Page 17 of Play Nice

“But…she didn’t live there,” I say. “Right? How has this never come up?”

“Why would it? That house is quite the sensitive subject for everyone, is it not?”

“That’s a polite way to phrase it. Very diplomatic. Still…”

“Would I board a plane and turn to the person next to me to chat about Nine-Eleven? Walk into a burn unit and ask if anyone needs a light?”

“Okay. Wow. You’ve made your point.”

“To answer your question, Alex moved out about a year after she lost you girls. She moved in with Roy here in Connecticut. But she didn’t sell the house. She believed it was possessed and that she had a moral responsibility to rid it of evil before passing it on to some other family to suffer there as you all did. She hung on to it. She and Roy spent time there over the years trying to exorcise it—to some success from what I understand. I did my best to talk her into selling, but she couldn’t bring herself to put it on the market. I think it was hard for her to let it go, for as much pain as it caused, it’s the last place she had you girls. Where you were all together.” She puts out her cigarette, flicks the butt over the side of the banister. All the world’s an ashtray. “In a way, I’m glad to know she was there in the end. In a place where she felt close to you and your sisters.”

My hands find my snake charm. I rub it between my fingers as my brain somersaults inside my skull, trying to work out something I already know but just don’t want to believe. “She was…wait. She was where in the end?”

“In the house. At Edgewood. Leda didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“She was there when it happened. The heart attack. She died there.”

Of all the places to go. I can accept her dying, but I can’t accept her dying there.

“Must have slipped Leda’s mind,” I say.

“Mm. Must have,” Helen says.

“I don’t get it. What was she doing there?”

“She’d visit sometimes. When she missed you and your sisters. And to make sure…”

“Make sure what?”

“That the demonic activity remained dormant.”

“Ah.”

“Your judgment is wasted on me, I’m merely the messenger,” Helen says. “I didn’t approve. Didn’t think it was good for her mental or physical health to be there. Turns out, I was right. But so often, being right means nothing but winning a round of a losing game. What an empty victory. My sister is gone. The house is still there. And it’s yours now. And Leda’s and Daphne’s.”

The thought of the three of us going back, pulling up to the end of that sleepy suburban street, up the long, cracked driveway. Seeing the house waiting there, shaded among the trees. That clunky 1970s shed-style split-level with such uninviting sharp angles. Narrow windows that didn’t let in enough light or air. The uneven stone pathway that led to the splintered stairs, wooden railings always wet, stinking of rot. The front door painted black, heavy and thick, but like all the other doors at 6 Edgewood Drive, it would allegedly open on its own and slam itself shut. How many mornings did I wake to find that front door wide open, a dead animal on the welcome mat? Offerings from the stray cats we would feed, which Mom took as proof. She thought that the cats were making sacrifices to the beast within the walls. That they could sense the sinister supernatural presence.

“Well then. I should probably go see Roy about that vial of holy water.”

Helen laughs, then offers me her arm. “Shall we?”

7

I find Tommy downstairs getting his tarot read by a gaggle of fabulous hags.

“The Fool,” one of the women says.

“The Fool reversed,” says another.

“No, you’re looking at it upside down. It’s not reversed to him.”

“What does this one mean?” Tommy asks, wide-eyed. “The Fool?”

“Don’t be offended.”

“I’m not,” Tommy says. “Just curious.”