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Then more footsteps up the stairs to the second floor.
Another door slammed shut upstairs.
Martha turned with a plate stacked high with peanut butter cookies. “Our house is haunted!” she said cheerfully. “It’s just the oddest thing.”
“Haunted,” Nick said slowly as he picked up a cookie from the plate she’d set in front of him. “So… that was a ghost?”
She nodded, her white hair falling in her face as she went back to the fridge to pour a glass of milk. “Oh, yes. We did some research on it and everything. Apparently, this whole block used to be a tuberculosis… insane… asylum. Yes,exactly.People got tuberculosis and they went insane and then theydied.Right where you’re sitting. And now their spirits have awoken for reasons that don’t need to be looked into, and here we are. Isn’t that wonderful? Eat your cookie.”
Nick stared at her.
She set a glass of milk in front of him and waited.
Finally, Nick breathed, “Whoa. A tuberculosis insane asylum and now there areghosts? Why didn’t Seth tell me about this? Don’t you know what this means? My god, I’ll have to look into it when I get home. We need to find out where they were buried so we can salt and burn their bones to put the spirits to rest. And if they’re malevolent, we may need to hire a medium.”
“Exactly,” Martha said, patting his hand. “You do that. Have another cookie. In fact, I will insist you eat every single cookie on that plate before going upstairs.”
“There’s like, twenty cookies here.”
“Then you best get started,” she trilled. “And while you eat everything, you can tell me what you’ve been up to every day since I’ve seen you last. And be detailed. You know how I love details.”
“That’s… a lot of days. I haven’t seen you since…”
“May twenty-second,” Martha said. “After you and that boy broke up, and you came over here and cried, and I made you grilled cheese and tomato soup like when you were ten.”
“I didn’tcry,” Nick mumbled through a mouthful of peanut butter cookie.
“Oh, I apologize,” she said. “Your face must have been wet from the rain that wasn’t falling at the time. Describe every day, Nicky. And I’ll know if you missed one.”
By the time Nick escaped and made his way upstairs, he was fuller than he’d been in a long time. He’d made it to July 2 and had eighteen cookies before Martha had suddenly cut him off and saidhe could go upstairs. If anything, it reaffirmed that he had a sharp memory and the capacity to eat a crapload of cookies. Both were good things to know about himself.
The old wooden stairs creaked under his Chucks, his hand sliding along the railing. The wall to his right was covered with framed photographs: Bob and Martha with big hair and parachute pants, Bob and Martha on vacation in front of a gigantic ball of yarn, Bob and Martha and little Seth at a park, snow falling all around them.
Nick was in some too, here and there. Nick and Seth in a blanket fort. Nick and Seth dressed like Jean Grey and Wolverine (Nick wasnine,okay?) Nick and Seth standing on the pier, holding tufts of pink cotton candy almost as big as they were. Nick and Seth sitting in front of a TV, shoulder to shoulder, Nick’s head tilted back in a laugh and Seth smiling quietly.
It was physical history of a good life, the wall cluttered with shared moments, some of which Nick had forgotten about.
As always, Nick stopped near the top of the stairs in front of one photograph in particular. The frame was old and worn, and the glass had a little crack in the right corner. The subjects were a little blurry and out of focus, but it reminded Nick of the one of him and Mom, standing near the lighthouse.
In it, Seth was four, and he was sitting on the shoulders of a thin, bespectacled man with a receding hairline. The man had his hands wrapped around Seth’s ankles, and Seth’s hands were thrown up in the air, curled into little fists. A woman stood next to the man, looking up at Seth, a smile on her face that Nick recognized on her son time and time again.
Nick had never met these two people. They’d been gone before the day on the swings. Seth had a few memories of them that he hoarded like a dragon does gold. Nick knew a couple of them, but not all. He didn’t mind. He was aware that sometimes, things needed to be kept hidden in shadow because if they were brought out too much into the light, they would fade.
He wondered if Seth talked to them like Nick did with his mom.
He moved on.
There were three doors in the hallway at the top of the stairs. The door to the right led to the only bathroom in the house. Thedoor to the left was Martha and Bob’s bedroom, all old wood and frilly lace, much to Bob’s consternation.
The last door—the one at the end of the hall—had a battered sign hanging off of it.
SETH’S ROOM
He knocked on the door.
“Come in!” a breathless voice said.
Nick frowned and shook his head before opening the door.
