Bliss House: A Novel

by Laura Benedict

  “Do you really want her to know?” he said, carefully making his way over to her.

  “I need to go,” Ariel said.

  “It didn’t scare you, did it?” he said.

  What does he mean? The kiss? The tunnel? She was so confused.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  It was getting harder to see his face in the fading light. The burned side of her own face was itching so badly that she felt like it was on fire. She really needed to go.

  “It’s not scary in a bad way,” Jefferson said, taking her hand. “Bliss House belongs to my old man. At least it should have been his. But I promise it’s really okay if you’re here. You’re not somebody who’s just supposed to pass through Bliss House. You’re family. You’re my family.”

  Oh, God. He was going to kiss her again. And what he’d just said about her being his family . . . Maybe kissing him was wrong. Really wrong.

  Before she could finish the thought, they heard her mother calling her name.

  “Guess you’re busted.”

  “What if she asks where I’ve been?” Ariel said, panicking. Her mother would have so many questions.

  “You went out for a walk,” Jefferson said, dropping her hand. “No big deal.”

  “I should go back in through the house,” Ariel said. She meant it. She had to get back inside so the pain would stop.

  “That’s a mistake. She’ll think it’s weird you didn’t answer her before she came outside. Listen to her voice. She’s scared. You don’t want to scare her more, or she’ll start hassling you. She might even freak out and take you away.” He paused, appraising her. “Unless that’s what you want.”

  He touched her chin. “You wouldn’t want to have to leave, would you?”

  No, I don’t want to leave! But she couldn’t say it out loud. Ariel stepped back, away from him, almost tripping on a fallen board.

  He didn’t press her further about it. “Go on,” he said. “She doesn’t know anything. You can do it.”

  She hesitated for a second, wishing with all her might that it was her father she was running to. Then she impulsively kissed Jefferson on one closely-shaven cheek, and turned to hurry away without looking back. She ran as best she could toward her mother’s voice.

  Chapter 41

  Gerard let Ellie in the house ahead of him. She trotted straight for her water bowl in the kitchen, and drank until she had to come up for air. Finding Gerard nearby, she leaned against him happily, staining his pants with water.

  “Let’s get you fed,” he told her, scratching her behind the ear.

  They’d spent the night in a rough hunting cabin that he knew about in the hills overlooking Old Gate. There had been a few pieces of sealed jerky and a couple of bottles of water in the room’s single cabinet. That was all the food, but there was a worn plastic bag with a pack of rolling papers and a couple of joints’ worth of pot in the cabinet, pushed off to the side. He’d split the jerky with Ellie, and that was all the food they’d had since he’d walked out on Molly.

  The evening was temperate, and he and Ellie spent much of it sitting on the cabin’s canted porch, listening to crickets, frogs, and night-birds. When Ellie found a raccoon skull in the brush at the edge of the cabin’s small dirt yard, he let her keep it. She tried to play with it, nosing it awkwardly up the slope of the porch floor as though it might, at last, move on its own. Finally, she pushed it into a hole in the boards, where it disappeared. After a few minutes of whining, she went back to where Gerard sat and lay on the floor with a disappointed sigh. At five years old, she was still very much like a puppy. Gerard didn’t want to imagine how lonesome he’d be without her, now that Karin was gone.

  In the fading light he rolled a joint, then realized he had no matches to light it with. So much for that. He didn’t really need it to disengage from reality, anyway. The woods were enough. They had taken away his ability to concentrate on anything but the sounds around him and the rumble in his stomach. Karin, Molly, the police . . . they were a long way off.

  When he found himself nodding off in the uncomfortable chair, he went inside to lie down, thinking it would be just for a couple of hours. He let Ellie up onto the camp bed to sleep with him, preferring her warmth to that of the dubious wool blanket piled at the bed’s foot. It was well past dawn when they awoke to the sound of noisier birds, and started for home.

  Gerard splashed water on his face at the kitchen sink, and wiped it off with the towel lying nearby.

  “I wiped down the counter with that after supper last night,” Molly said.

  “Yeah,” Gerard said.

  Molly’s curls were piled on top of her head in a clip. She wore clingy yoga pants and a Biltmore Estate T-shirt he recognized as belonging to Karin. Like Karin, she’d chosen to wear it without a bra. Despite the teasing motion of her breasts, and the pronounced curves at her waist, he felt no physical desire for her. If it was there, he’d shoved it so far down into the depths of his being that he couldn’t see it.

  She’d been in the bedroom, touching Karin’s things. What else did she find? But hadn’t he done the same thing himself? He supposed he would have to decide what to do with them. He wasn’t in the mood to just give them to Molly, which was what Karin probably would’ve wanted.

  “Whatever,” Molly said.

  The scene was too much like the one from the day before, though he had seen Karin’s parents’ car in the drive when he got back to the house.

  “Mom and Dad wanted to know where you were last night. They were worried.”

  So, that’s how it was going to be between them. All was forgotten, except that she was going to bait him until it wasn’t forgotten anymore. Gerard dumped Ellie’s kibble into her bowl, and she began to bolt it.

  “I’m sure you took good care of them.” Gerard was as hungry as Ellie, but he wasn’t going to give Molly the satisfaction of letting her know. “I’m going to get a shower.”

  As he left the room, he could feel her staring after him, inchoate with anger and probably pain, but he couldn’t bear to look at her face, which was so like Karin’s. It hurt too damn much.

  He knew he should say something to Karin’s parents about his absence, but he procrastinated. After he got cleaned up, he returned the rash of work-related phone calls that had come in his absence and got his work crews going for the day. There was one vague message from Rainey Adams that had come the day before as well. He decided he would go out and see her instead of calling her back, knowing that it wasn’t her so much that he wanted to see. It was that damned house. Bliss House. The house where Karin would always be.

  He found Molly and her parents in the kitchen. Her mother, Ingrid, sat at the table, absently stirring a cup of tea. She was fair, with a permanent look of fragility about her, so different from her ruddy, energetic husband and daughters. Her hair was bleached or colored to an elegant platinum—what Karin had called rich lady blond—her diamond-heavy fingers precisely manicured. Even though her eyes were slightly reddened and her face puffy, she looked as though she’d just had her makeup done by a professional. Karin had never once complained about her with stories of small cruelties or meanness. She was the perfect mother-in-law, too. She never criticized or questioned his judgment.

  How strange it was that Ingrid moved so lightly through life, barely touching it. Never objecting. Always just floating along, leaving no wake.

  Barron, her husband, simmered beside her, fire to his wife’s vaporous cool.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Barron said. “People have been looking for you. We have to take care of Karin. Make arrangements. You can’t just walk out on this, son.”

  Son. Barron wasn’t the kind of father any boy would want. He’d made it clear from the first day Gerard and Karin had moved in together that he thought Gerard was an unemployable loser and not fit for his eldest daughter. The success of Gerard’s contracting business hadn’t softened him a bit. Since he’d arrived, he’d spent half of his time on his c
ell phone dealing with his chain of furniture stores, and the other half in a tight cluster of grief with Molly and Ingrid. He wasn’t interested in Gerard’s pain.

  “Molly didn’t tell you?” Gerard pulled a twist of grapes from the bowl on the island and popped a couple into his mouth, hoping no one would notice how his hand was shaking. He wasn’t quite sure what he was going to say next, but he knew he was going to have to put a tight rein on it if he wanted things to stay civil.

  Molly had retreated across the room to stand by her mother. Her hand rested on her mother’s shoulder protectively—or was she the one looking for protection?

  “What?” Her voice had gone from cold to cautious.

  Both parents looked up at her.

  “She thought I needed to get away,” Gerard said. “I got some bad news.”

  “Stop it,” Molly said.

  Ingrid flinched under her tightening grip.

  “What in the hell could be worse news than your wife dying?” Barron said, standing up. “This had better not be one of your bullshit mind games.”

  Molly moved quickly, stepping in front of her parents. “Why won’t you leave it alone? When did you turn into such an asshole?” Her eyes were hard with anger.

  There was something inside him that was pushing him to be cruel to these sad people, people who had—to all appearances—loved Karin very much. He wanted to shout that they hadn’t known her at all, that they had no idea what she was really like, that they hadn’t managed to pass on even half of their upstanding, middle-class moral code to their oldest daughter. From the beginning they’d refused to believe in Karin’s addiction, and it had hurt her.

  “Maybe it started when Karin told me she was pregnant with another man’s child,” he said.

  The words were spoken, then disappeared into the tense silence. For a confused second, Gerard wondered if he’d said them at all. Beside him, Ellie whined.

  Barron fell back a step. Ingrid put her hand to her throat, as though stifling the cry that Gerard knew was aching to come out.

  Molly turned back to her father. “Daddy?”

  Barron slumped onto a chair beside his wife. Ingrid quickly grabbed his hand and squeezed it. They were one person, Gerard saw. The girls didn’t matter so much as their parents did to one another. He was jealous for a moment. Something he’d never have. Something he should have had, but didn’t.

  He was about to turn and leave, almost regretting the scene he’d caused. Almost.

  “You.”

  Ingrid rose from the table, pointing one of her pink-tipped fingers at him.

  “You did this, Gerard. You killed her with what you couldn’t give her. You told her she’d make a terrible mother. You told her she didn’t have a bone of genuine kindness in her body. What kind of man says those things to his wife?”

  She didn’t wait for an answer. The diamonds in her rings caught the morning light as her hand trembled, shooting a spray of transparent stars across the ceiling.

  “Karin begged me to tell her what to do. It was the one thing she wanted, Gerard. A child. First you couldn’t give it to her, and then you wouldn’t. And she’d finally decided. She was going to try to have a baby regardless of whether you—or anyone else—wanted her to.”

  What was she saying? His head felt fuzzy. He knew it was the lack of food, but he felt like he might never eat again, his stomach churned so.

  “I want you to know that it was me, Gerard. Me.” She put a delicate hand to her chest. “I told Karin that she deserved to be happy, no matter how you tried to break her, and break her heart.”

  Molly tried to put her hand on her mother’s arm, but Ingrid brushed her away, impatient.

  Recovering himself, Gerard interrupted. “It never occurred to you for a moment that she’d lied to you about me? She lied to you about everything her whole life! It was part of the illness you refused to believe in. You don’t even know what you’re saying.”

  “She said you didn’t care if she slept with other men,” Ingrid said. “You didn’t, did you? Did you ever even love her? God help her, she thought you did. If she went ahead and got pregnant in spite of you, it was because she knew she couldn’t trust you. It was your own fault!”

  Witnessing Ingrid’s shrill attack was like discovering that a furious Ellie had suddenly turned into a pit bull. Sweet, gentle Ingrid. Sweet, gentle Ingrid and her brutal words.

  “We were going to raise that child together,” Gerard said. “She didn’t tell you that, did she? She didn’t tell you that I was going to raise it as my own, whoever it belonged to. No, that wouldn’t fit, would it? That would make me look human, and not like the monster you people want me to be.”

  He glanced at Molly. “Tell her, Molly. Tell them what a liar she was.”

  Molly gave him a snide smile and shrugged. “What do I know, Gerard?”

  Behind her, Barron had begun to stir, roused from his shock.

  For the briefest sliver of time—a millisecond or a nanosecond—Gerard saw the three of them crushed together, broken. Dead quiet. The force of his hatred for them at that moment tensed every muscle in his body. All he wanted was for them to shut up.

  “Don’t try to put words in Molly’s mouth,” Ingrid said, jabbing a finger at him again. “She told me you tried to hurt her too, Gerard. If you come near any of us we’ll call the police. We’ll tell them that we believe that you killed Karin and that poor baby.”

  Gerard stared at the people he thought he’d known. They were strangers in his house. Hostile strangers. If he didn’t get away from them, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from saying or doing something he’d end up regretting the rest of his life.

  “Molly, I’ll let you tell them what actually happened to that ‘poor baby’,” he said. “You people don’t want to hear anything I have to say. Then, all of you get the hell out of my house. I want you gone by the time I get back. I’ll deal with my wife’s body without your sanctimonious bullshit help.”

  Chapter 42

  Rainey listened to Bertie’s phone message as she did her breakfast dishes. Bertie was her breathless, cheerful self, asking if Rainey could come by for coffee and pecan coffee cake around ten-thirty. It wasn’t something that Rainey was excited about doing, but the idea of cooling off away from Ariel for a while appealed to her. She was tired of Ariel’s games, and her sneaking out of the ballroom and wandering outside had been the last straw.

  The previous night, after spending an hour of angry energy to try to organize her office, and another hour trying to read a novel that was making no sense to her because she kept thinking about Ariel’s accusations, Rainey had knocked on the door of the ballroom. She hated being so emotionally separated from Ariel. They’d both been angry. Hurt. But she was the adult, and it was up to her to make things work. Ariel was suffering. Possibly delusional. She knew she had to help her.

  Behind the doors of the ballroom, the music had stopped.

  At first, when Ariel didn’t answer the knock or respond to her through-the-door apology, she’d been certain that Ariel had fallen asleep. Then she knew—she knew—that Ariel wasn’t answering because something was wrong, and she began pounding on the door. Of course, she hadn’t known the day that the worst had happened, had she? Her feelings weren’t reliable. Maybe her fears were just guilt. But this was the room she never should’ve agreed to let Ariel use. Whatever happened to Ariel in there was her fault. I never should have let her come in here!

  Finally, she tried to slide open the doors and discovered that they weren’t even locked. Finding the room empty had been a surprise, but she was somewhat relieved to find that Ariel wasn’t inside, hurt. She searched the house, calling Ariel’s name, her panic rising each time her own voice came back to her, unanswered.

  When Ariel finally appeared, a black-swathed wraith hurrying across the grass behind the house, she wanted to scream at her, scold her. Make her understand what kind of hell she’d put her through in the last half hour. Instead, neither of them spok
e when they met in the driveway. Ariel limped past Rainey, hurrying, and obviously in some kind of physical pain. Her scars were reddened again, and her mouth was drawn in a tight, fierce line as she stared ahead, focused on the path to the house.

  Rainey had followed her as far as the front hall and watched as Ariel made her halting way up the front stairs. Her bedroom door slammed shut behind her. Rainey sighed.

  At least her daughter was safe.

  Rainey changed out of her shorts and T-shirt and into a bright, casual sundress. Since the party, she hadn’t paid much attention to what she was wearing. After brushing some fullness into her hair, she pulled it back with a pretty barrette, and put on some mascara and lipstick. Looking in the mirror, she even tried a smile. It was weak, but she felt a lot better than she had in days. Bertie would be flattered that she’d taken so much care.

  On her way out of the house, she tapped on Ariel’s door to tell her where she was going. She had to say Ariel’s name twice to get her to answer, but finally she heard a dull okay from inside the bedroom. It was enough.

  Bertie’s house sat in the county’s fertile bottomlands, exactly where Bertie had said it would be in her message. It was smaller than Bliss House, but grand in its own way, a white two-story plantation-style house nestled in the green countryside, with columned porches on both floors, jutting from the front. The windows were tall, topped with transoms to let in fresh air and framed by black shutters that were perfect in their hand-hewn imperfection. Two sets of chimneys bookended the house proper.

  Bertie had filled the tree-spotted front yard with azaleas and rhododendrons, and it was early enough in the day that a few of the shaded bushes were still slick with dew. Their blooms were long spent, but Bertie had replaced their color with hundreds of red and white New Guinea impatiens. Rainey knew that Bertie’s perennial garden—where she grew flowers for cutting—was in the back. Out front, the focus was on the house itself.