Falling Into Forever

by Delancey Stewart

  “Wasn’t your building in New York a pre-war building?” Paige piped up.

  “They renovated!” I said, defending myself. “We had working toilets and showers, and no ghosts that I knew about. I’m just not sure I could live there with Michael Tucker. And if we each do six months, I have to stay here for a year before we can sell.”

  “The place is big, right?” Paige asked.

  “Yeah, pretty big, especially compared to a New York apartment.”

  “Couldn’t you both live there at the same time without being on top of each other? There’s more than one bedroom, right?”

  I nodded, thinking about sleeping with handsome Michael Tucker just down the hall. That’d be strange, wouldn’t it? And Dan would be there too, because Michael had joint custody. I couldn’t figure out quite how I felt about that—would I be an intruder in their family life? I didn’t like that idea.

  “One sec?” Cormac said, his face taking a serious cast. “How well do we know this guy? You’re going to move into a house with him? Is that a good idea?”

  “I mean . . . the Tuckers have been in town forever,” I pointed out. “It isn’t like he’s a stranger. I’ve known him since he was a baby.”

  “Still,” Paige said. “There’s one more thing to consider. Mom will hate this.”

  I thought of Lottie, back in her little house, where my childhood bedroom was just waiting for me to return so it could stifle me with all the hopes and dreams I’d never fulfill under my mother’s painfully sympathetic gaze. I had to get out of there either way. “Yeah. You’re right,” I said. “But I think I’m going to do it anyway.”

  Monday morning, I met Michael at the lawyer’s office again. Augustus had called to find out if we had questions and to tell us he had something else for us.

  “What do you suppose this will be?” I asked Michael as we met on the sidewalk outside.

  “Well, it’s unlikely to be as surprising as the first time we visited,” he said. Michael smiled at me, and in the sun shining over the square, his hair glowed golden red and his blue eyes sparkled. He might have been a Tucker, but on a purely aesthetic level, the man was hot.

  I ignored his dazzling looks and my own unbidden reaction to them and cleared my throat. “Let’s go find out.”

  We climbed the stairs and knocked on the door to the lawyer’s office, and Anders greeted us wearing the same strange round hat he’d had on the previous week.

  “Hello, hello,” he said, waving us in.

  When we were seated, he looked between us. “You’ve seen the house, yes?”

  “Yes,” we agreed.

  “Then I am bound by the terms of Mrs. Easter’s last wishes to give you this.” He slid an envelope across the desk to us.

  The crisp white paper had our names written on it in a spindly hand, and for a moment we both stared at it.

  “X-ray vision, is it?” Anders asked us, sounding a little impatient.

  I glanced up at him. “What?”

  “Most folks need to open an envelope to make out what’s inside. But maybe you’re honing your X-ray vision?”

  Michael chuckled as his eyes met mine, and I ignored the warm rush of familiarity I felt as I looked at him smiling. “May I?” he asked, gesturing to the document.

  I nodded and waited as he opened up what appeared to be a hand-written letter. Surely this would explain everything and give us a clear idea what we were supposed to do. Michael read out loud:

  * * *

  Dear Addison and Michael:

  I’m sure you have convinced yourselves that I was a doddering old woman, losing my faculties. I am not, I assure you. I do feel, however, that I’m losing my grip on life and suspect you’ll be reading this sooner rather than later.

  At this point, you have heard my final wishes and have visited the house at Maple Lane.

  You should know that house holds many fond memories for me, and for my family—which perhaps you have gleaned by now is your family too. Both of you.

  I left it to you for two reasons. Number one, that house is both the root and the end of the feud between the Tanners and the Tuckers—or that’s what I hope. I’ll leave that last part to you two. Number two, you are the only people I could think of who also have history there—albeit short-lived—since you both spent time there as children. I hope that maybe you can see past the overgrown gardens and dusty rooms to find and restore the true beauty of my childhood home.

  Finally, I believe you will enjoy the experience. The house holds ghosts between its walls, history and heartache, joy and devastation. I hope you will find something for yourselves there—your pasts, and maybe, your futures too.

  Sincerely,

  Your Cousin, Filene Easter

  * * *

  “That’s it?” I asked. I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting, but the letter hadn’t exactly cleared everything up.

  “That’s the whole letter.”

  “So what have you decided to do?” Anders asked. “Will you take possession of the house?”

  “What happens if we don’t take it?” Michael asked.

  “If you don’t take the house, it’ll be donated to those causes Mrs. Easter designated. And as soon as it deteriorates to the point where it can be condemned, it will be demolished so the land can be sold for proceeds to divide between them.”

  “That sounds kind of awful,” I said, imagining the grand old house being pushed over by bulldozers, the contents and history lost forever as it was turned into the soil of those lush gardens.

  “Right,” Michael agreed. “But you and I just walk away. So really, it wouldn’t change much. The house is just sitting there rotting now anyway.”

  “But . . .” I trailed off, unsure what I was about to say.

  “You have too much on your plate already.” Michael’s eyes met mine again as he suggested this, and I could see hope there. He wanted this.

  I lifted a shoulder, considering his words. Did I have a lot on my plate? Not really. I did have—before . . . but now? I had almost nothing. I had Mom hovering and questioning and opining about things, I had work at the Muffin Tin, and I had the scattered rubble of my old life waiting for me to come sweep it up. “I think I want to do this,” I said, surprising myself.

  “You do?” Michael sounded excited, and part of me felt happy to have made him happy.

  “I think I do.”

  9

  Mice in the Mattress

  Michael

  “You’re doing what? Hell no.” Shelly crossed her arms over her chest, lifted her pointy chin and gave me her entitled cheerleader stare. The one that used to intimidate the hell out of me. I’d gone to talk to her on her lunch break at The Shack on Wednesday, to tell her about our plans to move into the house.

  That had gone over as expected. Like a wagon full of manure.

  “It’s not actually your decision,” I pointed out, keeping my voice low as other people wandered past the corner of the bar where we were chatting.

  “My son is not going to live in that haunted house. Did you know some teenager was murdered in there?” Her blue eyes widened with conviction.

  That story had been going around since Shelly and I had been kids. It was just one of many stories told about the old house, which was the center of hundreds of ghost tales in Singletree. “That’s not true, it’s just a story we used to tell each other to scare ourselves.”

  “Daniel told me his friends knew the girl who died.”

  This was pure Shelly. Zero rational thought, one hundred percent reaction. I needed to have a chat with Daniel about telling his mother stories. “It’s not true, Shell. Don’t you think there would have been a police investigation we would have noticed? And it’s a small enough town—we would have known the family. Plus, that story has been going around since we were in school, remember?”

  “It’s haunted,” she said defiantly.

  “It might be, I guess.” I didn’t know that it wasn’t. I suspected ghosts were not real and th
at the house suffered mostly from neglect rather than an infestation of otherworldly spooks.

  “It’s dangerous.”

  She might have a point on that one. “I won’t let Daniel wander, and it’ll be a good chance for him to learn how to fix a few things around the house.” I had already thought about how Dan could help patch drywall and replace fixtures. I’d thought that part through. This was a great chance to teach Dan things, to work on a real project side by side and to grow our relationship. I was excited about it.

  She sighed. “I don’t like it. What’s wrong with the house you have now?”

  The house I had now was a two-bedroom bungalow I’d bought after things fell apart with Shelly. It was a bachelor pad for the most part. But I think Shelly liked me being there, knowing I was staying put in the remnants of the failed life I’d once had. If she couldn’t move forward, she didn’t want me to. Or maybe that was just me, assigning my life’s failures to someone else. Either way, I was ready for a change, and this opportunity felt like an offering from a universe that had previously offered me only lost dreams.

  “It’s going to be fine, Shelly. I’ll look out for Dan.”

  Her shoulders rounded, the fight leaving her. “Fine.”

  I sighed, turning to leave, and wished fervently that somehow things had worked out differently. For us, for Dan. For me. But these pseudo-fights with Shelly were just reminders of the mistakes of my past, the life I’d failed. And I would bear them because the only real obligation I had now was to my son. To make sure his life went a different way, that he had every opportunity I could give him.

  I headed for the truck, where I’d already piled my duffle bags and the few scant pieces of furniture I thought I’d move. There had been beds in all the rooms, but I brought along an air mattress and sleeping bag for me and Dan just in case. I wasn’t sure how long that furniture had been there or what kind of condition it was in, and there was a good chance the mattresses needed to go out.

  Today I drove around back, to the street entrance of the property. There was a one-car garage covered in vines, and a driveway that had once been paved but was now mostly rubble. I pulled the truck in, and shut off the engine, peering through the overgrown trees up at the old house, standing silent against a blaze of bright blue sky. A little shudder ran through me, but I wasn’t sure if it was excitement or foreboding.

  “Here we go,” I said to myself, stepping out of the car and grabbing a couple of my bags.

  I stopped to gaze through the dark windows of the little garage, but I couldn’t see a thing through the dirt-streaked glass, most of which was cracked and disintegrating. Whatever vehicle sat inside was undoubtedly in as bad of shape as the rest of the garage.

  It only took an hour to get my room set up inside. I had taken one of the smaller bedrooms, figuring I’d let Addie have the master, not that it was really any better. En suite bathrooms had not been a thing when this house was built, and no matter where we each slept, we’d be sharing the single bathroom in the hall upstairs. I’d managed to get the power turned on with a call after we’d seen Anders Monday, so that was a start. But the place was dusty and creepy, and there wasn’t much I could do about that right away.

  I was expecting Addison to arrive at any moment—she’d said Wednesday afternoon—and I thought I heard the door downstairs open a few times and then slam shut. Once I thought I’d even heard her walking around down there as I dusted the room I’d chosen for myself, but when I called down, no answer came.

  That time, I’d bolted down the stairs, certain someone was in the house, but the place had been empty, the front door shut firmly. I refused to let the place creep me out, though. It was just a house. An old creaky house.

  Finally, around four, I heard a car in the driveway outside, and peered out the back window to see the silver Toyota I knew Lottie drove pull up next to my truck.

  Addison stepped out, her dark hair gleaming in the afternoon sun as she pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head and gazed up at the house. I wasn’t sure if she could see me in the window, so I waved, but she didn’t wave back.

  I found myself hurrying down the stairs and out the back door, more excited than I should have been to have her here.

  “Let me help you,” I said as I arrived to greet her.

  “I don’t have much. I think I’ve got it.” Addison pulled two suitcases from the back of the car and then shut the trunk again.

  “That’s it?” I asked. Part of me was a little disappointed she could come and go so easily—it might mean she wouldn’t find it hard to bolt at the first sign that this house was more than she wanted to take on.

  “The house is furnished.” She shrugged. “I brought some clean sheets.”

  I’d checked out the beds while I’d been poking around. The mattresses were destroyed by whatever had been living in the house since people had cleared out. “I don’t think you want to sleep on the mattresses up there.”

  She frowned. “Why not?”

  “Mice love mattresses when people aren’t around.”

  Addison’s eyebrows shot up and her eyes filled with horror. “Mice?”

  “‘Fraid so.”

  She took a step back, like maybe that single word was going to make her change her mind about the whole plan.

  “We’ll catch the mice,” I said, thinking of the traps I had at the store. “And don’t worry about the beds. I brought an air mattress and sleeping bag,” I told her. “I actually brought a second one for Dan that you can use tonight. He’s sleeping over with a friend until tomorrow.”

  Her eyes slid from the big foreboding house to me and back again as she thought about this, a little frown line appearing between her eyes. “I don’t really camp.”

  “Figures.” The word slipped out before I thought about it—and her face darkened. I hadn’t meant anything really, I was just so used to being petty when it came to Tanners that my brain was still searching for opportunities to drop little daggers.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” She asked.

  “Nothing, sorry. Only, that you’re a city girl. Nothing about you screams I’m-the-camping type.” Her frown told me I hadn’t managed to make that any better at all. “Sorry,” I said again.

  She sighed. “I guess I can sleep on the floor for one night. I’ll figure something else out tomorrow.” I decided not to mention the wealth of bugs and dirt that would be joining us on the floor tonight.

  “Great,” I said, and as I followed her down the path next to the garage and back toward the back door of the big house, I felt an unfamiliar glimmer of hope, or maybe excitement at the prospect of a new opportunity, spring to life inside me.

  10

  Lack of Air

  Addison

  Something about the way Michael was leading me into the house—our house—was rubbing me wrong. The fact he had moved in first, had been here all afternoon doing whatever it was he’d been doing . . . it made it feel like this was his house, his project, and I was just a guest. One who had to sleep on the floor in a room inhabited by mice. Ew. But Lottie had needed a lot of convincing, and she’d demanded help with her famous pumpkin spice muffins before she’d let me go. Technically, she reminded me, I was still working at the Tin part time.

  At least at the Tin there were no mice.

  Living in New York City had made me pretty immune to—or at least used to—things like rodents and cockroaches. But it sure didn’t mean I enjoyed sharing space with them. Still, I’d never been the squealing type unless confronted by enormous kangaroos, and I wasn’t giving Michael the satisfaction of seeing me afraid.

  We were partners in this insanity, and I needed it. I needed to get out of Mom’s house for a bit, get some space to think, and to figure out what to do about my past life, which felt like it was standing just around the corner, waiting for me. The problem was that it was tarnished and ruined. And expensive. Very expensive. But I didn’t know if I wanted it back. Everything about my life in New York had hin
ged on a fantasy—my belief in the love Luke and I shared. And it turned out, we’d shared that in the same way we always shared fries—I’d take one and savor it, and when I went for more, they were gone. That wasn’t sharing at all.

  “I guess I’ll leave you to get settled?” Michael stood in the doorway of the biggest bedroom, the one with the window seat in the turret, shifting his weight from one foot to another. He had on a long-sleeved navy-blue T-shirt and dark jeans, and his ginger hair was pushed back from his face in an annoyingly perfect kind of way. He looked uncertain, though, like now that this was officially my bedroom, he’d be intruding to cross the threshold. That was fine with me.

  “Yeah, I guess.” I looked around. Michael had handed me the air mattress and sleeping bag, and I dropped them next to the window that overlooked the yard. “Not really that much to do. Are there projects we can start on today?” The sooner we got everything done, the sooner we could both get on with our lives. As long as it had been six months, that was.

  “There are. Meet me in the dining room in a few minutes, and I’ll show you the project plan I’ve been working on?”

  He made a project plan? I wasn’t sure why that bothered me, except if this was our project, if we were equal partners, then the idea that he was somehow leading the charge was annoying.

  “Okay,” I said, unable to keep the irritation out of my voice.

  He left me then, and I stood in the center of the dusty old room and looked around. The space was nice, and it was flooded with late-afternoon light, giving it a golden glow. But it felt stale and stagnant, and smelled like ancient ammonia and old clothes. Not dirty, but not clean. Just . . . old. And not quite empty, either.

  Maybe it was the old sleigh bed pushed against the wall, its rolling headboard standing strong in contrast to the wallpaper tattering around it, but it felt like someone else’s space. Like I was an intruder. It made me shiver slightly, so I busied myself rolling out the air mattress and putting the sleeping bag on top of it.