Page 42 of Paper Ghosts

The sting in her bones suddenly pushed Willamena fully awake, focusing her, and now she knew exactly what time line she was in. She reached for her prescription on the nightstand.

“The pain is waking you more often,” Jack said as he leaned forward.

“Which you wouldn’t know, but you insist on sitting there all night, watching me like a nursemaid.”

He smiled. “Lurking in corners is part of my job description, Wills.”

She laughed a little as she swallowed the pill. He was the only one who called her Wills now.

“Are you sure Bailey’s coming home today?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Hot damn.” He slapped his knees and stood. “Eight years. I can’t wait to see her again.”

Willamena only nodded. There were no words to communicate how desperately she had missed her granddaughter, and the bright, bittersweet happiness of laying eyes on her again.

Jack walked around the room, snapping his fingers rhythmically with excitement. He paused by the window facing the backyard and stopped snapping. “That other one outside is happy about it, too. What are you going to tell her about him?”

“About him? Nothing.” She would always stand by that decision. Everything else was tinged with uncertainty. She’d never wanted to send Bailey away, but she’d had no choice. If she had been in a better frame of mind that night, maybe she could have thought of another way. She’d come up with dozens of better alternatives over the years, which did no good now. But as Jack could attest, she had a propensity to hold on to things well past the time she should have released them. “But there are things she needs to hear from me. Like the story of you.”

Jack said dramatically to the ceiling, “Oh, thank God. All this time she’s thought you were in love with Andy Smooth. She used to listen to his album over and over on her phone in her room. I could hear it through her earbuds.” He walked to her and sat on the bed. “Now Tug, he listened to some great music when he was a teenager.”

She leaned back against her pillow. “I’m sorry I couldn’t listen to music anymore, after.” It had been too much. It was still too much. She had always been able to feel music in a transcendental way, but after Jack died—after he came back—it was one detachment from reality too many.

“Wills, don’t you know by now?” he said. “I didn’t stay for the music.”

No, he stayed because she was here. And she could never move, she’d even married Terrence in order to keep the house, because he was here. It was a catch-22, but they eventually made their peace with it, though not before Willamena went a little crazy. After Jack died, she remembered charging out of the Wester House to confront Jani, but then almost turning back. The curious thing her grandmother used to say when Willamena was young suddenly made sense. They were everywhere, glimmering in shadows, waiting for her to see them. But in certain places, there were voids, and when Willamena was older and could think more clearly, she realized that what she had once called dead zones were actually the opposite. They were where no one had died, so there were only the living. She remembered her anger being stronger than her fear, propelling her forward anyway, and once at Jani’s house, she spewed such mad, unbelievable things that she would never forget the look on Jani’s face, as if Willamena had turned into a monster. For sending her grandmother that Polaroid, for the series of events that followed, she swore to take her revenge, swore to find a way to hurt her more, and she had meant it. It was no surprise when Jani left town the very next morning and never came back. During that time, Willamena would have burned every bridge she had, she would have burned down the entire Wester House with herself and her grandmother inside, if Jack hadn’t finally managed to calm her, center her, save her. He told her that he was still here and he wouldn’t leave, not until she was ready for him to. He ended up guiding her through every phase of her life, because there had never come a time when she was ready to let him go.

But now, whatever freedom was, it was finally coming for them both.

“Close your eyes and get some rest,” he said. “I’ll be right here when you wake.”

“This house is full of corners,” she said, turning off the light. “Go lurk somewhere else.”

“Not a chance. I like your corners best.”

As Bailey drove into the downtown loop late that October afternoon, the sun was the color of a persimmon as it set directly behind the courthouse clock tower. It cast a long, narrow shadow over the center park. She remembered once hearing a story about how the Westers, who built the courthouse, had planned it that way to remind everyone of their family’s towering presence. The clock tower shadow was the reason Hen Town’s annual Halloween festival, the Shadow Fair, was held downtown. There were banners everywhere she passed, announcing this year’s fair on Saturday.

In one of his chatty weekly phone calls, sharing random news from town as if she wanted to hear it, her dad told her that the county had relocated their offices out of the courthouse last year because the clock tower needed too much costly repair. For a while, there was concern the gothic building was going to be demolished and the Shadow Fair would be no more. But when it was sold, the winning bid came from a local developer who planned to repair the tower and turn the building into a boutique hotel.

She drove slowly around the loop twice, biding her time. She used to relax when her dad would drive them back into town after every vacation, exhausted and smelling of suitcases and airports. She’d loved the moment she finally began to recognize old, familiar things. It had never been anything specific, not even the Wester House itself. It had just been the idea that she knew where home was.

She wasn’t sure what she would feel today, eight years after leaving, but she quickly discovered it was resentment. She wanted no part of who she used to be here, yet things here still resonated with her, like she’d left something of herself behind, something vital.

She finally turned out of the loop onto a residential street, winding her way to the Wester House. When she pulled in front, there was a faint glow from a television flickering inside the dark sunroom. Mim, she was certain, had seen her arrive.

She took a deep breath and switched off the engine of her rental car. Adjusting her hat to make sure it covered her hair, she then reached for her carry-on and got out.

When she got to the front door, she hesitated, wondering if she should simply walk in the way she used to. She opted for ringing the bell instead.

“Bailey?” her dad said when he opened the door. “Why didn’t you use your key?”

“I wasn’t sure if I should.”

He pulled her inside and hugged her. She could feel the tension he’d been under, how it quivered through him like a bowstring. There was an immediate sensation that the house was happy to see her, too. Its presence was right in front of her, staring at her face in wonderment. She thought she’d imagined this part. Her old therapist said this feeling of care, this humanization of the house, might have been a childhood construct to offset the loss of her mother, or because of Mim’s unobtainable standards, or because Bailey felt that Tug was miserable here. The house, her therapist suggested, became her invisible parent. It asked for nothing, and expected nothing in return.

She heard an uneven gait and turned to see Mim slowly making her way down the hallway by the staircase. She was using an old umbrella as a cane. Bailey’s eyes immediately went to the long floor register in the foyer. The umbrella that had always been lying in the vent was now gone.