Open House: A Novel

by Katie Sise

  “Someone should call Noah,” Haley was saying to everyone, but none of the police personnel seemed to hear her. “Hello?” Haley tried again. She scanned the cops, and then her gaze fell on Priya. Priya’s mind was working well enough to remember that Noah was Josie’s husband, but it wasn’t like she had his number.

  “I don’t know him,” Priya said quickly, but her heart pounded as she realized her mistake: she should have pretended to know Noah. Though maybe Noah and Josie took on clients separately—maybe it was plausible she only would have met Josie. She didn’t dare look at Brad. Was this really happening? Was she really at a crime scene, trying to figure out how not to implicate herself and her husband?

  A cop knocked into a vase on the kitchen counter, catching it just before it shattered into a thousand pieces. “Should I just call him?” Haley asked Priya, but she didn’t wait for Priya to answer before she started dialing. “Noah, this is Haley,” she said into the phone, and it was clear from the way she prattled on that she’d gotten his voice mail. Priya’s stomach dropped when she imagined Noah checking his messages. “There’s been an accident,” Haley said. “Someone hurt Josie, we just found her in the kitchen here at the open house on Carrington, and she was lying on the floor bleeding, and I believe they’re taking her to Memorial Hospital, so if you get this message, just go there, please, and hopefully we can meet you soon.”

  Haley disconnected her call, and then a cop strode toward them. “I’d like to ask that you hand me your phones,” the officer said. “We’d like to keep them while you’re being questioned at the station.” Priya’s nerves flared, but she handed over her phone like everyone else, and then the cop asked them all to please stand up, and everyone obeyed except Dean, who couldn’t seem to stand from his chair. His face was white, and he looked like he was about to pass out. Brad was studying him carefully, and Priya realized she hadn’t seen her husband study anyone besides her in a very long time.

  “The cars are here to take you to the station,” the detective said, his voice neither hard nor gentle, just matter-of-fact. “You’ll be driven separately, and interviewed there.” When Dean still didn’t get up, the officer asked, “Do you need some help?”

  Dean shook his head and got to his feet. “Is she going to be all right?” he asked.

  “We don’t have that information, I’m sorry,” the officer answered, and then he motioned to two policewomen and two policemen entering the kitchen. “Take them back to the station,” he said.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Emma

  Ten years ago

  Please, Emma, says Brad’s next text. Just talk to me.

  I’m back in my dorm now, standing in the middle of the carpet. I have no idea where Josie is. The door was locked when I got here, and I opened it to find her gone.

  What’s there to say? I text Brad back, still standing awkwardly and unmoored like a guest in my own room. You know she’s my watercolor professor, right?

  He doesn’t reply for a while, which means he either didn’t know, or maybe he’s with Priya right now, and she’s screaming at him, or maybe he’s just embarrassed and shameful and doesn’t know what to say. And if it’s the latter: good. Why should I be the only one who feels awful when he’s the one with the fiancée?

  I glance around our room. Josie’s jacket is gone, which means she isn’t just bouncing around the dorm. Gum wrappers litter her desk, and her laptop is open to her email. I’ve never felt the need to snoop on Josie, even though I know she’s snooped in my email before. But now something pulls me like a magnet to her inbox. I stand there, zeroing in on an email from Chris’s mom, who lives a few hours away upstate. She’s the one who raised Chris and Josie when they had no one left. Josie told me that when Chris’s dad died, his mom tried to take only Chris back into her home, but Chris refused to go without Josie, so she took both. I recognize the woman’s address because she’s emailed me more than once wondering if everything’s okay because Josie hasn’t been in touch in weeks. Whenever I’ve brought that up to Josie, she just shrugs and acts like she forgot to call her and then assures me she will. Weeks seems like a pretty long time to go without talking to your family, but it’s not her real mom, and Josie and Chris didn’t exactly have a typical family life. Josie’s dad abandoned her, and her mom eventually married Chris’s dad. But then her mom died in a car accident when Josie was only six. Josie says Chris’s dad was a rage-filled alcoholic who didn’t want her in the first place, and hated her from the moment her mom died and he became stuck with her. And while Josie often tells me stories about growing up with Chris in a rural New York town she said could make you forget entirely about the city, she’s only told me one about her stepdad and the day he died. It was more of a memory than a story, really, because she can’t remember the beginning or the end—only the middle. It starts with her huddled on the floor, and then a slant of light spreads across the foyer, and she looks up to see Chris entering the house. It’s Halloween, and Chris is dressed like a superhero, which strikes me as fitting because Chris is still Josie’s hero, the one she truly loves, the only one she really lets in. In the memory, Chris’s smile fades as he takes in the sight of his dad lying dead at the bottom of the stairs with a twelve-year-old Josie sitting beside him, patting his cheek and trying to wake him. Shards of glass from the dropped vodka bottle fan out like a halo and surround Josie and her stepdad. Josie said that sometimes her memories call her like a scab wanting to be picked, and that in this particular memory it was the halo of glass that concerned her the most. She couldn’t figure out how she’d gotten inside it, sharing the epicenter with her stepfather, the glass like something in orbit swirling around them. She told me this when she was drunk and high, and the next day she pretended she never told me at all.

  I stare at her computer, wondering if I can get away with scrolling through her inbox. I don’t even know where she goes half the time, like right now, for example, but whenever she comes back (sometimes in the middle of the night) she won’t tell me. She’s either into heavier drugs than I give her credit for, or she’s meeting up with her tall, dark, and handsome guy and sneaking into his dorm and staying the night there, or maybe something I can’t even think of yet because it’s so far outside the realm of what I could imagine. Josie’s always saying I’m short on imagination for an artist. It’s probably the meanest thing she’s ever said to me.

  I’m about to turn away from Josie’s computer when I see another email a few lines down, this one from Noah. I can’t help myself. My heart goes wild in my chest as I open it.

  What the hell, Josie? What does this even mean? Why are you emailing me something like this?

  I scroll down to find an email from Josie, written today at 4:32 p.m.

  This has to stop. You know Emma really likes you. What are you doing to her, leading her on like this? It’s cruel.

  I step back like I’ve been slapped. Why would she write that?

  I’m shaky at first, reading and rereading, but then I try to think clearly. Josie’s always overprotective of me, but there’s nothing Noah’s said or done to lead me on that she’s seen. No one even knows we’re hooking up because Noah hardly ever touches me when we’re in front of other people, even if the way he looks at me may as well be his hands all over my body. There was this night last month when Josie and I were drinking beer with Noah’s roommates, but Noah wasn’t because he had a test the next morning. Josie was watching the two of us like a hawk, like if she just stared hard enough, she could figure everything out. But then Chris got too drunk and said something rude to one of Noah’s roommates, and Josie was distracted trying to defuse the ensuing argument, and in that moment I snuck away into the kitchen. Noah followed me. I tried to play it cool, scooping ice into my glass with my back turned to him. There was plenty of room for him to pass behind me. But he came right up behind me and put a hand on my hip as he passed. I turned toward him, only an inch between us, and then his fingers trailed a line right over my hip bone, which burns
every time I think about it.

  The door creaks opens, and I whirl around. Josie’s standing there with an expression I can’t read. I curse myself for not closing Noah’s email. Josie’s still wearing her coat, and the smell of the clove cigarette she just smoked wafts into our room.

  “Are you reading my emails?” she asks, her voice strangely calm.

  I swallow. “You’ve read mine,” I say, trying to stand up a little taller.

  “True,” she says. She steps all the way inside and slams the door behind her. It feels too aggressive, and every inch of me tightens. We’ve never fought before, and I don’t want this to be the first time, and maybe that’s why, instead of asking about her email to Noah, I blurt, “I’m pregnant.”

  Josie’s hands fly over her mouth. “What?” she says through her fingers.

  I burst into tears. I still can’t believe it’s real. I start crying harder, feeling like I can’t breathe. “I don’t get it,” Josie says, but I can’t imagine what it is that she doesn’t get. “Oh my God,” she goes on, and there’s a hint of fury in her voice. It sets me on edge. “Is it that teacher’s?”

  It takes me a minute to realize she’s talking about Brad. I never told her about him, which means she gathered it from the emails she read, which is kind of impressive considering he and I mostly texted and barely ever emailed. “Who?” I ask, playing dumb, trying to stall.

  “Who?” she echoes back, mimicking me.

  I purse my lips and make myself stop crying. I don’t want to be weak in front of her. I don’t know whether to be mad at her for knowing all along about Brad and not saying anything, or for the snooping itself, but mostly I’m mad that she’s not hugging me right now and trying to make me feel better.

  She sees it on my face. That’s the thing about Josie: she’s eerily good at sensing what other people are thinking. “Come here,” she says. She unzips her coat, revealing a camisole and bare skin. She tosses the coat onto her bed, and I can see the effort it takes for her to open her arms to me. But in that moment I’m just so relieved that I do what she says—I fold into her hug, my face in her hair. “Emma?” she asks softly. She smells like cigarettes and rosewater, and I start to relax a little.

  “Yeah?” I answer against the soft skin of her shoulder.

  “It’s the teacher’s baby, isn’t it,” she says, her voice almost cooing, like how you’d talk to a child. “Did he hurt you, Emma?”

  “What?” I say, pulling back. “No—not at all. And it isn’t even . . .”

  Knock, knock, knock . . .

  We both turn to face the pounding on the door. “Coming!” Josie says, and then she drops my embrace like a stone. She leaves me standing there all alone like I’m nothing to her, and then crosses the room and flings open the door. Noah’s massive frame takes up nearly the whole doorway. He doesn’t seem to see me at first; he looks at Josie, his features narrowing. Their email exchange curls through my mind like smoke.

  “Emma here?” he asks pointedly, and then he looks past her, and his eyes find me.

  “Noah,” I say, and for the first time in a very long while, I have the fleeting sense that everything might turn out all right.

  “Hey,” he says, not breaking my gaze. He has workout clothes on, and he’s still sweaty.

  Josie’s turned toward him, and I’m glad for that: I don’t want to see the look on her face. She reaches both arms up to tighten her ponytail, and I watch as her taut back muscles contract and loosen.

  “You guys ready?” she asks suddenly, and then she turns around to look at me, smiling like all is forgotten, but there’s no way that’s true. “The woods tonight, right?” she asks.

  I swallow. “The woods tonight,” I echo back, trying to ignore the sweep of cold over my skin, trying to focus on Noah, on his bright eyes holding mine.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Haley

  At the police station, Haley waited inside an empty interrogation room that smelled vaguely like tomato soup. She was still shaky, trying hard to distract herself with the details of the room: the bare cream walls with paint peeling in some spots and reinforced in others.

  The door finally opened, and a fifty-something blond woman made her way inside. Her gaze was buried in a folder filled with paperwork.

  “Haley McCullough?” she asked, still not glancing up.

  “Yes,” Haley said, taking in the woman’s neatly pressed uniform.

  “I’m Detective Peters,” she said, and Haley immediately felt nervous. She had to remind herself she hadn’t done anything wrong and neither had Dean. She thought of her fiancé in a similarly stark room, antsy without his phone to distract him.

  The woman finally took her eyes off the paperwork and set them on Haley. She scanned Haley’s face, clothes, and bloodstained hands, and Haley fought back the urge to cry. “Is Josie all right?” Haley asked, her voice trembling.

  “She’s alive from the last I heard,” the woman said, sitting in the seat across from Haley. Her eyes were light blue and clear like Josie’s, and Haley couldn’t help but imagine Josie lying on the kitchen floor. “Any idea of anyone who would want to hurt her?” the detective asked.

  Haley sat up straighter, determined to be helpful. “I don’t know her as well as I used to,” she said, “but I certainly don’t know anyone who wanted to hurt her.”

  “As well as you used to?” the detective repeated.

  “She and my sister were best friends during college,” Haley said. “My sister is Emma McCullough, the student who disappeared from Yarrow.”

  Haley had only said it like that a few times in her life, and each time it made her want to retch. It was too factual, and as much as Haley loved facts, she preferred to talk about Emma in a more roundabout way, mostly in stories from growing up.

  The police detective nodded, and Haley couldn’t tell if she’d known about Emma before this moment or not. Maybe it didn’t matter. “So you knew her well, years ago, as your sister’s friend,” she said, and Haley nodded. “And what is your relationship like with her now?”

  Haley shifted in her seat, the metal chair creaking beneath her. “Josie’s my real estate agent. My fiancé and I are looking for a house to buy, and she’s been helping us for about a month.” Haley swallowed. It felt so hot inside the room, and she needed water. “Well, I guess, longer than that, because she found us our current house to rent. But we’ve been actively looking at houses together during the past month.”

  The detective raised her eyebrows. “Funny,” she said. “Josie and Noah sold my family and me our house, five or so years ago, when they’d just opened up their real estate business.” She stopped talking, but held Haley’s stare like she was waiting for her to respond to this tidbit.

  “What a coincidence,” Haley finally said, unsure of what else to say.

  “There was a problem with the house, actually,” the woman said, her eyes boring into Haley’s, and again, she left an uncomfortable silence between them, as if she were waiting for Haley to respond.

  “Oh?” Haley said.

  “Oh,” the detective repeated. “There was a terrible, and I truly mean god-awful, sewage smell that rose from the crawl space every time we did the laundry. My husband and I never understood how that didn’t come up on inspection. Seems like a pretty big thing to miss, don’t you think?” The detective shrugged. “Well, you know how it is. These things happen, I suppose.”

  Haley crossed and uncrossed her legs. She really needed water.

  “Cost us tens of thousands of dollars to replace the septic tank, though,” the detective added. Haley exhaled, and the woman finally dropped her eyes to her paperwork. “Crazy thing is, Noah’s totally unreachable now,” she said, perusing what looked like some kind of incident report. “And so is the only other employee at Carmichael Realty, a Mr. Chris Paxton.”

  “That’s Josie’s brother,” Haley said. And then she immediately felt idiotic for telling the detective something she must have already known.

 
“Both of their phones are going straight to voice mail,” the detective said. “Doesn’t that seem strange? Real estate agents are almost always by their phones, almost like police detectives.” She gave a chuckle that sent chills over Haley’s skin. “But it appears Noah Carmichael and Chris Paxton have gone completely off the grid.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Emma

  Ten years ago

  I sit in the back of Noah’s Jeep with my legs crossed. The headlights illuminate the narrow patch of road ahead of us, and I watch as a small animal scurries out in front of the Jeep. Noah doesn’t slow down. I gasp when he nearly hits the thing, and he laughs, and then so does Josie.

  “You guys suck,” I say playfully, but really my insides are turning. There’s pressure on my bladder every time the road gets uneven, but it feels different from having to pee. I can’t imagine the baby is big enough to make me feel like this, but maybe my body parts are moving around in weird ways?

  I open my phone to see a text from my sister. I’m coming tonight, just text me where you are, ok?

  Good. I need Haley tonight. I’ll text her back when I don’t feel so carsick. The Jeep gets so bumpy in the back seat, and Josie always says she has motion sickness and needs the front. “Can you guys roll the windows down?” I say, feeling way too queasy for a ride like this.

  “It’s freezing!” Josie says, laughing, but it’s really just her way of saying no to me.

  “I’m going to be sick, Josie,” I say through gritted teeth, but Josie still doesn’t roll down the window. Noah hits a pothole, and dirty water splatters the windshield. Finally he rolls down his window.

  Josie turns and gives me a small, sad smile over her shoulder. Then she asks Noah, “Have you told Emma your big news?”

  “I was going to tonight,” Noah says, rounding a sharp corner.