32
Don’t Upend the Pens
Addison
I called my boss to let him know I was coming back early, and things didn’t go quite the way I’d imagined.
“We definitely have a place for you here,” he told me. “It just might not be the same place you left.”
“What does that mean?”
“Look, Addie. It’s just . . . I mean, you upended my pen cup the day you left.”
“Is that a metaphor?” I’d been really angry about Luke that day and didn’t remember exactly what had happened when I’d stormed around work and told my boss I was taking leave.
“No. It isn’t an expression. You dumped all my pens on the floor.” He said this in the same tone one might say, “you stormed in here with a knife and took hostages.” My workplace was traditionally quite sedate. Upending pens was practically a violent offense.
“Um. Sorry?” I didn’t feel sorry. I’d been upset.
“Anyway, I was pretty sure that after that, you wouldn’t be coming right back, and we needed an analyst. So we hired one.”
That hurt a bit. “So where does that leave me?”
“Junior analyst.”
“Roger. I’m thirty-five.” I’d spent ten years working my way up to the position I’d left not four months earlier, and now I was going to be demoted?
“And a bit unpredictable.”
I would figure this out with him in person. “Fine. Fine. I’ll be back Monday.”
“Ah, okay. We’ll see you then, I guess.”
After that less-than-positive interaction, I had to scour my network for a place to stay, finally landing a couch with a friend from college for one week.
Still, I needed to get back to the city. Get back to building the life I’d intended in the first place. Once the house was sold, I could make my city life more comfortable. More permanent.
I just needed to hold to my commitment to help Daniel put on the best haunted house Singletree had ever seen, and then I’d be leaving.
“There you are!” Daniel crowed from the front porch as I strode up the walkway on Saturday, steeling myself to see Michael again.
“Here I am,” I agreed. I had worn a white dress, as instructed, so that I could play the part of Lucille Tanner, ghostly and lovelorn.
“Good. Dad needs help with the lights upstairs.”
“Ah, okay,” I said. “Or I could do something down here. Set up gravestones?” I gestured toward the lawn.
“Emmett and Virge have that covered.”
“Oh,” I said. It had been my plan to avoid Michael as much as possible, not help him hang lights. And though I didn’t want to let Daniel down, I also didn’t want to spend my night in an uncomfortable situation with Michael, and I was guessing he would think the same. So I did us both a favor.
I hid. Like a scared little girl.
I was still dawdling around the back door, watching a surprising number of middle school and high school kids running around setting up, when a tall thin guy with about half a beard appeared from around the back of the garage, squinting as he regarded the organized chaos around him.
“Here for the traps,” he told me.
I must have looked semi-official, the way I was guarding the back door in my efforts to avoid Michael. “Sorry, what?” I asked him. Had we planned traps into the event? Maybe Dan and Michael had changed the plans since I’d left. “Traps?”
“The coons.” He nodded once, as if to show that we were both now in agreed understanding.
“You are?” I asked.
“Liam. Exterminator.”
“Oh, you’re the guy catching the raccoons!”
“Yeah. And I got these for you.” He held out a bag that held a few things I recognized, and some I didn’t. Michael’s watch. My silver earring. A couple spoons. The ring we’d found in the little box. And a slim silver bracelet I’d never seen before. “Had ‘em in their hidey hole up there. Coons like the shiny things,” he said, and winked at me like this was a secret we shared.
“All right, Liam,” I said, moving aside. “Do what you need to do, I guess.” I watched him disappear inside the house I’d still been too chicken to enter.
It didn’t feel like my house anymore. It felt like Michael’s house now. I was beginning to question why I had even bothered to come when I heard a familiar deep voice inside. “Thanks,” Michael was saying, and every nerve in my body fired at once. I nearly fell over right there on the back step.
I knew I’d see him, of course I did. I just hadn’t realized quite how tentative my grasp on my own resolve really was. Just hearing that voice made me want to give up all my plans and beg Michael to give us a chance, to see that we were better together.
But he’d been the one to make the choice. And I needed to accept that my own life did not lie here in Singletree in a ridiculously large old house.
“Thanks,” Michael said again, and too late, I realized he and Liam were coming out the back door. I sprang into the bush next to the door, crouching and then realizing a few seconds too late that the bush had dropped its leaves for winter, and I was essentially kneeling behind a pile of twigs. Michael’s head swiveled to where I was hiding, and his face showed his surprise at finding me there. “Ah, hi,” he said, his brows knit together.
I stood, brushing myself off to free my gauzy dress of twigs and dead leaves, and tried to look composed. “Um. Hi.”
“Caught the coons,” Liam told me, holding up two long black boxes.
“They’re in there?” I asked, momentarily distracted from the way my heart was beating around in my chest like a trapped bird.
“Yep.”
“And where will you take them?” I asked him.
“Out to the woods. Hopefully they’ll get set up out there and won’t be back to bother you none.”
“Oh. Okay.” I felt Michael’s eyes on me as I quizzed Liam, and suddenly wished I could think of many more raccoon-related queries to keep Liam talking so I didn’t have to talk to Michael. But I was out.
“Just bill me,” Michael told Liam, and the tall man nodded and left.
“Wasn’t sure you’d come,” Michael said to me. The blue of his eyes looked deep and heavy in the fading light, and I had an urge to cup his cheek in my hand. He looked weary and sad. Much like I felt.
“I promised Daniel,” I said, feeling other words crowding up my throat. But I wouldn’t let them out. I was tired of being the woman men gave up easily, and I wasn’t going to beg.
“Right,” he said. “Listen, ah—“
“No.” I interrupted him. “Let’s just get through tonight. I’m leaving tomorrow, and then we can just coordinate at a distance. It’ll be fine.” I spun on my heel and retreated around the side of the house, fully aware that I was acting like a child. But with my heart in tatters in my chest and my sanity similarly frayed, it was the best I could do.
Night fell soon enough, and the purple lights sprang to life around the yard. Daniel and his friends greeted guests at the gates and walked them through the house along the path we’d set up. You could hear shrieks and screams as the jump scares and spooky surprises worked their magic, and I was more than happy to stick by the front gates and distribute candy as our guests left, laughing and smiling over the fun we’d planned. I imagined that in the future, my Halloweens would be slightly less family-oriented. New York City didn’t really lend itself to high school fundraisers at big ancestral houses.