Bliss House: A Novel

by Laura Benedict

  Ariel shook her head and whispered, “Nobody else. There wasn’t anyone else.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “I guess we’re done, then. Later today I’d like to send a couple of officers to look more thoroughly for Mrs. Powell’s keys and phone.”

  Anticipating an angry response, he raised his palm a few inches. “Outside,” he said. “You won’t even know they’re there.” He stopped the recorder and quickly packed away the fingerprinting equipment. “I can see myself out. I’ll be in touch.”

  He left Rainey standing by the girl’s chair looking calmer, but still on the defensive. There had been no point in continuing. Passing through the front hall, he glanced up at the dome, two stories above. Except for the rhythmic ticking of the clock, the place was as stuffy and solemn as a church. He had almost reached the front door when he heard hurried footsteps behind him.

  “Detective?”

  Rainey stood in the center of the hall, illuminated by a shaft of sunlight from overhead. He steeled himself for another tirade about him harassing her daughter.

  “Ariel wanted me to tell you that she ran into her room and shut the door after seeing the girl. She was afraid. You can understand that, at least, can’t you?”

  There was a grudging plea in her voice. He knew she was in a difficult spot. While there was still the possibility that she was involved in Karin Powell’s death, he felt pretty sure it was a remote one. He didn’t want to be swayed by the fact that the daughter was messed up, and she was attractive and obviously vulnerable. The prisons were full of attractive people who’d committed crimes during difficult periods of their lives. She looked almost like a child herself against the enormous scale of Bliss House. What was she doing here, anyway? It wasn’t the kind of house in which to bring up a damaged girl like Ariel Adams—especially alone. Then he chided himself. Rainey Adams was a grown woman. It would be foolish to underestimate her.

  “Of course,” he said. “You take care, Mrs. Adams.”

  When he shut the door behind him, he couldn’t help but feel relief at the warmth of the late morning sun. He’d had enough of that damned house for the day.

  Chapter 19

  Rainey and Ariel ate a cold, silent lunch in the kitchen an hour after Detective Chappell left. Rainey didn’t feel much like eating, but she was trying hard to set a good example for Ariel, who was looking gaunt. It may have been Ariel’s sad lack of sun exposure that was making her good skin look so transparent. She still refused to go outside. Two summers earlier, she’d been on the country club swim team and had started golf lessons. Will had taken her out every weekend to hit balls, and the pro at the club in Hilton Head, where they had a condo, said she showed real promise.

  “I was thinking of going into town later,” Rainey said. “But I worry about you being here alone.”

  “Why? Just because somebody died here? I’m not scared. Not anymore.” She took the top slice of bakery sourdough off of her turkey sandwich and began to eat the avocado and turkey with her fingers. Rainey didn’t say anything to stop her. She was using her right hand to eat. It looked awkward, but it was something new.

  “Of course, that’s not what I meant,” Rainey said. “I just thought it might be too soon, that you might not want to be by yourself. You could always go with me. Maybe wait in the car while I run some errands?”

  “That would be a no. I wish you’d stop asking me. I don’t want to see the stupid town. Plus, now people will stare at us even more because of Mrs. Powell.”

  “We’ll have to see your new doctor up in Charlottesville soon,” Rainey said.

  Ariel didn’t answer.

  “I made the appointment for three weeks from now. That’s the soonest they could work you in.”

  “You might’ve asked me.” Ariel dropped a piece of turkey to the plate.

  “The doctor isn’t negotiable, honey. You know that.” Rainey moved a veggie chip around the plate with one finger. “Besides, I think she’ll be pleased when she sees you’ve made a little progress since we moved here.” She laid a hand on Ariel’s arm and gently squeezed. Ariel didn’t pull away.

  “They said I wouldn’t heal any more,” Ariel said, her voice low.

  “Doctors don’t know everything, honey,” Rainey said. “You’re doing just fine.”

  Ariel stood looking out the French doors in the dining room that opened onto the big side patio. Her mother waved as she passed by from the garage, her huge sunglasses hiding her eyes.

  “Are you sure you’re okay here for a little while?” Rainey had asked her. “You won’t be scared or weirded out?”

  “I might take a nap.”

  “I’ll stop in at the library, or maybe that bookshop on the square. Bertie says they have a little of everything. I liked the owner, even if he did talk a lot.”

  “No more vampires,” Ariel said. “Maybe some mysteries. Or a book about haunted houses. That would be cool.”

  “Really?”

  Ariel shrugged. “Whatever.”

  Her mother had said she’d made a “little” progress. Why didn’t she want to admit how much she’d healed? Before going back to the kitchen, she went to the mirror in the downstairs powder room. Tilting her head to the side a bit, she ran her fingers down the scarring on her neck. The flesh had become more supple and sprang back when she pressed it. There was a change around her eye, too. It opened wider, and tiny lashes had begun to grow along its lid. When she smiled at her reflection, it was an easier, less painful smile. Pretty soon her mother wouldn’t be able to deny what was happening to her.

  Satisfied, she continued on to the kitchen, where she opened the refrigerator to find some of the lemon bars and tiny cakes left over from the party. She was suddenly very hungry.

  Chapter 20

  The afternoon Will died, Rainey was on the highway driving home from the shop when Joyce, a neighbor, called her screaming that something had happened at the house. Joyce was so distraught that Rainey had a hard time understanding exactly what she was saying. But the word explosion came through clearly and, a moment later, the distant sound of sirens through the telephone. Joyce tried to convince her to stay on the call while she went outside, but Rainey hung up before Joyce was out the door. As her call to Will’s phone connected, Rainey told herself that Joyce didn’t even have a direct view of their house, so how could she know? But she voice-dialed Will right away, just in case.

  She drove recklessly through the traffic, taking advantage of any breaks, no matter how risky, as she half-listened to Will’s lighthearted voice telling her to leave a message and that he would get back to her later. Not waiting for the beep, she called Ariel. Will was always careful about being on the phone when he was driving. He and Ariel were together, and Will probably didn’t want to answer. Ariel would surely tell her that they were almost home and would let her know if they saw what Joyce was upset about. But after a single ring, she heard Vivaldi’s “Summer Adagio,” and Ariel’s high, sweet voice laughingly saying that she was probably in dance class and would call back the minute she had a chance. Finally, Rainey hit the app that would locate them—or at least their phones. After a full, agonizing minute, the same message came back for them both:

  LOCATION NOT AVAILABLE.

  That was all Rainey would remember of her drive home.

  Ten minutes later she was on their street, driving way too fast, and approaching the curve from where she first might see the house. Knobby clouds of gray smoke drifted through the neighborhood like dull, unseeing creatures.

  Yes, there’s a fire somewhere. That doesn’t mean anything.

  A rotund man wearing a helmet and an open fireman’s jacket waved her down from beside a fire chief’s pickup slanted across the road. Rainey braked to a hard stop about ten feet away from him and yelled out her window for him to get out of the way! When he shook his head and called out that she needed to turn around, she answered, her voice filled with desperation:

  “It’s my house! Someone called and said it’s m
y house—I have to get to it!”

  “It’s not safe past here,” he said, coming over to her window. “We’ve evacuated most of the neighborhood because of the possibility of more explosions. You need to turn around.”

  Rainey didn’t consider obeying him for even a second. Before he could continue, she hit the gas pedal so that he had to jump away or be injured. She swung around his truck without looking back or even glancing in her rearview mirror.

  Rounding the curve, she nearly plowed into a solid bank of fire trucks, police cars, and EMT trucks. There was a narrow path between them, no doubt for more emergency vehicles. Unwilling to be stopped, Rainey left the road and drove into the grass. The house lots were all an acre or larger and were mostly open lawns, so she didn’t have to drive over anyone’s landscaping—not that that would’ve deterred her. But when she reached the edge of her next-door neighbor’s property, she stopped the car, stunned.

  The scene was unreal, like something from a disaster film. Their house—the house that she and Will had spent a year planning and another nine months building—was an unrecognizable, steaming shell. Only two soaked, blackened masses of wall remained atop a pile of rubble. It didn’t didn’t even look like a house anymore, but some kind of antique ruin. There were three fire hoses going, one of them from the top of a ladder truck, its water aimed at the smoking trees at the back of their property. The sky was filled with vapor and smoke. The only color was in a small, uncertain rainbow in the arc of one of the plumes of water.

  Then she saw the Jeep. She was too far away to see any detail, but it looked as though the windows were gone, and some large piece of debris lay on its hood.

  Will and Ariel had beaten her home.

  She wanted time to stop just then. She wanted to stop it and rewind herself like a cartoon, back out of the neighborhood, onto the highway, and all the way back to the shop where she was showing a new client a damask fabric for the too-large sofa the woman had selected, where she could have called Will to have him pick her up so the three of them could have dinner out together, instead of coming home.

  But it was only a flash of fantasy that bloomed in her brain for the length of a single inhalation, the time it took for her to open her car door into the stinking, leaden air filling the yard.

  No one seemed to notice her as she flew across the neighbor’s driveway, and then what was left of her own lawn, toward one of the several groups of uniformed responders. She somehow knew—God, she knew!—that Ariel was at the center of that cluster of uniforms, those men and women who seemed to be both hurrying and moving in slow motion all at once.

  She screamed Ariel’s name.

  One of the cops stepped in front of her, and she propelled him backward a foot as she ran into him. He grabbed her arms.

  “Let me see my daughter!” Rainey struggled, reaching toward the group.

  “Wait,” the cop said. “You can’t be in this area, ma’am.”

  “This is my house! And that’s my husband’s car. Where’s Will? Where’s my husband? Is it him?”

  “You don’t know . . .” the cop said. But his voice wasn’t calm. And it was bad if this man, taller and broader than Will, with a brusque, paternal demeanor, was upset.

  Rainey looked up at him.

  “Let me see. God, just let me see. Please.”

  “Your house?” he said.

  Some of the others had taken notice of her, but barely paused in what they were doing.

  She looked toward the house and saw a man with something laid over his outstretched arms as he walked toward another group of uniforms. They were gathered near a black plastic sheet spread out on the grass. Her mind registered the image and the shape of the thing he carried, but her brain seemed to refuse to reach any conclusion about what it might be.

  I know. It’s black and burned, but I know. And the smell . . . the smell of cooked meat.

  “Oh, God, no. No. No. No,” she whispered.

  Every muscle in her body seemed to relax at once, and she collapsed against the cop, who caught her.

  I won’t!

  Rainey took that second of surprise to free herself from him. She ran to where she thought Ariel was, pushing between an idle EMT and a man who was a neighbor she’d only met once.

  They were all silent. The cop hadn’t even yelled after her. The rumbling of coursing water and diesel engines receded. The only sounds Rainey heard were the EMT talking brusquely into the radio attached to his shoulder, and the reply from the doctor on the other end. But even their voices dropped into the background.

  Rainey’s head was filled with Ariel.

  Stripped of her clothes, Ariel was like some frail creature driven out of the burning woods. Her eyes were closed, her face almost unrecognizable. Was she asleep? Not dead, surely! They had put an oxygen mask over her mouth and nose, and Rainey watched her daughter’s chest for signs that she was breathing. It was as though she had been drawn into halves—her left side was still fair and healthy-looking. Her left hand was even raised in seeming defiance, resting beside her cheek. But the rest of her . . . Was this even her daughter? Flesh melted and black, her thigh a raw mass of red. Her right arm, pinned by her side, her hand almost unrecognizable.

  A second EMT was working to wrap some sort of large bandage over her leg, almost like a blanket.

  Rainey fell to her knees, covering her mouth, afraid of what might come out. A scream. A wail of agony. Any of the people watching her might have thought that she was praying. But inside her head, she was cursing God.

  The people who weren’t working on Ariel fell away. Rainey didn’t notice them go. The sounds returned. After a few moments, when the EMTs had Ariel wrapped and were transferring her to a gurney, the cop who had tried to stop her from seeing Ariel helped her stand.

  “My husband?”

  The cop shook his head. Rainey didn’t react. She already knew.

  “We’ll talk at the hospital,” the cop said. “There’ll be a social worker there. Just be with your daughter.”

  “I can go with her?”

  When Ariel was carefully loaded into the ambulance, and the techs were ready to go, the cop helped Rainey inside.

  She didn’t look back, but only watched her daughter’s face as they sped away, leaving Will and the remains of their house behind.

  Chapter 21

  The bookstore was bright and sunny, all wood floors and sleek pine bookshelves and book-laden tables spaced comfortably for browsing. Several people sat in canvas sling chairs near the window, sipping coffee and reading in the air-conditioned sunshine. Brahms played quietly from the overhead speakers. An enormous sense of freedom washed over Rainey, and she wished she could grab a book and sit in one of the chairs herself for an hour or two. But this was not the day for it, and Ariel was home alone.

  Before she could get a sense of where the books Ariel might like would be, a young man with extravagant, shockingly white-blond hair approached her. A chunky gray and white striped cat lounged contentedly in his arms. As the man scratched its chin, it tipped its head backwards and embraced his arm with its forelegs, purring loudly.

  “What can I help you find?” he said.

  Now that he was closer, Rainey saw he wasn’t as young as she’d thought. His white hair, caught and bound up in a ponytail, was cut through with wiry strands of silver, and there were deep, white lines around his eyes that were accentuated by the tan on the broader planes of his face. His loose, comfortable clothes didn’t hide the fact that his body was athletic and taut beneath them. But her attention was immediately drawn to the complicated tattoo on the arm embraced by the cat. She’d seen plenty of tattoos—mostly on artist and musician friends at design school—some of them gorgeous works of art and others quite extreme. This one, a lynx or some other kind of exotic feline surrounded by fantastic blue creatures with yellow eyes, repelled her.

  When he cleared his throat, she realized she’d been caught staring. She covered with a smile.

  “Young adult.
Something new for my daughter.”

  Hearing Rainey’s voice, the cat startled and twisted out of the man’s arms with an irritated growl. Rainey backed up.

  “Strange,” he said. “She’s usually very calm.” He motioned for Rainey to follow him.

  After showing her to a table piled with new releases, he left her to make up her mind. Rainey had to guess which ones Ariel had already read. She worried over them for a good ten minutes before picking up two paperbacks and a hardcover—the latest in a series about an adolescent pair of girl detectives. None of them were about haunted houses. At the cashier’s desk, she also picked up a famous North Carolina novelist’s book that had just come out. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had the focus to read an entire novel, but maybe it was time to try again.

  “Anything else we can help you with today?” The man with the ponytail pulled the pile of books toward him.

  Rainey picked up a four-dollar dark chocolate bar from the rack beside the register and set it on the counter.

  “Had you pegged for milk chocolate. Win some, lose some.”

  Rainey smiled and handed him her credit card. He looked vaguely familiar to her, but of course she hadn’t ever been in the bookstore before.

  He swiped the card through the machine. “Thank you, Ms . . .” He looked at the name on the card. “Adams.” He handed Rainey the card. “Let me get some more bags. We’re out of them up here.”

  He disappeared behind the pair of swinging doors behind the register, and was gone much longer than Rainey thought it should take to get bags. She slid the chocolate into her purse and looked at her watch. She felt guilty about leaving Ariel alone, and an idea had come to her when she had passed Gourmet Away, the shop that had catered most of the food for the party.

  When the man came back, he wasn’t alone. Rainey was pleased to see the small, bespectacled man in a bowtie who preceded him.

  “Mrs. Adams!” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Ethan Fauquier. We spoke at your lovely party?” Making a little moue, he took one of her hands in his and pressed it firmly. “This is such a sad day for us to meet again.”