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“It’s not actually your decision,” I pointed out, keeping my voice low as other people wandered past the corner of the bar where we were chatting.
“My son is not going to live in that haunted house. Did you know some teenager was murdered in there?” Her blue eyes widened with conviction.
That story had been going around since Shelly and I had been kids. It was just one of many stories told about the old house, which was the center of hundreds of ghost tales in Singletree. “That’s not true, it’s just a story we used to tell each other to scare ourselves.”
“Daniel told me his friends knew the girl who died.”
This was pure Shelly. Zero rational thought, one hundred percent reaction. I needed to have a chat with Daniel about telling his mother stories. “It’s not true, Shell. Don’t you think there would have been a police investigation we would have noticed? And it’s a small enough town—we would have known the family. Plus, that story has been going around since we were in school, remember?”
“It’s haunted,” she said defiantly.
“It might be, I guess.” I didn’t know that it wasn’t. I suspected ghosts were not real and that the house suffered mostly from neglect rather than an infestation of otherworldly spooks.
“It’s dangerous.”
She might have a point on that one. “I won’t let Daniel wander, and it’ll be a good chance for him to learn how to fix a few things around the house.” I had already thought about how Dan could help patch drywall and replace fixtures. I’d thought that part through. This was a great chance to teach Dan things, to work on a real project side by side and to grow our relationship. I was excited about it.
She sighed. “I don’t like it. What’s wrong with the house you have now?”
The house I had now was a two-bedroom bungalow I’d bought after things fell apart with Shelly. It was a bachelor pad for the most part. But I think Shelly liked me being there, knowing I was staying put in the remnants of the failed life I’d once had. If she couldn’t move forward, she didn’t want me to. Or maybe that was just me, assigning my life’s failures to someone else. Either way, I was ready for a change, and this opportunity felt like an offering from a universe that had previously offered me only lost dreams.
“It’s going to be fine, Shelly. I’ll look out for Dan.”
Her shoulders rounded, the fight leaving her. “Fine.”
I sighed, turning to leave, and wished fervently that somehow things had worked out differently. For us, for Dan. For me. But these pseudo-fights with Shelly were just reminders of the mistakes of my past, the life I’d failed. And I would bear them because the only real obligation I had now was to my son. To make sure his life went a different way, that he had every opportunity I could give him.
I headed for the truck, where I’d already piled my duffle bags and the few scant pieces of furniture I thought I’d move. There had been beds in all the rooms, but I brought along an air mattress and sleeping bag for me and Dan just in case. I wasn’t sure how long that furniture had been there or what kind of condition it was in, and there was a good chance the mattresses needed to go out.
Today I drove around back, to the street entrance of the property. There was a one-car garage covered in vines, and a driveway that had once been paved but was now mostly rubble. I pulled the truck in, and shut off the engine, peering through the overgrown trees up at the old house, standing silent against a blaze of bright blue sky. A little shudder ran through me, but I wasn’t sure if it was excitement or foreboding.
“Here we go,” I said to myself, stepping out of the car and grabbing a couple of my bags.
I stopped to gaze through the dark windows of the little garage, but I couldn’t see a thing through the dirt-streaked glass, most of which was cracked and disintegrating. Whatever vehicle sat inside was undoubtedly in as bad of shape as the rest of the garage.
It only took an hour to get my room set up inside. I had taken one of the smaller bedrooms, figuring I’d let Addie have the master, not that it was really any better. En suite bathrooms had not been a thing when this house was built, and no matter where we each slept, we’d be sharing the single bathroom in the hall upstairs. I’d managed to get the power turned on with a call after we’d seen Anders Monday, so that was a start. But the place was dusty and creepy, and there wasn’t much I could do about that right away.
I was expecting Addison to arrive at any moment—she’d said Wednesday afternoon—and I thought I heard the door downstairs open a few times and then slam shut. Once I thought I’d even heard her walking around down there as I dusted the room I’d chosen for myself, but when I called down, no answer came.
That time, I’d bolted down the stairs, certain someone was in the house, but the place had been empty, the front door shut firmly. I refused to let the place creep me out, though. It was just a house. An old creaky house.
Finally, around four, I heard a car in the driveway outside, and peered out the back window to see the silver Toyota I knew Lottie drove pull up next to my truck.
Addison stepped out, her dark hair gleaming in the afternoon sun as she pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head and gazed up at the house. I wasn’t sure if she could see me in the window, so I waved, but she didn’t wave back.
I found myself hurrying down the stairs and out the back door, more excited than I should have been to have her here.
“Let me help you,” I said as I arrived to greet her.
“I don’t have much. I think I’ve got it.” Addison pulled two suitcases from the back of the car and then shut the trunk again.
“That’s it?” I asked. Part of me was a little disappointed she could come and go so easily—it might mean she wouldn’t find it hard to bolt at the first sign that this house was more than she wanted to take on.
“The house is furnished.” She shrugged. “I brought some clean sheets.”
I’d checked out the beds while I’d been poking around. The mattresses were destroyed by whatever had been living in the house since people had cleared out. “I don’t think you want to sleep on the mattresses up there.”
She frowned. “Why not?”
