Open House: A Novel

by Katie Sise

  Downstairs, she peeked in on her wide-eyed mother-in-law. “I’ll be right back,” she said, already heading to the garage. “There’s someone I need to see.”

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Haley

  Haley was in the study now, about to do the only thing she could think of. She turned on the desktop, and the seconds it took to buzz to life felt like hours. She tapped against the desk—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven—always an odd number. She glanced around the tiny room at the walls, which were bare except for the Yarrow diploma Dean had hung.

  Next to Dean’s desk was a porcelain jar full of ballpoint pens. The thing felt too sterile, making Haley think back to the homemade pencil holder she’d seen just yesterday on Rappaport’s desk. She thought about the gaggle of kids the detective probably had, and then she wondered if she was about to lose everything she’d dreamed of having with Dean.

  Haley exhaled. The backs of her legs were sweating against the ergonomic chair. Finally the computer found an internet connection, and Haley entered the same password she and Dean used for the joint banking account he’d set up for them to use for any wedding expenses. He’d put seventy-five thousand dollars into it, telling Haley he was a grown man who didn’t feel comfortable with her parents throwing them a wedding. Haley had never seen an account with seventy-five thousand dollars in it. Hers always floated somewhere around three or four thousand dollars, depending on where she was with her student loan payments. When they got married—if they got married—Dean planned to pay all that off, which Haley had always reconciled in her mind by reminding herself she was studying to be a doctor, so obviously the money he spent would pay for itself eventually. How strange marriage was, with its debts and burdens, trade-offs and payoffs.

  Haley shook her head, snapping herself back to the moment. She clicked the sign-in button and—voilà! She was in. Would a man hiding an affair really use the same password he’d given his future wife for a shared account?

  Dean’s inbox splayed out before her. She tried to scan for anything abnormal, but all she saw was run-of-the-mill emails from work, an alert about a J.Crew sale, and a group email chain Dean was on about a trip to Vail. She opened the Vail email and scanned the names copied, but it was just a group of four guys Dean kept in touch with from Yarrow.

  Haley entered Josie’s email address in the search box. There were several emails written to both Haley and Dean about houses. But then she found a chain farther down without a subject line, sent to Dean only, from last week.

  From Josie.Carmichael@CarmichaelRealty.com

  To Dean.Walters@gmail.com

  Hey, Dean. Thanks for meeting with me today. I already feel so much better talking things through with you. Ghosts from the past still have so much power over me, but today I was able to let some of that go. Yours, Josie

  Haley stiffened. She certainly wasn’t aware of a time Dean had met with Josie alone. Why would he keep that from her?

  From Dean.Walters@gmail.com

  To Josie.Carmichael@CarmichaelRealty.com

  Hi Josie. No problem. It was nice to meet. I’m always here for you, I know you’ve been through a lot.

  Dean

  From Josie.Carmichael@CarmichaelRealty.com

  To Dean.Walters@gmail.com

  I can’t even tell you what that means to me. Thank you! J

  Dean hadn’t replied to that one. But two days later, Josie emailed him again.

  From Josie.Carmichael@CarmichaelRealty.com

  To Dean.Walters@gmail.com

  Do you think we can meet again? There’s something I want to discuss with you. We can call it a working lunch if we discuss some properties, too. Haha.

  From Dean.Walters@gmail.com

  To Josie.Carmichael@CarmichaelRealty.com

  Should I have Haley come?

  From Josie.Carmichael@CarmichaelRealty.com

  To Dean.Walters@gmail.com

  No, no. Sorry, shouldn’t have made the real estate joke. I’d like to meet alone.

  From Dean.Walters@gmail.com

  To Josie.Carmichael@CarmichaelRealty.com

  Ok, where?

  From Josie.Carmichael@CarmichaelRealty.com

  To Dean.Walters@gmail.com

  My house? Noah will be out tonight. Can you come?

  From Dean.Walters@gmail.com

  To Josie.Carmichael@CarmichaelRealty.com

  Yes but are you sure this is a good idea?

  From Josie.Carmichael@CarmichaelRealty.com

  To Dean.Walters@gmail.com

  Maybe I’m being reckless, but please come. 8 pm. xx J

  There seemed to be no more emails between them, but maybe they’d switched over to text after this. Rappaport had said they’d found correspondence on Dean’s phone, which could mean anything.

  Haley spun the ergonomic chair around and stared out onto the lawn. A streetlamp glistened over the snow like a beacon.

  Could this really be? Could Dean and Josie have been romantically involved? She didn’t want to jump to conclusions from the emails, but the whole thing was so off. Dean meeting with Josie at her home and not telling Haley about it? What else could have been happening there besides an affair? And if that was it—if they’d cheated—what if Noah had found out? Haley’s heart pounded. What if today’s attack had nothing to do with her sister’s disappearance? What if it was a jealous husband trying to kill his wife because of an affair?

  Her stomach felt like a rock, and something dawned on her that scared her more than almost anything, which was that, in this possible scenario, she felt more disappointed by the possibility of losing the answers to her sister’s disappearance than the prospect of her fiancé straying.

  Haley put her hands over her eyes—she could worry about her cold feet later. She still felt sure she was missing something, and for the thousandth time she wished her sister were here to help her. Tears came, wetting her hands. “Can you hear me, Emma?” she asked, and the sound of her own voice in the empty room made her cry harder.

  The doorbell rang.

  Haley glanced up at the clock to see it was almost midnight. Dean wouldn’t normally ring the bell, but he probably hadn’t taken his keys when Rappaport took him to the station. She went to the front door and peered through the peephole. Priya. Haley’s heart pounded, and she knew she probably shouldn’t talk to Brad’s wife, but curiosity propelled her. She yanked open the door. “Hi,” she said, a blast of cold air hitting her face. And then, before she could think better of it, she said, “Come in,” and Priya did.

  Haley didn’t look at her. She shut the door and moved into the living room, her bare feet hot and itchy on the carpet. “Do you want to sit?” Haley asked, gesturing to an uncomfortable-looking midcentury chair Dean had brought home from a tag sale.

  Priya wasn’t wearing a coat, only a knit sweater that she held together over her chest with skinny fingers. She had that same crazed, scared look in her eyes that she’d had at the open house. But she nodded, and after a beat or two she sat in the chair.

  Haley sat on the sofa across from her. “There’s a blanket behind you,” she offered, and she watched as Priya unfolded the blanket and set it across her lap. It made her look older than she probably was, and so did the worry lines creased around her eyes.

  “What do you know about my husband?” Priya asked.

  Haley tightened. “Did you come here to interrogate me?”

  “No, not at all,” Priya said, shaking her head. “I’m sorry. I’ll tell you everything you want to know about us. I was just wondering how much you already knew.”

  “I know you taught Emma,” Haley said. “I know Brad was sleeping with her, and may have gotten her pregnant, though I’m not sure on that part. I know the cops are holding him now, and I know there’s a pregnancy test with his DNA all over it. That’s pretty much all I know.”

  Priya nodded. “Haley, first,” she started, the worry lines growing deeper. “I’m so sorry about your sister. She was my student—like you said, you alrea
dy knew that—and she was extremely talented, but I’m sure you knew that, too. She was also kind, and we were friendly, actually. I’m completely sure that she didn’t know Brad was my fiancé, not only because I don’t think she would have slept with him if she knew, but also because Brad and I kept our relationship private, mostly because we both taught classes, and we didn’t want to ruffle anyone’s feathers. Yarrow can be conservative in that way. We liked it there, actually, at Yarrow. We had good times together, particularly when I first got the job and traveled back and forth between Yarrow and New York to exhibit. Things went wrong, of course. Brad met your sister—I still don’t know where, because we barely ever talked about it. I learned of their affair the night she disappeared. She came to our town house, and I could see it all over her face—the surprise at seeing me there, everything. It was awful.”

  Haley didn’t want to interrupt—but the words came out anyway. “But why didn’t you go to the police?”

  “Because I honestly didn’t think my husband did it. It was so wrong of me not to go to the cops, and I won’t make excuses, but if I were trying to make you see it from my perspective, I would tell you that I delivered my son a day and a half later, and I was out of my mind with stress about the affair and what would happen to my newborn son and me if I told the police that Brad had been sleeping with not only a student, but one who had disappeared. Emma had her sad side, too, we all do, and I believed the rumors that she had hurt herself. I don’t believe them now, not after what happened to Josie this morning, but I also don’t believe my husband hurt her.”

  “I don’t, either, actually,” Haley said.

  “You don’t?” she asked, and Haley heard the incredulity in her voice.

  “I don’t,” Haley said. “It’s a hunch, and it goes against the obvious—a teacher sleeping with and possibly impregnating a student . . .”

  Priya flinched. “All of it is so awful.”

  “It’s awful that she’s gone,” Haley said. “The other things my sister did, the things people like to blame her for—I can hear it in their voices, that they blame her—is being promiscuous, by some definitions, and drinking that night, or so some reports say, and now, as we know, being pregnant . . . but those things don’t mean she should have lost her life.”

  “Of course, you must know I agree,” Priya said. She leaned forward, her legs adjusting themselves beneath the blanket.

  “I don’t know anything about you. I don’t know you at all,” Haley said. There was a bite in her words, but they were true.

  Priya smoothed a wrinkle in the pillow closest to her. “So now what?”

  “I don’t know,” Haley said. “I know you’re here to absolve your husband, but I don’t even know how to help you. I can tell you the cops found suspicious stuff between my fiancé and Josie, and some of that could mean they were involved in some way, and I imagine that’s enough to get the spotlight off your husband for Josie’s attack for the time being. But Brad still slept with Emma, and she was a student, and that’s gonna come out, and you’re going to have to deal with it.”

  “I know that,” Priya said, her eyes welling. “Trust me, I know.”

  “Can you do me a favor?” Haley asked. She knew there were so many things she should be doing besides talking to this woman right now—like trying to get to the bottom of Dean’s relationship with Josie, or trying to figure out what had happened today at the open house. But the chance so rarely arose, and now that it had . . .

  “Can you tell me something about my sister?” Haley asked. “She was your student, an artist like you, and like you said—you were close. Can you tell me something I haven’t heard yet?”

  Priya wiped the tears from her face, sat up a little straighter. “Yes, of course I can. What would you like to know?”

  “Everything,” Haley said, and she pulled her knees closer to her chest, her entire being lifted as Priya started talking.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Emma

  Ten years ago

  I follow Dean along the trail, wondering if this is how every horror movie starts, with a girl following a guy she doesn’t know well enough into the woods. But of course, this isn’t just some random guy: it’s the guy Josie’s been stringing along. Maybe a part of me gets some sick satisfaction by turning the tables, interfering somehow with a guy who likes her. Isn’t that what she’s trying to do to Noah and me?

  In the silence, I swear I can feel something pulsing in the air between us, something that feels like frustration or anger, and I realize, sadly, that that’s pretty much what Josie has made a lot of guys feel since we started at Yarrow. Josie loves being in control; she loves every eye being drawn to her when she enters a room and the way guys hang on her every movement and every word. She knows just how much attention to give someone until they feel special, chosen somehow. And then she snaps it away.

  “So you and Josie are really close, right?” Dean asks when the branches start to thin out again. We’re almost at the cliff’s edge—I can hear the river. Dean’s broad back blocks out some of the light, but I’m pretty sure we’re about to see the full moon on the water.

  “Yeah, we are,” I say, pushing aside a branch. “I think we’re almost there.” I go on, and a beat later we emerge into the clearing. It’s beautiful up here, the moon so incredibly bright.

  Dean surprises me by plopping down onto one of the rocks. “Do you want to sit?” he asks.

  I shake my head. He looks up at me with a pitiful look on his face, and I know it’s there because he likes Josie a lot more than she likes him.

  “I’m sorry to drag you out here,” he says.

  “It’s fine,” I say. I don’t want to talk about Josie, but we don’t have anything else to talk about, so I get right to it. “If you want to know if Josie likes you, I don’t really know the answer to that. She talks about you and everything, but not specifics.”

  “I think she tried to break up with me today, actually.”

  “Really?” I ask. I don’t know if he has his terminology right: Josie never made it sound like they were anything serious enough to require a breakup conversation. “I didn’t really realize you were together,” I say. “Um, sorry, I’m not trying to make it worse.”

  He waves me off, but I don’t seem to have offended him. “You’re probably right,” he says. “That’s not even why I wanted to talk. I wanted to talk to you because she told me she couldn’t see me anymore because of you.”

  My pulse picks up. “Because of me? I never told her not to see you,” I say, flustered. “I don’t even know you.”

  “No, nothing like that,” Dean says. “She told me she needed to spend time with you because you’d been drinking too much lately and doing drugs, and she was worried, and I just wanted to talk to you, because, well, I guess I got the idea she might be lying, and if that’s the case, I need to just let her go. That’s a crazy thing to lie about.”

  I shake my head, feeling sorry for him. “She’s lying,” I say. “I’m not an angel or anything, I drink a lot, probably too much, just like everybody else here. But I don’t do drugs.” I leave off the fact that Josie does.

  Dean tips his head back, letting a breath escape.

  “Don’t bother being embarrassed,” I say. “It’s not just you. She’s lied to me, too. A lot.”

  I decide to sit next to him. It’s the least I can do. I know what it feels like to be on the other end of Josie’s mistruths. It makes me think back to the email I found today on her computer, the one she wrote to Noah. “I actually don’t know why she does half the stuff she does,” I say. “I think it’s just out of intense insecurity and past hurt, but it still sucks and seems to be escalating in terms of frequency. Or maybe I’m just starting to see it for what it is.”

  “She told me about how hard it was growing up,” Dean says. “About her dad leaving and then her mom dying and having to live with her stepdad. She told me he was merciless.”

  My heart feels heavy in my chest. “I should
go find her,” I say.

  “Let me first,” Dean says, standing. “It’s fine that she wants things to be over. It’s probably for the best.” He shrugs, considers me. “I’m going to say goodbye to her, let her know it’s all good. And thank you, by the way, for clearing it all up. I might have kept pursuing her if I really thought she was just trying to help you out of a tough time. But I don’t need someone who’s lying to me about why they don’t want to see me. Not to be cold or anything.”

  I smile up at him. “Good luck,” I say, and I mean it.

  “You coming with me?” he asks, but I shake my head.

  “I think I’ll just take a minute out here,” I say. “It’s peaceful.”

  He lifts his hand in a wave, and then turns to go. “Bye, Emma,” he says, and he leaves me sitting there all alone.

  FORTY-NINE

  Haley

  At sunrise Haley went to the precinct.

  “Your fiancé is here voluntarily,” Rappaport said when he met her at the front desk. “You know that, right?”

  Haley wasn’t sure why he was telling her that or the significance of it. She was too tired, her mind too taxed. Rappaport led her down the hall to a room a little bigger than the one she’d been interviewed in yesterday, and when he opened the door, Haley saw Dean sitting at a table, his head down. When he looked up, his eyes were sunken, the gray shadows beneath them darker than she’d ever seen them. “Dean,” Haley said as she sat across from him, and everything that rushed through her felt nothing like she’d expected. She’d been so furious on the drive here, furious at him for carrying on with Josie in secret and lying to her, furious for something even bigger than Josie that she was sure he was keeping from her. But now, as she took in the sight of his face, she felt a wash of empathy and love she didn’t know was in there. The things she’d been planning to say to him felt meaningless now that she was here.

  “I’m so sorry, Haley,” Dean said. “For all of this.” His palms rested awkwardly on the table, his fingers splayed. Rappaport had left them alone, and Haley wondered briefly if there were cameras in the room, not that it would change anything she said. She wanted to hear the truth, both about what happened to her sister and what happened to Josie. And however Dean was involved in either of those things, well, she needed to know that, too.