however. The main focus is on the area in front of the window. Little to no rain gets
through the slats of the deck above, leaving the dirt there dry, devoid of vegetation, and dusty . . .
And full of the footprints of the people who broke into his home.
I know Ash can see the footprints because his expression has fallen. Those laugh lines at the sides of his eyes—eyes I’m now
able to see are as dark brown as my own—go slack as his jaw sags, and his face, beneath his healthy tan, has gone pale.
Despite my glee over his discomfort, I find myself feeling a tiny bit sorry for him. It’s always a little sad when Summer
People realize West Harbor isn’t the vacation paradise they’ve built it up to be in their heads. The fact that it does have
real problems—the same problems faced by every town in America, excluding the witch stuff—can come as a blow to many who’ve
idealized it.
I watch as Ash mulls over this realization, the muscles of his perfectly square jaw twitching a little.
“Unless ghosts have taken to wearing running shoes,” I say, “I would guess by those footprints that someone—or rather, a number
of someones—broke into your house through the basement window to steal from your renters.”
Ash snatches the phone out of my hand and squints at the screen, holding it close to his face. A few seconds later, having watched the entire video again, he yells, “Son of a bitch!”
Without another word, he thrusts my phone back at me, turns, and runs back toward his own house.
This is not at all what I was expecting. In my imagination, when I confronted Ash with the incontrovertible truth of Mrs.
Baumgarten’s claims, and his own (potentially criminal, or at least criminally negligent) follow-up to them, I never anticipated
that he’d care, let alone be upset. I thought I was going to have to use the opportunity to make him understand why he should care.
But he does. He obviously does care. . . .
Unless it’s only because he doesn’t want to get sued by his own tenants.
Still, I know my part in this little drama is over. I’ve done what I set out to do—avenged Mrs. Baumgarten, who’s unfortunately
been victimized twice: first by getting robbed, and then by having no one believe her claim that she was robbed . . . until
I showed this video to her, Harbor Hideaways, the police, and now Ash.
I know I should turn around and go into my own house. I know I shouldn’t get more involved than I already am.
But for some reason, instead I hear myself cry, “Wait!”
Then I run after Ash Merit.