When I opened the fridge looking for drinks, I found a six pack of Mexican beer, and put one at each setting. Michael had thought of everything.
“Were you a Boy Scout, by chance?”
“What?” He looked over his shoulder at me, smiling. “No, why?”
“You’ve got everything all set here. The salad, the enchiladas, beer. Very prepared.”
“It’s called being a single dad,” he said, no bitterness in his voice. “Since I fucked up everything else about my life, I decided I was going to be good at that. Part of the gig is feeding the kid, making sure everything is ready at the right time and not forgetting things. I keep a lot of lists.”
That stopped me in my tracks, it was so honest and endearing. And I didn’t know a lot of men who would be willing to try so hard—even in Michael’s circumstances. Of course, the truth was that I just didn’t know a whole lot of men in general. But I still thought Michael might be special in this way. “I think you might be more organized than Lottie, and that’s saying something.”
“Thanks.” He put a plate in front of me and sat down with one in front of his place. “Do you always call your mom by her first name?”
“Only when pointing out her more annoying traits.”
He nodded, and I recalled that he didn’t have his parents anymore—I couldn’t remember when they’d passed, but I knew he’d been young, at least when his mom died. Guilt flooded me—he probably thought I took Lottie for granted.
“I mean, we all love her to pieces,” I said quickly.
“I know, Addison. It’s just funny, that’s all.” He smiled at me, warmth in his expression, and I relaxed a bit.
“Where’s Daniel tonight?” I asked him, realizing he’d said he had the boy every other week. Was it his week off? He’d had him on Friday.
“I asked Shelly to take him for a couple extra days. I wanted to make sure the house was safe before we had him here.”
That was smart. Michael was a really good father, I realized. “He’s coming tomorrow?”
Michael nodded, and part of me felt happy to imagine Dan here, exploring and just adding one more bit of life to the empty old house.
We ate in silence for a few minutes, the house emitting creaks and groans here and there as the lawn outside the windowpanes in the back door went from green to taupe to black with the fading light of the sun. As we finished up, I started to relax a little bit. The house felt like a whole world apart from everything I’d known before, its own universe of worn fabric, ruined wallpaper and creaky old floors. Even with a Tucker here, the place felt comforting in some way, and despite my need to pull together some funds and jumpstart my life in New York again, I found myself taking a deep breath and relaxing a little bit.
“So,” Michael said as we sat in relative silence, eating. “Finance, huh? Has that always been your calling?”
I thought about that. Did I have a calling? “Honestly? No. I wanted a job that would pay well. I knew I wanted to live in a big city, to make my own way, and finance seemed appropriate since math and numbers had always come easily to me.”
He nodded, his fork poised in the air as his eyes held mine. “And if you hadn’t had to think about money, if you could have chosen anything, what would you have done, Addison?”
“Call me Addie, please.”
“Okay. What would you do if you could do anything, Addie?” His head tilted slightly to the side, and I realized he was really listening, waiting for my answer. When was the last time I’d felt that kind of rapt attention from Luke? Maybe never. Our lives were about his life, mostly.
I let my mind roll back to dreams I’d had as a kid, before I knew how important money was going to be in my life. “I used to want to be a decorator. Or an interior designer.” It sounded so vapid to me now. “Silly.”
Michael was still watching me intently. “Why is that silly? That’s a real job. And not many people have the kind of foresight to know what works together in a space. I definitely don’t.”
I lifted a shoulder, suddenly a little uncomfortable at his validation of my one-time dream. I had dismissed it, set it away from me as unworthy of my lofty city goals. I knew there were interior designers in big cities, but I had never been sure how to approach that, how I would build clientele, get my footing. I didn’t think that kind of job came with the same starting salary as mergers and acquisitions work. “It just always seemed insubstantial to me, I guess. Like it would be something fun. Not work.”
“That sounds like the perfect kind of work to me.” He smiled at me, his eyes lingering on my face, dropping from my eyes to my lips for a split second before suddenly clearing his throat and scooting his chair back from the table to clear his dish.
As I carried my plate to the sink, considering his statement, a shrill scream came from somewhere above us and my heart skittered to a halt and then took off at a gallop inside my chest.
What. The hell. Was that?
11
Old Houses and Unearthly Screams
Michael
It wasn’t like me to believe in things I couldn’t see or touch, but I was beginning to think maybe Daniel and his friends were right. This place was haunted.
The scream that came from upstairs had not been human, that much was sure. And it seemed to reverberate inside the walls long after the actual noise had faded back into the gauzy silence of the place. Addie was frozen over the sink, her eyes huge as she stared at me, and I wished I could stand up and offer some comfort.
Don’t worry, I’d say. These old houses are often plagued by sub-human screeches that make your skin crawl right off your bones. Part of their charm. Nothing to worry about.
But I didn’t know what the noise had been, and it had been creepy as fuck. My skin was prickled in gooseflesh and for a second my mind had screamed too, telling me to run.
Once silence had settled again, I tried to appear calm. Brave. I was about to address the sound we’d heard when another noise crashed through the house—a single distinct impact, like something hitting the floor above us, hard. I swallowed, forcing my feet to stay planted, my lungs to continue to breathe normally.
“Those weren’t just old house noises,” Addie said, her face white and her knuckles matching it as she gripped the edge of the counter.
“No,” I agreed. Had someone broken in? Maybe the noises I’d heard earlier before Addie arrive had been someone coming inside. Had they been hiding all this time? Waiting for what, exactly?
“So we should . . . “ She looked around the kitchen, as if she might stumble onto a handbook we’d missed: How To Handle Oneself in a Haunted House. There was nothing.
“I guess I could, ah . . .” I trailed off, wishing chivalry was actually dead. “I could go check it out.” I cringed inwardly while trying to look self-assured on the surface. Being in possession of a set of balls didn’t seem like a good reason to have to be the one to investigate any and all terrifying noises. I picked up a cast iron pan that I’d found earlier in a cabinet.
“Um, no.” Addie said, shaking her head. “You can’t go alone. You’ll go up there, and then if something happens to you, I’ll have to go up. Or whatever kills you will know I’m alone and come down looking for me.”