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A trap, of sorts. Like leading a moth to a flame.
I stand up from the table, pushing my chair back with a screech before walking into the kitchen and grabbing my purse. I don’t have it in me right now: sifting through those names, spending another day chasing ghosts. I can’t pass the next three hours in this house, alone. Mason is everywhere here: in the closed door of his nursery, the one room in this house I refuse to step inside. In the child locks still strapped to the cabinets and in his crayon-scribbled drawings still stuck to the fridge.
That’s the thing about a missing child, the thing nobody tells you: They never die. In a way, their goneness makes them immortal—always there, just barely out of view. Forever alive in your mind exactly the way they were when they left you, materializing as that sudden cold spot when you walk down the hallway or a twirling tendril of smoke before evaporating into nothing, leaving behind just the faintest trace of what used to be.
“I’ll be back,” I whisper to Roscoe before slinging my purse over my shoulder and making my way toward the door. Then I step outside and lock it behind me, my eyes stinging in the sudden brightness of outside.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THEN
We pad down the stairs, Margaret carefully placing both feet on each step. Left, then right. Left, then right. I walk with her slowly, her fingers laced in mine.
Going anywhere with Margaret always takes a while; she’s small, after all, and our house is so big. Three stories with wraparound porches on every level. I’m old enough to understand thatbigis a relative term, actually. I really have no way of knowing if it is big, comparatively speaking, since this is the only place I’ve ever lived. The only place I’ve known. Maybe everyone’s house looks like this—so large that I find myself discovering new nooks and crannies during every game of hide-and-seek, no matter how many times we’ve played; so old that the creaks and pops and snaps of the wood have become like a family member to me, frightening yet familiar—but I don’t think so. I can see the way people stare as they walk past, cameras slung low around their necks as they grip the wrought-iron fence, trying to sneak a peek through the bars. I watch them read the weathered bronze plaque bolted to the brick columns, the inscription providing a little bit of background on our home. I’ve read it so many times myself that I have it memorized now, reciting it out loud likeI’m ushering pretend visitors through a gallery exhibit. But I’ll never forget the first time, the way my fingers moved across the cold metal as if I were reading braille.
“Built in 1840, the Hayworth Mansion was abandoned years later during the Great Ske-ske-skedee—”
“Skedaddle,” Dad had said, smiling. “The Great Skedaddle.”
“The GreatSkedaddle.”
I had never heard that word before,skedaddle, but I liked it. I liked the way it made my tongue feel, like it was dancing. In learning to read, I was also learning to fall in love with words; I liked how each one was different, unique, like a fingerprint. How some hissed through my teeth while others rolled off my lips, slippery like oil, and others clacked against the roof of my mouth like a verbal gum smack.
Each new word was a new experience, a new sound. A new feeling. And each combination led to a new story to read, a new world to discover.
“Converted into a hospital by Union soldiers,” I continued, “the mansion was later renovated during the—”
I glanced at my dad, eyebrows raised.
“Reconstruction Era,” he said.
“Reconstruction Era.”
After that day, I started to look at our home in a whole new light. It wasn’t justourhome anymore; somehow, it seemed to belong to both everyone and no one, like we were living inside my sister’s dollhouse, an identical pillared mansion Mom had gifted her for Christmas, our family nothing more than the collection of plush fabric dolls some invisible hand ushered from room to room, acting out a scene.
I thought of the prying eyes of the tourists, their fingers wrapped tightly around our torsos, playing with us. Making us dance.
I tried to imagine our ground floor, the main floor, grand piano and tufted couches replaced with rollout cots and bloodied men, their heads wrapped in gauze bandages. I had asked my mother once if anyof those soldiers had died—and if so, where were they buried? She had just shrugged, told me that they probably had, and then glanced out the window and into our backyard, eyes glassy and gray. Now the ground floor houses our most important rooms: our foyer, kitchen, living room, mudroom, dining room, and Dad’s office, which is strictly off-limits. The middle floor is our floor—a long hallway of bedrooms, most of which are empty—and the third floor is Mom’s studio, a giant open room with floor-to-ceiling windows and French doors that swing out onto the patio. She keeps her easel up there; her paints smeared across an old wooden table, her brushes soaking in cloudy water lined up against the wall. It’s my favorite floor of the house because of the views.
Sometimes, after dinner, we all go up there together and curl up in blankets on the balcony floor to watch the sunset, a salty breeze making the air stick to our skin.
“Can we have French toast?”
We hit the landing and Margaret unfurls her fingers before scampering into the kitchen. Her limbs are so skinny, her skin so tan, she looks like a fawn darting from a bullet.
“I don’t know how to make French toast,” I say, following behind her. “How about an omelet?”
“I’m sick of omelets,” she says, pulling out a chair with a screech. She clambers on top of it, pulls her legs to her chest, and grabs the baby doll Dad brought home for her after his last business trip. She carries it everywhere now, those porcelain eyes, forever unblinking, trailing us around the house.
“I’ll put cheese in it,” I say, opening the fridge and stacking everything onto the countertop: a brown carton of eggs, shredded cheddar, milk, chives. I crack the eggs into a bowl and start to whisk with a fork, tossing in the other ingredients while Margaret cradles her doll, singing in the background.
“Hush little baby, don’t say a word. Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.”
I light the stove and start to stir, the skillet hissing and the kitchen starting to fill with the scent of salt and herbs as I pour the creamy mixture onto the hot surface, batting away the steam. I almost don’t hear the soft approach of footsteps padding across the landing, the creak of the floorboards as an invisible weight shifts away from the hall and into the kitchen. The arrival of a new voice, light and sweet like frothed milk.
“My darlings.”
I turn around and take in the sight of my mother leaning against the kitchen doorframe, watching us. She looks like an angel in her white robe, the gauzy material delicate and thin. I can see the outline of her legs and hips; the gentle slope of her stomach as she walks across the windows, light shining through.
