After his breathing slowed, he got up from the bed. Was he talking to himself? Praying? He was saying something she couldn’t make out, as though he were talking to someone—but not her.
Though she was loath to move, she rolled carefully onto her side and tried to cover herself with her dress. If only she were lying on her own soft bed, in her own apartment, maybe then she could bear it. She might feel hopeful then, like she might be able to save herself. But in this place—this strange, awful place—she saw little reason to hope.
Michael tucked in his shirt and did up his pants and belt. His lips were moving, but she couldn’t make out anything he was saying.
“Michael,” she whispered. Her throat was scratchy and dry from screaming.
He wouldn’t look at her.
“Michael, I don’t understand.”
Still without looking at her, he turned on one of the sink taps. The water stuttered out, a rusty orange color, and he let it run until it was a narrow stream. Finally he splashed some water on his face and, dripping, grabbed a towel from the chair to dry himself. When he was done, he smoothed his hair back and tossed the towel at her. It landed, covering her arm, but she didn’t move to take it.
“Clean yourself up,” he said.
He went to the door, then turned back to her, took a disposable lighter from his pocket, and tossed it too on the bed.
“For the candles. And if you do something stupid, like start a fire, it will only kill you. It won’t hurt anyone else.”
As the door shut behind him, Allison—propelled from the bed by the sudden realization that he was going to leave her behind—grabbed the doorknob and pulled. But she was too late. She heard a bolt shoot into the doorframe, probably from the brass lock a few inches above the doorknob. Pounding on the door, she screamed for him.
“Don’t leave me here! Michael!”
Remembering the curtains on the other side of the room, she ran to them, thinking she could break the window if it, too, was locked. She slid the curtain along the wooden rod.
But there was no window. Only a gray, unbroken expanse of wall.
Chapter 2
Present Day
Standing a few feet behind her fourteen-year-old daughter, Ariel, in the hot Virginia sun, Rainey Adams watched her staring up at Bliss House. If it had been possible to will Ariel to love it as much as she did, Rainey would have done it in a heartbeat.
It was a house from Rainey’s dreams, rising from its bed of tattered gardens on two stories of firm yellow brick, its face boldly pushing forth from between two shallow wings. The third floor was a mansard crown of aged gray slate, relieved by several chimneys and windows set deep into shadowed cornices that made them seem secretive even in the afternoon light. The lower floors were layered with shutterless arched windows taller than a man and punctuated with iron accents whose points looked more dangerous than decorative. But the creamy white trim and pale stone outlining the house’s edges lent Bliss House a tentative air of softness and kept it from looking too severe. Too guarded. From the outside, one of Bliss House’s primary architectural oddities—a dome crowning the central well of the house—was barely visible. Overall, the house gave an impression of contradicting itself, as though it weren’t sure of what sort of house it meant to be.
Rainey, though, was certain it was meant to be hers. While she’d found it intimidating on seeing it for the second time in her life (the first having been when she was only eight years old, and then she couldn’t go inside), it was like nowhere she’d ever lived before, and she found that she wanted to cling to its immutable presence. It was solid and old and beautiful and challenging, all at the same time.
Ariel needed the stability a place like Bliss House could give her. Rainey needed it, too. As an interior designer who spent much of her life making homes for other people, she’d always believed that the atmosphere of a house was shaped by the people who lived in it. Yet here she was, looking for comfort and strength from a thing made of bricks and mortar. She and Ariel, like the house, had been damaged by their sad—even tragic—histories. But she had plans for the house beyond the critical repairs and renovations that she’d already done. She would heal it, as it would help to heal the two of them. It would be a home where Ariel would feel safe, and together they would bring the kind of happiness to Bliss House that would make it worthy of its name.
Overwhelmed with a feeling of hopefulness, Rainey reached out to touch her daughter’s hair, but then quickly drew back her hand. “What do you think? Do you like it?”
It was a ridiculous question, and she knew she was opening herself up for the worst kind of derision. Ariel had become an expert at taking advantage of her eager desire to make things right between them. All she had to do was turn and fix Rainey with one of her practiced, uncaring looks with eyes that looked too much like Will’s eyes. In life, the three of them had been a solid, happy unit. In death, the man they had both lost was always between them.
“You’re kidding, right?” Ariel leaned awkwardly on her cane, a scowl aging her once-delicate features. She hid her thinned, cropped hair beneath a slouchy patterned cap, and her scars beneath clothes that hung loose on her slight frame.
Rainey bit her lip to keep from asking Ariel if she meant “kidding” as in this-has-got-to-be-a-joke, or “kidding” as in this-is-the-coolest-place-I’ve-ever-seen. She’d been expecting a strong reaction to Bliss House—one way or the other—from Ariel, who had refused to even look at pictures of it before they arrived in Virginia.
Ariel started forward slowly. The accident—yes, it was an accident, even if Rainey herself was responsible—that had claimed Will Adams, Ariel’s father and the center of Rainey’s world, had also left the entire right side of Ariel’s body burned and badly scarred. Two years earlier, she’d been a lithe twelve-year-old who was already several inches taller than her mother. She had loved gymnastics and ballet, and wore her then-lush black hair knotted in a taut bun at the back of her head. Her porcelain skin had been free of the blemishes that plagued other girls, and her blue eyes—like her father’s—were alternately full of harmless mischief and solemnity.
That girl was gone, replaced by an angry, unforgiving teenager who had spent too much time in and out of hospitals, and stabbed her walking cane into the ground as though every step were a punishment. She saw every mirror as an enemy. Her depression and anger turned the time she and Rainey spent together into a shared silent cage that seemed to grow smaller with each passing day.
Rainey was finally used to her daughter’s wrecked beauty, the fierce red flesh along her jaw that spread like a chafing hand over her right cheek. She longed to gently touch the scars that ran from Ariel’s face and down her arm to the back of her hand. She missed the giggling girl who looked so much like her daddy, missed the intermingling of their hair—Rainey’s so blond and Ariel’s so dark—as they read or played computer games together, or cuddled on the couch to watch a movie. Missed looking into her daughter’s eyes and seeing something, anything, besides hurt and contempt.
To My Adorable Mommy, I Love You Soooooooo Much!!!! Ariel had written in bright gold on the last Valentine she’d given Rainey, over two years earlier. Yes, she missed so much about her baby girl.
“It was hard to get good pictures of the front of the house,” Rainey said, following Ariel. There was a pebble in her open sandal. The driveway hadn’t yet been repaved and was a minefield of small rocks and three-inch-deep potholes. “You’d have to go way back down the drive, and out there the trees get in the way. It will be clearer in the winter.”
What will winter be like here? She hadn’t thought about things like snow removal or even about the cost of heating such a monster of a house. Before buying it, she’d only been in Old Gate once, and by that time Bliss House had been sold to a doctor outside the family. But then it was sold again to become a successful inn run by a married couple, the Brodskys, whose ownership had ended in a tragic murder. Before it was sold the first time, Bliss House h
ad been in Rainey’s mother’s family for over a hundred years. Now it was hers.
In a better market, Bliss House might have cost her half-again the one-point-four million she’d paid for the house and land. Between her own trust fund and Will’s life insurance, she had a very manageable mortgage and, if she acted carefully, they could live quite comfortably for at least the next ten years. Ariel would be out of college by then—if she would even go. They hadn’t exactly been diligent about home schooling.
Will would never have believed she could let things get to this point. God only knew Rainey could hardly believe it herself.
When they reached the landing below the front door, Rainey looked up to the distant rooftop. Barely five feet two inches in her shoes, she suddenly felt insignificant. Beside her, Ariel seemed much younger than she was, and more vulnerable. It was as if they were two tiny, fragile dolls about to enter a massive new dollhouse.
Two ragged, broken dolls.
Chapter 3
The first night Ariel lay in her new bed, in her new room in the strange house, she dreamed like she hadn’t dreamed since long before the accident.
She walked with her father through unfamiliar woods, looking for a comfortable place to share the picnic lunch her mother had packed for them. Ariel was hungry and tired. The straps of the heavy backpack she wore dug cruelly into her shoulders. But her father laughed when she complained that she wanted to take it off, the sound of his voice echoing through the gold- and red-painted trees. She loved her father’s laugh.
“Don’t open it, Button,” he said, ruffling her hair. “It’s full of fire.”
The dream-logic of his answer made sense to her, and she trudged on, breathing heavily over the noise of leaves crunching beneath their feet. They headed downhill, the weight of the pack propelling Ariel forward so forcefully that she stumbled. Spying a stream in the distance, she stopped thinking about her burden and ran. Sunlight cast shards of silver on the water, and she couldn’t wait to get to it so she could splash the water on her face.
Once she broke through the trees, she saw that the sky beyond the stream was vast and cloudless. Falling to her knees on the muddy bank, she shrugged the pack onto the ground. The water was cool on her skin, and she gathered it to her again and again, heedless of the way it soaked her sleeves and untethered hair. She felt as though she could kneel there forever, and never be thirsty or weary again. Finally, she sat back on her heels and wiped the water from her face with the dry hem of her shirt.
Looking up, she found the sunlight was brighter. It spread without shadow, but instead of bringing warmth, it was spreading cold, and she shivered. She turned around, and saw that the woods had disappeared—and, with them, her father.
“Daddy?”
She scanned the pale tundra that, only a moment before, had been a forest blazing with color.
Beside her, the backpack shifted. Something was moving inside, wriggling against the canvas. She reached out to touch the pack, but drew her hand back, afraid, as the clip securing the cord at the top of the pack began to slide off all by itself. The pack opened a few inches, and tiny tongues of flame darted out, reaching for her.
She struggled to her feet, but the flames shot forward, growing longer and longer, chasing her as she ran toward the flat, frozen landscape. She screamed for her father. He had to be near!
“Daddy, where are you?”
The sound of her own choked words awakened her as she struggled to break free of the dream.
The walls of her new bedroom were bathed in a mellow gold light, and the air—like the air in her dream—had turned brutally cold. It was a winter cold, not the welcome chill of a late summer night. A curtain across the room stirred, and Ariel saw that the window was open. She groped for the blanket folded at the end of the bed. Finding it, she pulled it to her. Why was the room so bright? She didn’t remember the nightlight that her mother had plugged in the night before being so strong.
“I’m right here, Button.”
Ariel turned her head to see her father sitting in the chair nearest the bed. He leaned forward to smile at her. It was a sad smile.
In that split second of recognition, Ariel felt a weightless thrill in her stomach, like that moment before the plunge down the first hill of a roller coaster. How many nights had she awakened in the darkness, wanting to see his face?
The thrill quickly faded.
This can’t be real.
“Shhh. You’re all right,” he said, rising from the chair to stand over her.
Ariel held out her arms to him. “I want to be awake. I want you to be here, Daddy.”
Her friends had always wanted to come to her house to see her dad because they thought he was cute. Even though he was a lawyer, he kept his wavy black hair—so much like her own—a little long. Because he almost never got angry or said mean things, he always looked young, and not wrinkled like some of their fathers. But it was his eyes that made so many people like him. Cheerful, blue eyes, the color of her friend Melody’s blue finch. Now, he was dressed in his weekend clothes—khakis, a bright red polo shirt, and the embroidered canvas belt with the ducks on it that Grandma Adams had made for him before she died, and that her mother teased him about.
“You see me. I’m here.”
“But you’ll go away,” she said, sounding like a very young child.
His eyes were darkened by the shadows in the room, and they didn’t look as happy as she’d first thought. Still, she wanted to memorize every bit of him. To remember.
“No. I won’t. I promise, baby girl.”
She was still reaching out for him, but he wouldn’t come close enough. If only he would gather her into his arms to keep her warm. But she knew if she tried to touch him, he wouldn’t really be there.
“Go back to sleep,” he said, his breath making clouds in the air. “I’m watching you.”
Ariel, shivering and not really wanting to go back to sleep, lay back on the icy pillow.
“Stay, Daddy.” She was so tired that she barely heard herself speak.
Her father leaned down and rested a hand on her leg—the leg that a piece of metal from the house had nearly cut in two. Did she feel the pressure of his hand? She wasn’t sure because her eyes closed, and she no longer felt anything.
Ariel woke up on her stomach, her face mashed into the pillow. The room was stifling with humidity, and she’d kicked off the covers to the foot of the bed. A sheen of sweat had pasted her tank top to her back. With a tiny pang, she remembered the cold of the night before. With the memory of the cold came the memory of her father. She quickly rose up on her hands and knees, the heat and sticky sheets forgotten.
The chair was still near the bed. Empty. But she could feel that he’d been there. Something had changed. Despite the heat and the sweat, she felt better than she had since the accident.
Chapter 4
Rainey washed her cereal bowl and spoon and put them on the drain board of the sink to dry. Most of the maintenance work on Bliss House had been done before they’d arrived, supervised by Gerard Powell, the husband of the real estate agent who had handled the house purchase. Repairs to the aging slate roof, the doors, stairs, and floors of all the usable rooms refinished, walls painted, and the heat pumps replaced. But she hadn’t been able to bring herself to do much of anything to the kitchen. The only things that were different from the day she’d come out from St. Louis to close on the house, three months earlier, were a new microwave and an electric stove that replaced the professional eight-burner gas range the former owners had installed.
All her life she’d had a passion for things old and quaint and unusual. Her passion, along with an artistic eye and years of training, had led to a comfortably profitable interior design career. Their house near St. Louis, just over the Missouri River, had been custom-built for them, and she had filled it with the antique treasures she couldn’t bear to pass on to clients. Eighteenth-century Irish tables, a set of Welsh chairs, thirteen gilt-edged mirrors from a
Louisiana Creole plantation house, a trundle bed from a Kentucky barn that was two days from being demolished. Even her kitchen had been furnished with cabinetry salvaged from a dowager house near Forest Park. They were strings to the past that tugged at her because her own past had been so rich and full of love—like Ariel, she had been an only child, adored by her parents.
“But an antique gas stove?” Will had said, pausing as he pried open pistachio nuts—a quick after-work snack he washed down with a local micro brew. He wore the somber gray suit he’d put on for court, but had loosened the plum necktie she had laid out for him that morning. He wasn’t wild about the color, but she loved it because it made his eyes look as blue as the day she’d met him, fifteen years earlier.
“Can’t we just get one that looks retro?”
“Look at the molding on the doors. It’s gorgeous,” she’d said, her voice full of a proprietary awe that Will knew well. She ran her fingers over the stove’s pristine cream-colored front. “It’ll last another seventy-five years.” She wasn’t listening to him. A few days later, Will simply nodded when she told him the technician was scheduled to do the installation.
As always, Will had trusted her.
It wasn’t her fault that the technician had rushed the retrofitting of an electronic ignition into the stove. It wasn’t her fault that he was about to miss a payment on his truck and had to get to the credit union before it closed. It wasn’t her fault that their house was so tightly built that Will hadn’t smelled the gas filling the house before he unlocked the door. People from two miles away had reported the explosion. What none of them had seen was the second floor of the house rise, only to collapse onto the ground floor, crushing what hadn’t shot away in the initial blast. But Ariel, who had been down at the mailbox, had turned to look back at the house at the explosion’s initial roar. Ariel had seen more than enough.
The kitchen in Bliss House was in the shape of a T, and much more suited to a busy inn or a family with servants than a woman living on her own with a fourteen-year-old. Here in the long galley there were two deep, adjoining sinks with ridiculously long drain boards, and a food prep counter with open shelves above and below for pans and bowls. The racks on the walls already held a few knives and the other cooking tools she’d been able to find. There was also an industrial dishwasher with two brand new plastic dish racks sitting ready to slide automatically through it, but she’d yet to turn the dishwasher on. She’d never run anything like it, and, actually, she was a little afraid of trying it.
Bliss House: A Novel Page 2
