by Kate White
I tiptoe into the sitting room and stare at the wooden door. Someone or something is clearly out there, scuffing the ground. It could be deer, or a raccoon. Or the darn coywolf.
And then a different sound, a light but frantic rapping on the door.
Holding my breath, I inch toward it.
“Who’s there?” I call out.
Silence.
“Who’s there?” I repeat, but this time louder.
“Daddy,” a voice calls, almost a wail. “Daddy, please let me in. Pleeeease.”
I fling open the door, and there, standing in the dark, is Henry in his Spider-Man pajamas, his face streaked with tears.
“Oh my god, honey, what’s the matter?” I exclaim.
“Something,” he says. His chest heaves as he speaks.
“Something what?”
“Something bad happened.”
7
Gasping, I yank Henry inside, kick the door closed with my bare foot, and wrap an arm around him.
“Can you tell me what happened?” I ask, trying to keep my voice calm as my shock morphs into dread.
“Gee,” he says. “It . . . it’s about Gee.”
My heart nearly stops.
“Is she okay? Is she sick?”
“Not sick. She’s really mad.”
“At you, honey?” I can’t imagine that.
“No . . . at someone else.” He starts to cry again, softly, and swipes his tears away with the back of his hand. “I heard her when I was in my room—and I got really scared.”
Okay, none of this is making any sense, but at least the house isn’t burning to the ground like Manderley.
“Come sit. I’ll get you a glass of water and we can talk about it some more.”
I lead him to the couch, flicking on a light as we go. The back of his pajama top, I realize, is damp with perspiration.
“Is Daddy here?” he asks mournfully as I turn toward the kitchen.
“Yes, of course. Want me to wake him up?”
But I don’t have to. Suddenly there’s the sound of feet barreling down the enclosed staircase, and Gabe emerges dressed only in his boxer briefs. His gaze immediately falls on Henry and he rushes toward him.
“Hen, what’s happened?”
Henry glances at me, like he’s wondering if he should start at the beginning again.
“He thought he heard your mother yelling at someone in the house, and it frightened him,” I say.
“Not yelling,” Henry corrects me. “She was scolding the person. And it wasn’t in the house. It was outside my window.”
Outside? Had Claire encountered a would-be intruder prowling around the house?
“What was Gee saying?” Gabe asks, dropping onto the couch next to Henry.
“She was telling them she knew what they were up to. And that they better do the right thing.”
No, not a stranger then. Someone in the family—or the person’s partner. Could she have been talking to Hannah? Based on what Claire told me, I’d assumed she’d be biding her time, but maybe she decided to bring the situation to a head tonight.
“But you don’t know who Gee was talking to?” I ask.
Henry shakes his head.
“And when did this happen, buddy?” Gabe prods. “Just now?”
“Uh, I don’t know. I think I went back to sleep for a while. But I can’t sleep now. Please, I don’t want to be in the big house anymore.”
Gabe pulls Henry toward him in an embrace. “You don’t have to be there. You can stay right here in the cottage with me and Summer. The bed’s already made up in the spare room.”
Henry whimpers in relief and then asks if he can have a glass of water now.
“Summer will get it for you and take you upstairs while I run to the house for a second, okay? I want to make sure everything’s all right over there.”
Henry nods, and Gabe jumps up and follows me to the kitchen.
“What the hell do you think is going on?” he whispers. “It’s the middle of the night. Who could my mother have been talking to outside?”
“I think it might be just what he said—that he heard it earlier and then fell back to sleep.”
I’ve managed to avoid answering my husband’s second question. Who?
“And maybe,” I add, “he only thought he heard it out his window. It could have taken place in the living room or the screened porch.”
“Yeah, well, whatever and wherever, I don’t like the sound of it and I want to check things out. I have my house key.”
“Okay, but take the flashlight, too. And honey, be careful. We have no idea what’s really going on.”
Gabe nods and hurries upstairs for his pants and shoes, then grabs the flashlight from the kitchen drawer. He tells Henry not to worry, swings open the cottage door, and disappears into the darkness outside.
I’ve never felt jittery on the Keatons’ property at night, but I do now. After Henry’s nursed his water for as long as possible, I lead him upstairs to the second bedroom. Because the space hasn’t been used in a while, it smells musty, and I wiggle open the windows, allowing fresh air to seep in through the screens. I also plug in the night-light so he won’t get scared when I switch off the bedside lamp.
“I can stay here the rest of the week, right?” Henry asks.
“Of course. Daddy will bring your bag over tomorrow. And why don’t we have you wear one of his T-shirts to bed? Your PJ top is a little sweaty.”
I grab one from Gabe’s drawer, and as I’m slipping it onto Henry’s small frame, I realize that it was probably a mistake to ever let him stay in the main house. He seemed so excited initially—especially about the chance to sleep with the dogs—and of course, I’d been all for the idea of Gabe and me having the cottage as our private love nest, but Henry’s a bit young to be on his own that way.
This switch is for the best, then, though there probably won’t be dreamy afternoon sex from this point forward.
“You feeling any better?” I ask, pulling the cotton blanket over him. I take a seat on the edge of the bed.
“Yeah, I guess. Is Daddy going to be okay?”
“For sure, and he won’t be long . . . . Is there anything more you can remember about what you heard?”
“No, just what I told you . . . . Oh, wait. Gee said if the person didn’t do the right thing, she would.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” I tell Henry, even though the hair on the back of my neck is standing up now. “Maybe she only sounded mad because she was tired.” I kiss his forehead and rise. “Night, night. I’ll leave your door open and ours, too.”
From the glow of the night-light, I can see the outline of his hand giving me a thumbs-up.
Descending again to the sitting room, I pace, fretting. Was it Hannah whom Claire had been speaking to? Or could it have been Ash she was addressing? No, that seems unlikely. That’s not the way their relationship operates—at least as far as I’ve witnessed.
Another thought flickers in my head, one I probably should have considered initially: Could Henry have simply dreamed the exchange?
After ten minutes have passed and Gabe hasn’t materialized, my stomach feels like a big hard ball of rubber bands. Five minutes more go by, and I wish I’d told him to take his phone.
Finally, as I’m nearly out of my mind, I spot the beam of a flashlight bouncing between the branches of the shrub in front of the sitting room window. Gabe pushes the door open before I have the time to cross the room, and his expression reads perplexed rather than alarmed.
“So?” I ask quietly.
“The house is dark, and no one’s up—or seems to be. I looked all around and climbed to the top of the stairs, and I could hear my dad snoring. And the dogs are now sitting outside my parents’ room.”
“No sign of anything unusual?”
“None. The door at this side of the house was partly open—that’s obviously how Henry got out—but I closed and locked it as I left.”
I nod. “Wha
t are you going to do next?”
“I’ll have to talk to my mom in the morning, explain why Henry’s not there anymore. But I feel a little weird bringing it up—it sounds like it was a sensitive conversation.”
“Marcus and Keira are staying in the main house. Maybe they overheard it, too, and can fill you in so you don’t have to ask your mom.”
“But they’re in the big guest room, all the way at the other end of the house, so I doubt they heard anything. I’ll just have to suck it up and be frank with my mother, I guess. Did Henry go to bed okay?”
“Yeah, he seemed pretty relieved to be here. Do you think it’s possible he dreamed the whole thing?”
Gabe scrunches his mouth in thought. “Or . . .” he says, lowering his voice, “what if it’s all the product of a nine-year-old’s overactive imagination—and he made it up as a way to get out of staying in the house without having to ask directly?”
“Possible. And he might not have fabricated everything. Maybe he heard something, and it got twisted in his mind.”
Gabe shrugs. “Right. Hopefully we’ll know more in the morning.”
We trudge up to our room and crawl back under the sheet. The room feels slightly more humid than earlier, but I don’t have the psychic energy to activate the air conditioning. From sheer fatigue, I drift off into a restless sleep.
I wake the next day to the sound of laughter coming from below. Gabe and Henry. I roll over on my side. It’s 7:04. Sleepily, I pull on shorts and a T-shirt.
Downstairs I find the two of them drinking orange juice at the kitchen table. Henry’s playing a game on Gabe’s phone and grinning so widely that I almost wonder if last night was something I must have dreamed.
“Hi, guys,” I say, my voice froggy still from sleep. “Everything good?”
“Yup, all good,” Gabe announces.
“Dad said I could play Subway Surfers for fifteen minutes,” Henry tells me without looking up. “Then I have to stop.”
Sitting in front of Henry, I notice, is a plate scattered with toast crumbs, and there are strawberries and plums in a bowl, neither of which were in our kitchen here yesterday. I shoot Gabe a questioning look.
“Hey, Hen,” he says, “why don’t you take the phone upstairs while you get dressed? I left your duffel bag on the luggage rack in your room. And then when you’re ready, we’ll take the dogs for a long walk.”
“Gee says the dogs can’t go in the woods this week because of hunters,” Henry says.
“We’ll walk them on the road with their leashes, then,” Gabe assures him.
As soon as Henry’s scampered upstairs, Gabe eases the kitchen door shut with his foot.
“So you’ve been over to the house already?” I say.
“Yeah, I realized I’d better be there when my mom woke up so she wouldn’t go into Henry’s room and find him missing.”
“Did you learn anything?”
Using his foot again, Gabe shoves a chair away from the table for me to sit on.
“Turns out Henry was right,” he says. “He did hear my mom reading the riot act to someone outside his window.”
“Who was it?”
“You know the girl who’s been working with Bonnie? The one with the pink hair? My mother caught her helping herself to a couple of bottles of wine on the way out last night and confronted her out on the patio.”
It takes a second for the answer to register since it’s not what I was expecting.
“You mean after we took Henry up to bed?”
“Yeah, though there were still people around in the house. My mom didn’t want to spoil the mood, so she kept it to herself. Henry obviously did fall asleep after hearing the conversation and only came over here after he woke up in the middle of the night.”
I feel a weird, diluted kind of relief. On one hand I’m glad there’s no major family conflict, but part of me was hoping that Claire had put Hannah on notice.
“Does your mom know Henry’s staying here now?”
Gabe takes a couple of moments to chug his coffee. “Yeah, and she gets it—that he’s not quite ready to bunk down at the main house on his own. Though she was upset to hear he was out in the dark like that.”
I pour a mugful of coffee for myself and feel a frown form on my face, as if the muscles around my mouth have a mind of their own.
“What is it?” Gabe asks, his eyes curious.
“After you went over to the house last night, Henry remembered one more thing about the conversation. He said your mom told the person that if they didn’t do the right thing, she would. How does that jibe with your mom catching a girl stealing bottles of wine?”
“Hmm. Well, I doubt Henry’s memory of the exchange is a hundred percent accurate—especially if he fell asleep right after. And my mother could have meant she wanted the girl to tell Bonnie what had happened—or she would.”
“That makes sense, I guess,” I say, even though it seems like a stretch.
“By the way, my mom wants to keep this low-profile, so don’t mention it to anyone, okay?”
“Got it.”
Gabe grabs a plum and leans over to kiss me on the lips. “I figured we’d get out of your hair for a while today so you can work on your play,” he adds.
“Thanks, I appreciate that.” Gabe, I’m happy to see, seems to be doing his best to bring us back on an even keel. “Shall we meet up before lunch?”
“Maybe at lunch. Marcus and I are going to talk shop with Dad before then.”
“Wait,” I say, remembering something else as he starts to rise from the table. “Are you planning to ask your dad for a loan?”
His brow wrinkles. “Who told you that?”
“Keira mentioned it last night. I felt stupid not knowing.”
“She’s clearly misunderstood what Marcus told her,” Gabe says, obviously frustrated by Keira getting it wrong. “No, we don’t need money at the moment, but Dad’s been promising some investment funds and we have to nail down the details if we want to expand going forward.”
“Okay, that’s what I figured it might be.” I’m relieved not only that Gabe’s business is okay but also that he hasn’t hidden any problems from me.
After they take off, I serve myself a bowl of yogurt from the fridge and open my laptop on the kitchen table, thinking there’ll be fewer distractions in here than out on the patio. But before long I’m groaning in frustration. I just can’t concentrate.
My mind keeps replaying the events of last night. Not only Henry bursting in from the dark like a scene out of a Harry Potter movie, but all the tension that preceded it: the engagement announcement, Gabe complaining about my behavior, Claire sharing her concern.
And as I sit there, a spoon dangling in my hand, a memory rushes into my brain like an animal suddenly darting across the road at night: Claire and me in the kitchen, speaking quietly, the rhythmic calls of katydids and crickets coming through the windows. Voices, too. Bonnie and her helper chatting as they dropped a trash bag into the bin outside, and then the firing of their car engines as they departed for the night. All before we went in to admire Henry’s magic tricks.
Which means the pink-haired helper was long gone by the time he went up to bed. Which means she wasn’t the person Claire confronted.
Who was she talking to then? And why would she concoct a story for Gabe?
I replay the fragments of conversation that Henry claimed to have overheard: I know what you’re up to . . . . You’d better do the right thing . . . . And if you don’t, I will.
So what “right thing” could she be referring to? For Hannah to confess to Nick? And possibly back out of her engagement?
I’m too antsy now to look at my computer, so I decide simply to make some notes about how to clarify the arc of my story and the question it involves. I grab my notebook and start up the path to the house, in search of an espresso and a spot where I can sit and scribble, maybe the boxwood glade.
To my surprise, I seem to have the entire grounds to my
self. Granted, it’s early still, but I’d expect on a Sunday to hear sounds of people playing tennis or someone splashing in the pool, but there aren’t any. And the table under the pergola is abandoned. It feels as if I’ve showed up at an event on the wrong day or at the wrong time.
But clearly people have been here earlier—the croissant basket on the sideboard, I notice, is only half full.
“Morning,” I call out, stepping into the kitchen. But no one’s in there.
I enter the dining room next, as the swinging door yawns behind me. The space has been tidied up from last night, and the living room is pristine, too. You’d hardly know we’d been gathered there.
Curious, I begin to wander, from room to room, corridor to corridor, practically the length of the house, and the quiet is almost eerie.
Finally, back in the living room, I glance into the adjoining study, a room I think of as mostly Ash’s turf. Though the fireplace probably hasn’t been used in months, I can pick up the lingering hint of woodsmoke even from the doorway. I don’t see anyone in here, either, but as I turn to leave, I sense a motion on the other end of the room and spin quickly to the right. Wendy’s standing by the wall of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and I’ve clearly surprised her, too.
“Oh sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude,” I say.
“No problem. I was just looking for something to read. My iPad seems to have died.”
“You’ve got your choice of classics here, I guess, but there are a couple of thrillers in the cottage bookshelf if you want more options . . . . Where is everyone, do you know? It’s like a ghost town this morning.”
“Blake went for a drive along the river, and Nick and Hannah haven’t emerged from their room yet.”
She says the last part with a faint smirk on her face.
“What about Claire and Ash? And Bonnie?”
“Bonnie’s at church apparently and not due until later. I saw Ash leave with his bike about ten minutes ago. He said Claire had gone to the farmers’ market.”
“Sounds like there might be more corn on the cob in our future.” I step a little closer to her. “Wendy, I have to say again how thrilled I am for you and Blake. You must be in seventh heaven.”
