Chapter Fourteen

Purple clouds take over the sky while we drive back home. It’s as if day and night reversed while none of us were paying attention. Since our conversation at breakfast, there’s a tightness at the corners of Traci’s mouth that tells me she’s not completely over the way I reacted to her and Jeff’s comments. Jeff keeps shooting me furtive glances in the rearview mirror, as if I’m going to suddenly decide to rip him to shreds.

Back at home, I help Traci clean up a few last little things that popped up around the house after breakfast. She tries to make conversation with me as we scrub the insides of the windowpanes. I find my mind wandering to what I can remember of the Walker house. It was so dark in there, though, and my memories are all blurred from intoxication. So Traci keeps talking at me, about Aggie, about this house, about how far the place has come, how much better she feels about living here with me and Jeff. And finally, I know it’s time to ask her.

“Who built this house?”

She pauses her scrubbing. “Why do you ask?”

“Can’t I ask a question? I’m just curious. It’s a big house, they must not have built it themselves.”

Traci sighs. “Ellis’s grandparents had this house built in the late 1800s.”

“But who did the building?”

Traci knows what I’m asking. “You know, Ellis’s family was wealthy. They made a lot off the fur trade. Asha, I hate talking about this—”

“But it’s important.” I’m firm. “We can’t ignore it.”

She lets out a big breath. It’s almost as if the walls sigh with her. “They moved here for forestry and opened the pulp and paper mill off the river. They employed a lot of people. And to build this house, they hired some local Black folks. Your father’s family among them, I believe.”

I believe? I think that means yes. “Did they pay them?”

Traci is quiet. She won’t meet my eyes. “I don’t know. Ellis always said they did. But I don’t know.” Not knowing is not good enough. I don’t want to be mad at Traci for not knowing, but anger simmers beneath my skin.

This entire house is violence. I don’t want its lineage attached to mine. This house, which was supposed to be a place for me and Traci to start fresh, is built on violence preceding violence. It makes me feel sick to know my ancestors may have built this house for people who didn’t even see them as people. And it hurts to know Traci has kept this information from me. When I’m here, I feel like I can’t fully exist. Maybe that’s how everyone I’m related to has felt in this town. Aggie couldn’t be queer. Nan couldn’t continue living here. They were isolated or expelled.

“Aggie never agreed with it, and it wasn’t her ancestors who built the house, even though she chose to marry into that family. She tried her best, in her privilege, to help this town become a more inclusive place.” With her white women’s salons and sporadic involvement in town affairs . . . that’s step one, but aren’t there like a hundred more steps before justice? And are they even steps to justice, or more of a never-ending cycle of repair? Does it matter whether someone is blood related to the source of the violence when they live in a house so closely aligned with it?

“If she made it more inclusive like you said, then why couldn’t Nan keep living here?”

“I would never deny that many people in this town are racist. Aggie knew it. I saw it myself. Your father experienced it when we were young and visiting. I thought . . . I thought things would be better now, Asha.”

“Why would you think that? After what happened to my great grandfather, and now Dad—”

“That’s different. You don’t think I know about your great grandfather’s time here?” This whole time she knew about that history, and she kept it from me? She continues, “We don’t know your father was wrongfully accused.”

“We don’t know he was rightfully accused.”

Traci presses into her eye socket bone with a thumb to release the pressure this conversation inevitably builds. All roads lead to this disagreement. She takes a steadying breath. “I thought working on all these rooms, making them our own . . . I thought we could make this space our own. I still do. Time passes, people change.” She really believes it. I want to trust her on this, but I think I know better. I can see things she can’t in this house. We have different lived experiences.

“What about action?” I ask her. “How can we just wait for people to change or for this house to change into someplace I can live?” I don’t know if I believe we can make this space our own without sacrificing parts of ourselves to it. No matter how much we reform this house into a shape that looks better to us, into a place where our relationship can heal, it will never shrug off its violent history and that will continue to prevent us from loving each other in the way we need.

I don’t think Traci gets that. Instead of arguing with me, which would only end up fueling my anger, she tells me she’s going to the grocery store and asks if I want to come. I say no.

I go back up to my room to avoid one-on-one time with Jeff. Sabrina’s lying on my unmade bed looking up at Aggie in the ceiling. It’s weird to walk in on them. My imagination of their afterlives while I’m not in the room is limited. I’m aware that I don’t understand their experience of the living world. When they are visible, they want to be seen, but sometimes what I see doesn’t seem to serve any purpose.

“Sabrina?” I whisper so Jeff won’t hear me. She slides her feet off the side of my bed. Aggie absorbs back into the ceiling.

That man shouldn’t be in this house.

“Does Aggie agree?” I don’t know if she’s talking about Ellis or Jeff. Maybe they’re the same to her.

She’s not like me. She doesn’t have opinions anymore.

“Why do you have opinions?”

Because I was taken.

“By Ellis. How do I stop him?”

Your friend. He wants your friend too.

“Cole?”

It’s hard to have a conversation with Sabrina. I get the impression my words don’t reach her and that only some of her words reach me. Maybe it’s not a direct translation from the afterlife to this world.

That man shouldn’t be in the house.

“Jeff?”

He will take his body and use it. He will take her body and use it. He will take your body and use it. Sabrina begins to fade. My heart bangs desperately against my ribs in panic. How much longer do we have before Ellis tries to drop into . . . who? Which “he” is she talking about, Jeff or Ellis? Or both? And my body too? What does he need to use us for if he already murdered Sabrina? Or is the conflict on some metaphysical level between Ellis and Sabrina and they’re just using us as their pawns?

“Wait!” I need to know more. Why would she fade now? Jeff’s footsteps are clomping toward the stairs. He begins up the steps. I close my door and stare at the empty space she’s left. “Sabrina?” I whisper. She’s gone.

I watch the sky through my open window. Look down at the grass below. The garden Traci was working so hard on through the first few weeks is now abandoned, reverting to a poison ivy patch. I can almost imagine nobody lives here. It’s easy to imagine because all three of us in this house are already nobodies to this town. Traci is a memory, Jeff is an invader, and me . . . what am I? A ghost? Am I really the one haunting this house?

What if it’s been me, all along, making everything up: the woman in the ceiling, Ellis and Sabrina, the coldness of the house, how I used to wake up gasping for air . . . the dizziness. What if living in this house built on blood, in this town built on blood, Traci keeping its history from me, Dad’s incarceration, the isolation, all of it, is just too much? What if all this stress is making me sick? I just want things to work out. I still want that fresh start I gave up on. I can’t think straight. All of it’s too heavy.

I can’t.

The first thick drops of the storm hit the windowpanes and spray through the open screen. I move back and sit by the mirror. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of my reflection. I barely recognize myself. My face is a mask; pale and dull, as if painted on, where it should be tanned and bright. My hair’s growing out at the roots all frizzy. I was planning on taking my braids down tonight. I lean in closer. Press my cold cheeks and stare into my irises. A whole landscape in there. Reminds me of pictures of other planets’ terrains. Up close, I don’t even know my own territories. Maybe I should go to a clinic. I don’t want Traci to know how close to the edge I am. How sick I feel. Like I need to vomit, but for my whole insides, not just the contents of my stomach. How I’m never really here. Everything is so vague and distant.

I wish Cole were here. But she doesn’t want to hear about my issues anyway. She wanted a friend, not a walking Ouija board. And I want her as more than a friend. Does she want me?

The wind picks up outside and the trees thrash around like they’re in this town’s first mosh pit. And I hear a knock at my door. Jeff cracks it open.

“Asha? I was going to make fishcakes for your mother to give her a break. Want to help?” I search for Ellis behind him after Sabrina’s warning. The ghost isn’t there. It’s just Jeff in his fleece and khakis wanting to do something nice for Traci. I follow him down to the kitchen.

There’s a pile of dill he must have braved the poison ivy for. Next to it, a knife. “Can you chop this?”

I nod. He tends to some leftover mashed potatoes, adds the fish, eggs, breadcrumbs. The silence between us is painful. Jeff must have wanted me to help as a bonding exercise and it wouldn’t kill me to talk to him, at least just to pass the time.

“How’d you learn how to make fish cakes?”

“Glad you asked.” He rinses his hands under the tap, then turns to me. His confident white-toothed smile imagines an openness between us. “Dad was a fisherman and Mum worked at the processing plant. We ate fish for everything—dinner, lunch, breakfast sometimes. We were true pescatarians.”

I knew he came from a family that was involved with fishing, but I never realized his parents were working class. All his obsession with class and looking perfect, it makes more sense now. He’s trying to conceal his own history.

“You ever get tired of fish?”

“Sick of it. Hated fish for years after leaving home.”

“So why do you like it now?”

He shrugs. “I guess I got old and nostalgic. After Mum passed, I started making fishcakes again. I found I could stomach the taste.”

Last spring, Jeff’s mother died. I wonder if his change in taste had anything to do with that. He disappeared for a couple weeks back to his seaside hometown in the fall. I remember because Traci and I tried to have alone time for the first time since I’d stopped living with her. The trip ended in a horrible fight about how I didn’t like Jeff and didn’t want to live with him. All Traci had to do was mention the possibility of me coming back a couple days a week and I snapped. After I’d heard Jeff talking to whoever was on the other end of the line, living at Traci’s place just hadn’t felt like an option.

“It’s nice of you to want to give Mum a break,” I tell him.

“Least I could do.” Thunder rumbles in the distance. “We really needed the rain.”

He heats up the pan and adds oil. I add the dill to the mix and flatten the fishcake patties. We make a surprisingly efficient team. The aroma of dill, mustard, onions, garlic fills the kitchen. Jeff’s shoulders are relaxed. I think about Sabrina’s warning earlier. As much as I don’t like Jeff and completely disagree with his politics, when he does let his guard down around me, I can almost imagine all of us coexisting peacefully under the same roof. I don’t know, maybe we could even get a dog, live a real traditional middle-class life.

Then I remember the way he fights with Traci about what she posts on social media and how he blackmailed me into keeping his affair a secret. The receipt by the rabbits’ den. Even after he broke his promise to me, I still hold on to my end of the deal. It’s moments like these that make me unsure whether I would have a better life with him and Traci broken up.

“Hey, Jeff?”

“Yeah?”

“You remember that night when you were first here, and your foot went through the porch?”

“Vividly.” Tension has gathered between his shoulders again. He thinks I’m going to bring up his affair.

“Did you see anything when your foot went through?”

Instead of relief that I didn’t ask him about the affair, puzzlement breaks over his face. “It was pitch black. Didn’t see much. Why?”

“Some people say this house is haunted.”

Jeff laughs loud and full, flips one of the fishcakes. It’s honey gold on one side. Perfect. “You’re listening to too many local stories. You’re a smart kid, Asha. Do you really believe that bumpkin rumor?”

“Maybe,” I admit. “But you should watch out for ghosts. Just in case.” I know he’ll dismiss my warning as childish. If Ellis appears ready to drop into him without consent, though, maybe now he’ll be slightly more prepared to resist.