Open House: A Novel

by Katie Sise

  Haley sipped her coffee. “I don’t know,” she murmured. Bowling was the only activity her father still participated in outside the house, and he didn’t carry a cell phone. He’d said he found the phone in his pocket unsettling, the fact that someone could call him with devastating news at any moment, and he looked at Liv and Haley as if they were insane whenever they urged him to carry one for safety purposes. Nope, he’d say, or, no siree. He didn’t go so far as the grocery store anymore, or to the library, which he’d once loved, or to the town pool, even on the most sweltering days of summer. He hadn’t made a new friend in the decade since Emma had been gone; he hadn’t done anything at all, really, besides the bowling.

  “I’m just so scared he’s going to lose it,” Liv said, gently touching the smooth leaves of one of her ferns.

  “He’s lost it before,” Haley said. She set down her milky coffee. It was getting too cold. “We survived, so did he.”

  “You’re very practical, you know,” Liv said, and a small, sad smile worked at the corners of her mouth.

  “I get it from you,” Haley said. She cleared her throat. “We all would have fallen apart without you. You know that, right?”

  Tears sprang to Liv’s dark eyes. “Oh, stop it!” she said, but her voice was soft. “You’ll make me cry, Haley, I mean it. No more of that kind of thing.”

  The doorbell rang. “Why would Dad ring the bell?” Haley asked, straightening.

  “He probably forgot his keys again,” Liv said. She smoothed the front of her striped top and made her way around the kitchen island. Haley waited, uncrossing and crossing her legs as her mom trekked through the foyer and opened the front door. Haley prepared herself to hear her dad’s lumbering footsteps, to see his face fold when they started talking. But instead she heard her fiancé’s voice.

  “Dean?” Haley blurted when he entered the kitchen. “What are you doing here?” Her tone sounded more offended than she’d meant it to.

  Dean’s dark eyebrows shot up. “I’m here to say hello to my almost-wife?” His voice was questioning, like he couldn’t imagine why she sounded so upset that he’d stopped by. “I saw your car in the driveway,” he went on, clearly embarrassed that she’d spoken that way to him in front of Liv.

  “I’m sorry,” Haley said quickly. Cell service was spotty in Waverly, and Dean’s phone had gone straight to voice mail when she called earlier after leaving the precinct. “I just thought I’d see you at home and explain everything and . . .” Why was she so awkward when she was caught off guard? “We got bad news today,” she blurted, “and I’ve just been really concerned with how my dad is going to take it . . .” Her voice trailed off. She held her breath, determined not to be crying when her father arrived.

  “What happened?” Dean asked, crossing the kitchen in two giant steps, his arms around her strong and sure. He sat down on the stool next to her, his hand going to her knee.

  Haley exchanged a glance with her mom.

  “He should stay,” Liv said softly.

  Haley nodded. Maybe it would be good for her dad to have Dean here, too, to deflect his pain somehow. She tilted her chin to take in Dean’s brown eyes flecked with green. He was so tall she was always lifting her glance to see him, always arching onto her tiptoes to hug him. Even though it was Saturday, he was dressed in his work clothes because he’d had to meet for lunch with a client in Greenwich, and his perfectly tailored suit emphasized his shoulders. Ever since the first night they met while she was bartending, there had been something about Dean’s presence. He settled Haley, and not many people did.

  “They found a bracelet in the gorge behind Yarrow,” Haley said, “right beneath the cliffs by where the party was that night.” She watched the lines that crossed Dean’s handsome face deepen. “It’s Emma’s,” she said, “and it changes the way the police are thinking about the case. They always thought she wandered alone downriver where it’s a straight jump into the water.” Haley’s hands went to her lap, and her fingers tapped a hard circle against her palm. “But the cliffs above where the bracelet was found drop four stories down to the dirt, where there’s plenty of land before the water starts. If Emma fell there and died, or if she were pushed, a body would have remained on the ground. Which means if she was killed at the party or at the cliffs, the location of her bracelet shows that someone hid her body or put her in the river.” Haley’s voice broke, and the words echoed through the still kitchen, followed by a deathly silence. She thought of her sister, all alone, river water coursing over her body; she thought of her heartbroken father; and then she thought of the lifeless cadaver on that table in anatomy, and it was like every horrible thing she’d ever known was suffocating her. Her breathing started to go so fast she thought she would pass out. She looked down at the floor, focusing on her mom’s bare feet against the tiles, and then she felt her mom’s arms, plus Dean’s, wrap tightly around her.

  “Shhhh, it’s over, honey,” Liv was saying. “It’s all over. No one’s hurting her now.”

  Haley looked up to see her mother’s calm face, wondering for the thousandth time how she was able to do this. Was it just because her father was such a mess, so paralyzed by his grief, that this was the only option left for her?

  Dean kissed the top of Haley’s head, and then the front door opened. “Hello,” came her father’s voice, a little wobbly. “Haley’s here?” When had he started sounding like an old man? The clunk of his shoes came next, covering the floor with heavy footsteps.

  “Tim? We’re in the kitchen!” Liv called out, her voice quaking.

  Haley’s dad emerged, his wiry eyebrows shooting up just as Dean’s had moments earlier. His striped Izod shirt was slightly askew, and there was a stain on his khakis. Haley felt Dean’s hand squeeze her shoulder.

  “Dad,” Haley said softly. Her father looked at each of them carefully. He didn’t speak. He crossed the kitchen and sat at the table. They watched as he situated himself in a chair and smoothed the wrinkles on his pant legs. Finally he looked up.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, his voice stronger than Haley had expected.

  Liv took a long breath and told him about the found bracelet.

  PART II

  EIGHT

  Emma

  Ten years ago

  Noah’s kissing me in my dorm room, but all I can think about is what a mess I’ve made. I never even had a boyfriend in high school, and I didn’t even lose my virginity until this year. Twenty-one is pretty late to lose your virginity, but I seem to be making up for lost time by sleeping with two different guys, and then stupidly going and kissing Josie’s brother, Chris. I’m going to break things off with the other guy I’ve been sleeping with, because Noah’s the one I really want, but trying to manage it has made me even more anxious than ever.

  “Emma,” Noah whispers. I kiss him back, trying to focus on him, because hooking up usually gives me a break from my sadness, but it’s not working this time. I keep flashing back to the night I kissed Chris a few weeks ago. We were so drunk, and we just kissed, but if Josie finds out, she’ll never speak to me again. The only other memory I have of that night isn’t even my own; it’s the video Josie showed me of all of us sitting around Noah’s apartment, and I still shudder when I remember her expression as she shoved her phone at me. “Look at my brother,” she said, and on the video you could see Chris’s face as the camera panned across Noah’s living room. You could see him watching me like he was waiting for something. He tipped his beer to take a swig, his eyes never leaving me. But you can tell on the video that I never saw him staring at me because I was too busy smiling up at Noah, who was telling some elaborate story.

  “Look at how much Chris likes you,” Josie said as she forced me to watch, her pupils made small by the glow of her phone. “It’s so obvious. Remember what you promised me, Emma?”

  I had no idea Josie was filming all of us that night, and it made me sick to watch that video. All our desires out on display.

  Focus on Noa
h, Emma, please.

  Noah’s fingers trace patterns over my shoulders, my collarbone, my chest. He’s the one I really want to be with, and I should be able to pay attention to him, but I can’t control my thoughts lately—they go wherever they want, meandering along a dark path until I either get drunk or fall asleep. I feel the scrape of his stubble against my skin, and I think about how rough and warm he is compared to Josie. Whenever she and I get in bed to talk or watch movies, she’s always freezing, always shoving her cold toes beneath the sheets and pretending she doesn’t realize they’re pressed up on me. It’s weird how much more intimate hanging out and talking with Josie feels compared to hooking up with anyone, even Noah. He doesn’t really know what to say to me, or how to listen to the things I try to tell him. Mostly he’s just interested in the stuff he’s telling me about himself or his family, like how his sister just had to drop out of Dartmouth because she couldn’t cut it there. Noah said she embarrassed their family, which made Josie laugh and say, Sounds like you and your family have no idea what the word embarrassing means.

  Noah pulls me closer, and I try to shake Josie from my mind, my closest friend, but she’s in this room like a ghost, a figment of my imagination. Even when Noah starts whispering in my ear, I still can’t pay attention, and it’s the same way in my classes. Nothing I do lately seems enough; even my art sucks. Every time I go to paint something, it comes out wrong.

  Noah. His hazel eyes are on me now, first locking onto my gaze, and then having their way all over my skin.

  Did he start this? Or did I?

  The thing about Noah is that he’s just so good on paper. You take one look at him and you know he’s the captain of some sports team (Lacrosse? Crew? Does it matter?); that he drinks protein shakes after lifting weights; that he’s summered in Nantucket since his mother was pregnant; and that he thinks everything is all about him, but in an innocuous way that he’ll hopefully grow out of just in time.

  Josie sees it, too. “God, Emma, he grew up eating lobster at family picnics in Martha’s Vineyard. He’s nothing like us,” she once said.

  Right. Martha’s Vineyard: not Nantucket, apparently. I have no idea what the difference is, and if I ever do, maybe it will mean that something has gone irrevocably awry.

  But Noah’s upbringing doesn’t bother me, not even if mine is middle-class and boring in comparison. I like that he’s so all-American without really knowing it. I think he actually considers himself something of a rebel, which used to make Josie and me laugh.

  We don’t laugh as much now. Noah, Josie, and I used to pal around together last year at Yarrow, but then this year I started hooking up with him, and Josie’s been so annoyed at me every time I hang out with him, saying that he’s stealing me away from her. And now there are these secrets piling up between us. I guess I used to think college would be a continuation of my formally safe teenage life, but it’s not. I don’t know if that’s because of things I’m doing, or if this is just what college is like for everyone. I guess guys hook up with more than one person all the time, but my Catholic upbringing isn’t dying easily. I’m nearly paralyzed with anxiety and shame, and I’m lying to everyone I care about—including my sister, whom I’ve never lied to before.

  Noah pushes my camisole higher. “You want this, don’t you, Emma?” he asks. I don’t think he means to be cliché. I can sense the currents running beneath his skin, even if he can’t express them in anything other than words that don’t suit him.

  His hands push down my pajama pants, and I can see him taking in the sight of my new lace underwear. Josie was the one who said I was too skinny for boy shorts, and on Sunday when we were bumming around the mall eating Annie’s pretzels, she steered me into Victoria’s Secret, and we found a pale pink thong on sale.

  My fingertips trail a line across Noah’s broad shoulders, but my eyes wander to the collage of my high school friends hanging above my desk, which actually really freaks me out, because none of my old friends would believe what I’ve been doing lately.

  Josie’s desk is lonely in comparison to mine. There’s only one photo: Josie and her stepbrother, Chris, standing outside a stone church next to a nun who looks pissed off. Behind our desks, our shades are drawn to avoid imaginary creepers with telescopes in the dorm across the quad, and, maybe even more so, to stave off the four o’clock nightfall. We complain that the weather is mind-numbing and sleepy in conversations with our classmates, even if that isn’t really the whole truth. Because here at college I’m always on the edge, and so is Josie: we’re buzzing with something fear-inspiring and razor-sharp, and not even the frigid winter can take it away. We’re too wired to sleep, really, except sometimes in the late afternoons when we’re supposed to be studying. Josie tries to pass me Tylenol PMs and her prescription stuff, but I won’t even smoke cigarettes or pot because that’s how nervous I am about getting hooked on something, which drives Josie nuts. “Try being in college,” she says every time she nearly convinces me to take something. But I’m terrified and only thinking about myself, about the threat of vast shame in it all: Emma McCullough, art scholarship student, gets nabbed for possession; loses scholarship.

  Shudder.

  When Noah and I finish hooking up, he checks his phone and says something about lacrosse practice. We climb down the ladder from my bunk, and Noah’s yanking his warm-up pants over his boxers when the door swings open. “Hey,” he says, seeing Josie before I do.

  Josie stops in the doorway, her hand on the knob. Half of her light hair is tied back, and the rest falls in curls over her jacket. The cold has made her cheeks flush, and black mascara makes her blue eyes look even paler. Her face betrays nothing at first, but then her features crack into a smile. I can tell she wants to laugh at my half-dressed state.

  “Hey,” I say. College is so degrading.

  “My class got out early,” she says, and it comes out like an apology I don’t really think she means.

  Noah averts his eyes from her, which I’m pretty sure is because he knows how annoyed she gets now that he’s over so much. The room suddenly feels far too small for the three of us, especially when Josie shuts the door behind her. She sets her satchel carefully on her prim white quilt. We bought that quilt together at Target when it went on clearance. Josie has the tightest budget of anyone I know at Yarrow, and she makes it work by buying only things that are perfect. Less is more, she always says, making me believe it.

  I adjust the waist of my pajama pants as Noah makes small talk. Josie tosses her jacket onto the floor, which is the first sign that she’s about to do something strange, because she never puts her clothes on the floor. She takes off her sweater next, and I can hear the break in Noah’s stream of chatter. She’s wearing a sheer lace bra, nothing else. She turns to us. “What were you saying?” she asks as if everything is normal, like she’s just changing the way she would in front of one of the other girls from our dorm.

  “Josie,” I say, but she ignores me. For a second I think she’s about to take off her jeans, but instead she opens a drawer and pulls out a tank top. She turns and looks at both of us before yanking it over her head.

  Noah averts his eyes, but it’s too late. He catches my glance and says, “I’m gonna go,” and then he does, scramming from our room as fast as he can. I’m not stupid enough to think he doesn’t want to see her naked. It’s just that nothing could be worth the tension in here.

  We stare at each other. “What are you doing?” I ask.

  Josie shrugs. “What’s the big deal?” she asks. She lies back against her bed, staring up at the cylindrical metal casing that keeps my top bunk from crashing down on her. “Why does he always take so long to leave?” she asks. She pats the quilt, clearly wanting me to sit beside her.

  I give in and go to her. “Give him a break, Josie,” I say, because she’s always just shy of cruel to Noah.

  “You think he deserves a cuddle?” she asks, her pink lips curving into a smile. “It must be why he likes you so much. You’
re so nice, Emma.” She says it like an insult, and then shakes her head and sends shiny waves of hair over the pillow. “You’re not in love with him, are you?” she asks, her blue eyes all over me.

  “No,” I say quickly, because I don’t think I am, though maybe I could be with more time. Josie turns away. She moves to the window and opens our shades. The sky is the mottled inky color of a bruise, the kind of night that makes me want to press pause as dusk hurtles into darkness, the kind of night that makes me feel desperate. Sometimes I’m not ready for the evening hours with Josie, for whatever she has planned for us, especially when it involves her brother. Chris gets so drunk and picks fights, and it’s embarrassing, really. I tried to say something to her once, but she shut me down before I could even finish my sentence.

  “Noah’s one of the good ones,” Josie says as she stares out the window, and I think about how Noah’s good in bed and good at life, but obviously I don’t say that.

  Outside, an oak tree is bare, with branches as thin as fingers. Josie cracks the window, and the branches point at us, accusing us of everything we already know is true. “Josie,” I say, pulling the quilt over my legs as cold air rushes into our room. “Really?”

  She smirks at me, and then everything switches, and we’re okay. We’re roommates, best friends, practically sisters. Noah could never come between us. And maybe Chris couldn’t, either, especially if she knew it was just a mistake and would never happen again.

  Josie comes back to the bed and sits. She pushes her slight body against the bedframe. She’s olive-skinned, looking almost tan even in December, making my body appear ghostlier than ever.

  My phone buzzes, and I see a text from my sister. “It’s from Haley, I gotta get it,” I say, reaching for my phone to open the text, but Josie gets it first and puts it in her lap.

  “You and Noah are getting serious,” she says.

  “Um, I guess,” I say. I’m not really sure about that, but I want it to be true.