12
EMERGING
“Sabrina.” My head aches at the temples, and the light is so bright it’s difficult to open my eyes. But the last thing I remember flashes in my mind—Edison, the knife on the table, the attic—and I sit up with a gasp. “Sabrina!”
“All right. It’s all right.” The voice is deep, male. “I’ve got her.”
I blink hard, and when I manage to focus, I see my daughter resting her head on Cody Granger’s shoulder, asleep. There’s a quilt covering me; I throw it off.
“No, no, no.” When I try to stand, I teeter and fall back to the sofa and try again. “We have to get home. This . . . God, this doesn’t look good. How did we get here ?”
Amid my confusion, details of the house begin to register: doilies draped over the backs of chairs, lace curtains, statuettes lining the shelves of the credenza. This is not the home of a bachelor.
“We’re at Ms. Malcolm’s house,” Cody says.
“Where’s Edison?” I reach for my daughter. “Is he all right?”
Cody places Sabrina in my arms. “He’s with Sophie. At your place.”
“The look in his eyes,” I say. “I swear he was going to—” I shut up. I can’t say it, even if it’s true. I can’t admit I think my husband is capable of killing me. “I wish someone would believe me.”
“I do.” He looks down at his hands for a moment, then meets my gaze. “That night, at the Depot . . . he was . . . different somehow. Different enough for me to be concerned, and after what you said, I’ve been checking on you every once in a while. I slept in my truck down the road a piece one night, and this afternoon, you looked so scared when you passed the Crescent Moon . . . I went to check on you again this afternoon.”
“You saw what happened?”
“I saw he was about to push you around a little, and I wasn’t about to let that happen.”
“You saved us.”
“No, ma’am. I just stepped between you, and you fainted. Your husband seemed to come to his senses then, and he agreed we should call Ms. Malcolm. It was she who suggested I bring you and the baby here until she had time to sort things out with Eddie.”
“I wish someone would tell me. What’s in that house? You dated one of the Churchill daughters. You must know something .”
“I know the town’s first lawyer disappeared,” he offers.
“Everybody knows that. That’s published, for God’s sake.”
“Everyone also thinks there’s more to the story. That he suspected his wife of having an affair and locked her in the attic.”
The journal Ms. Malcolm had slipped to me suggested the same. The chill whipping down from the attic stairs revisits me now, and I shudder with the thought of being a prisoner in my own home.
“Everyone assumes the old man didn’t really disappear, that once she managed to escape the attic, she took care of the problem .”
“Meaning she killed her husband?”
“No one knows.”
“But there’s evidence he left. His car was never recovered.”
“This was the early 1900s. How difficult would it be to unload a vehicle without keeping a record of it?”
If the energy in the house, as Sophie insists, is on repeat, and Edison is reenacting what once happened there, I wonder if whatever is in the house is retaliating, avenging the lawyer’s mysterious disappearance or death.
“But I asked you about the house, and you said nothing strange happened there,” I say. “Why wouldn’t you tell me all this then?”
“I told you I never experienced anything strange, and that’s true. I wasn’t about to fill your head with ghost stories. You live in an old, spooky house. Primarily alone, I might add. What kind of friend would I be if I scared you unnecessarily?”
“Friend?”
He nods. “Yes, Anastasia. I’d like to think we’re friends.” His phone buzzes, but he maintains eye contact with me.
“Ed says you stole his high school girlfriend.”
“Yeah.” He checks his phone. “That was a long time ago, and you ought to thank me for that. He might have married her otherwise.”
“I don’t know about that , but thank you,” I say. “For being there today.”
“That was Ms. Malcolm.” He holds up his phone. “She’s ready for you.”