His hand over his mouth, holding back giddy laughter or tears or both, Mark descended the stairs, too. A woman’s voice—Trudy Weill’s—grew in volume, and when he emerged into the living room he found all the others—Chloe and Warren and Connie and even Jacob—sitting silently, heads bowed.
All of them lifted their heads at Mark’s arrival; all of them except Jacob smiled.
Trudy immediately walked to him and took his hand. “Mark! Join us!” Her palm was dry, warm. He wondered if she could know his heart right now, the horror trying to claw that heart to flinders.
“I hope, Mr. Mark, that you’ll bear with me while we pray.”
Trudy pulled him along beside her. Chloe read his face and began to rise from her seat; he shook his head. Instead he turned to Jacob—who sat beside his mother on the couch, staring intently at his shoes.
“O Lord!” Trudy cried out, with a shocking lift in volume. Connie and Chloe both dropped their heads; Jacob started, then stared gape-mouthed, first at Trudy, then at Mark. Warren dropped stiffly onto one knee, his hands clasped before him.
“At last,” Trudy cried—and here she squeezed Mark’s hand—“we are all assembled, to do Your work. To return a wayward sheep to Your flock, as You have called. O Lord, we ask of You only Your patience and guidance—and Your forgiveness, as we knock upon the gates of Your kingdom. O Lord, please guide us as we reach out our hand to little Brendan. Please let us send him home to You. In Your name we ask this. Amen.”
Connie’s fervent squeak. Warren’s louder baritone: “Ahh-men.” Jacob’s lips moving soundlessly. And amid the other voices Mark even heard Chloe’s: “Amen,” whispered, like the name of a lover.
Bigwig the cat emerged from under an end table. He hopped from the floor onto an ottoman in front of a low reading chair, standing as close to Jacob as he could. He glared first at Mark, and then at everyone else in the room.
“Well,” Trudy said, beaming. “Shall we begin?”
Mark couldn’t hold it in any longer. He took a deep breath. The five faces in the living room turned and regarded him. He opened his mouth.
Jacob spoke first: “Wait!”
The boy was bent forward, his fingers laced tightly together. He turned his wet eyes to his mother. “We can’t.”
Trudy released Mark’s hand.
“None of it’s true,” Jacob said.
The excitement drained from Chloe’s face, was replaced by something more uncertain—then pain. Hurt. She took a step toward Jacob—who launched himself from the couch, then ran past Mark and up the stairs. As he turned the landing a sob escaped him.
His cat gave the room one last, hateful stare, and followed.
“Well,” Trudy said, “that was unexpected.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Mark said.
Warren came to stand beside his wife, one fist pressed to the small of her back, his face stony.
“What’s happened, Mark?” Trudy asked; her voice was like a suspicious high school teacher’s, just beginning to harden around the edges. She reached for his hand, but he pulled it back. He had to applaud her acting—she seemed as upset, as shocked, as Chloe, who was staring at him motionless.
Connie stood, obviously torn between following her child and listening to what Mark had to say.
“He lied to us,” Mark said. “He never saw any ghost.”
“Mark,” Chloe said.
“We just had a talk upstairs,” he said. “That’s what happened.”
Chloe said, “Mark, we’ve—we’ve all—”
Mark could hardly bear to look at her. She leaned forward, one arm crossing her stomach, as though he’d punched her. In one day’s time he had told the only two women who had ever loved him the words they could bear the least.
“Chloe,” he said softly, “why don’t we go talk to Jacob? He’ll explain.”
“Mark,” she said again, but did not move.
Warren cleared his throat. “I think you misunderstand, Mr. Fife. This situation—”
Trudy cut him off. “Mark. I feel your son in this house. He is here, I assure you.” Her scar stood out from her forehead like a smear of chalk. “I knew the moment I walked in. The energies here are considerable—”
Mark ignored her. He went to Chloe and took her hand, tugging her upright. She rose weightless as a balloon, but did not look at him. Connie, her shock finally broken, ran up the stairs.
“Connie felt him, too,” Chloe said.
“I think we’ve all been fooling ourselves,” Mark told her. “That’s what’s been happening here.”
“Mark,” Trudy said. “Please, let me—”
“We’re going to go talk to the boy,” Mark said, firmly. “Just the two of us.” Trudy seemed to have no answer for this.
He walked toward the stairs, Chloe’s hand gripped in his. She followed—but when they’d begun to climb the steps, when they were deep into the shadows, her fingers pulled suddenly back from his, as though they’d been bitten.
They found Jacob sprawled across his bed, crying. He’d taken off his glasses and was wiping at his face with the corner of his sheet. Connie sat beside him, rubbing his shoulder. His cat was curled between his feet.
Chloe walked past Mark into the room, and knelt in front of Jacob. She said his name.
Mark had forgotten how tender she could sound; how kind she was to the children she taught. He used to marvel at this reserve of kindness—how she could mother her own son so beautifully and still have love left over for the children of strangers. He wanted to reach out and hold her as she spoke. He wanted to apologize.
“I’m sorry, Chloe,” Jacob cried. “I’m so sorry!”
Chloe’s shoulders jerked. Connie covered her eyes with her hand.
“Jacob,” Mark said. “Tell us what’s wrong.”
Jacob could barely force out the words, but he needed no more prompting. He was confessing now, and Chloe, her eyes tightly shut, took his hands and listened.
The boy’s story did not take long, and it played out as Mark had suspected: Kids at the elementary school had told Jacob about Brendan, and he had done the rest. He hadn’t meant to—he insisted this, over and over. He had told his mother about a bad dream that had woken him up: a dream about the ghost of a boy who’d died in the house. But his mother, he thought, had misheard him—had thought he actually saw a ghost—and was so upset over his story, so sad and frightened for him, that he didn’t correct her right away.
Connie drew back. “But—”
“Mom,” he said. “That’s what happened.”
He told them all he kept meaning to correct his mother, but he didn’t. He just couldn’t make himself, and after a few days of this, he knew she’d be angry at him for lying, for playing along. And anyway, what was the harm? It was a fun story he and his mother shared, exciting and scary. He didn’t know that his mother was seeking out Mark and Chloe—he pleaded with Chloe to believe him about this.
And then one day his mother told him she’d heard the ghost, too. She told him, too, that she’d talked to the little dead boy’s parents, and then one day Chloe came to visit—
“And then you saw him!” he said to Chloe. “And then it was too late!”
“Jacob,” Mark asked. “Did you ever hear the ghost? Even after Chloe did?”
Jacob couldn’t say the word. He looked at Chloe, then buried his face in the sheet and shook his head. Connie held her hands to her mouth, then slumped over him.
Mark reached to Chloe and lifted her up again—she was even more pliable than she’d been downstairs. He led her out of the room, into the hall in front of the turret office. As gently as he could, he said, “I think we should go home now, okay?”
She shook her head; her cheeks were wet.
“We can’t do anything more here,” he said.
“I want to talk to Trudy,” Chloe told him. She was looking everywhere but at Mark’s face.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, honey. I don’t think Trudy and Warren are who they say they are.”
Chloe leaned against the wall. Some of her hair had come loose from its clip and hung in damp strands against her cheeks.
“What’s done is done,” he said. “Let’s go home.”
When she met his eyes, he drew back. He saw that what had happened when Brendan died was beginning again. Her grief was turning to anger. Chloe’s fondest hopes had vanished—and she was starting to suspect it was his fault.
“We both felt him,” she said. “I felt him. You can’t tell me that’s a lie.”
She turned abruptly, and, before he could reach for her, she’d run down the hall, into Brendan’s old room, and shut the door.
At the same time, Connie closed Jacob’s door; behind it he could hear both of them sobbing. Then all these sounds were drowned out by heavy footsteps on the stairs—Warren Weill’s.
Mark met him at the landing. “Let’s talk downstairs.”
Warren’s mouth was an angry cartoon frown, almost the exact shape of a staple.
In the living room Trudy sat on the couch, reading from a Bible perched on her knees. When Mark entered she closed the book and stood; Warren took his usual place beside her. His back was straight, his hands curled into fists; if Mark saw a man this tense in a bar, he would assume he was about to be punched.
“Mark,” Trudy said, “we think you’re making a grave mistake—”
He didn’t want to give them a syllable more than was required. “I thank you for coming down here. If you haven’t been paid for your room and your gas, I will do that now. But I’m going to ask you now to leave.”
“Mark,” Trudy said, “please. Your son—”
“Thank you, Trudy, but that’s enough.”
“Mr. Fife,” Warren said carefully, “we’ve seen this sort of thing before. These are just jitters. In every case the family reconsiders, given time. I have to remind you that if we don’t perform the ceremony tonight, we won’t have another chance for a long while. If you love your son—”
Mark walked to the rack beside the front door and lifted their coats. He brought them back and extended them to Warren.
“Let’s try real hard to keep things civil,” Mark said.
Warren stared at his coat as though he were being offered a dead animal. “I would imagine Chloe doesn’t feel as you do.”
“Warren, how about you don’t imagine my wife ever again.”
Warren tried to stare him down, but Mark had bigger contests ahead of him; he wasn’t about to back away from this charlatan now. Trudy’s hand tapped against Warren’s forearm. Her face remained so sorrowful—so full of genuine fear—that for a quick, panicky moment Mark wanted to fall on his knees and beg her to stay. But he did not.
“Warren,” she said at last. “Let’s keep the energies here pure.”
Mark walked them to the door, and through it. When they were on the porch he turned the deadbolt behind them. He watched them walk all the way to their car, their breaths puffing out in vehement bursts. He didn’t turn his back on them until they’d gotten into their SUV and driven away. Then he gathered his and Chloe’s coats, and her purse, and returned upstairs.
Jacob’s door was still shut. Mark walked past it to Brendan’s old room. He knocked, softly; Chloe didn’t answer, but when he turned the knob, the door opened easily.
Chloe had pulled one of the folding chairs beside the window; she had lifted the blind and was looking out at the street. Her thumbnail was pressed against her lower lip.
He crossed the room, then knelt and set her coat and purse beside her. “Chloe. We should go home, now.”
“I don’t want to.” Her voice a wisp.
“We really should leave.”
“I’ve been asking for Brendan to come, and he won’t.”
Mark’s chest tightened. “Honey, Jacob made everything up. You heard him.”
“I heard him,” Chloe said, but she wasn’t repeating Mark’s words. She didn’t mean Jacob.
He put his hand on top of hers. She drew her fingers away, but not before he was shocked by the iciness of her hand, cold all the way to the bone, as though her body had been abandoned by its heart.
“I heard him,” she said, “and I felt him.”
“Me too,” he said. “But honey”—this time she flinched at the word—“I wanted to feel what everybody else did, and I found a way to do it. I got really drunk—”
“I wasn’t drunk.”
She said this without any anger at all. She was acting as she had right after Brendan had died, as if all the important parts of her were curled up in a tiny cave. Outside she was cold stone.
Then the Chloe he loved looked out of her eyes. “These last few weeks have been more real than anything else in my life. The last two days, we’ve been happy. Do you want to tell me that was a lie, too?”
“Of course not,” he told her. “But if he was real, and we’d sent him away tonight, would that be any different? Either way we still have to spend the rest of our lives without him.”
Her eyes kept boring into his. “Our son is here. I still feel that. I’ll call Trudy and Warren back; they’ll listen. Just do the ceremony, Mark. Do it for me.”
Mark wondered if he would ever be able to explain to her why he couldn’t. The harm it would do them, in keeping the Weills near, in pretending. His firm belief that sooner or later, in order to love him, Chloe would have to pretend, as well.
But they had loved each other without Brendan, these past days; they could do it again. He believed that, too.
He slid his hand up Chloe’s calf, to her knees, to the hands that were linked in front of them. He grasped her fingers. She was stiff, her eyes now shut tight.
“I want you to listen to me for a minute,” he said.
He told her, then, what he knew to be true:
He told her he loved her. He said this with words, and with his arms, his hands. He embraced her, rocked her. And while he spoke, she softened, she did; she slid off the chair, down and into his arms, and, made hopeful, he shut his eyes and pressed his face against her hair and murmured to her:
I love you, he said. I need you. You’re real to me. You always will be.
After a while he stopped talking. He held her head to his chest. What he hoped she could hear now was not made up of words or sentences but, rather, his own heartbeat—rabbity and terrified, pattering like code.
Finally she spoke.
“I just—I just need to think.” She put a hand to his cheek. “I can’t just give it up.”
He shook his head.
She said, “Let me try, one more time, to reach him.”
“Chloe—”
“Go downstairs,” she said. “Okay? Let me try.”
“Tell me you love me first,” he said, panicking now.
She lifted her fingers to his cheek. Looked into him, long and deep.
“With all my heart,” she said. “Please believe me.”
Downstairs, in the living room, Mark found Connie and Jacob sitting side by side on the couch. Jacob held his cat, and turned his blotchy face into the cushion, but otherwise seemed to have survived his unburdening. When Connie saw Mark she stood and said, “I need to speak to you in the kitchen.”
The moment they were there, she turned to him, her finger jabbing painfully into his breastbone.
“That was some story you told him. If he doesn’t tell the truth, some—some demon’s going to come and eat us?”
“I regret that,” Mark said. “But he wouldn’t have told me, otherwise.”
“That’s—that’s coercion. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Mark rubbed the back of his neck.
“You’ll give him nightmares,” she said.
“Connie,” he said, “you and your son have just about ruined my fucking life. Maybe he should have some bad dreams.”
Connie crossed her arms in front of her chest. She tried to look angry, but he’d gotten to her, he could tell. Her eyes kept skipping past his.
“I’m sure of what I heard,” she said. “And the Weills—”
“The Weills are con artists,” he told her. “If you call them back, they’ll want a lot of money. But you won’t have to call them. There’ll be no more ghost after tonight. You watch.”
“I know what I heard,” she insisted.
“Voices?” he asked. “Bumps in the night? I heard those, too. It was the goddamned cat, Connie.”
“You don’t live here anymore. I’m the one stuck here with your son.”
Maybe he was still being too kind to her. He seized on the worst idea he could: “Connie, none of this had anything to do with you wanting to get out of your mortgage, did it?”
Connie drew a sharp breath; she flinched back from him, blinking. But he saw no guilt in her face—only new anger.
She shouldered past him. “I want to talk with Chloe.”
“She wanted some time alone,” Mark said, softly. His anger was gone; now he was only sorry—for himself, for Chloe, for Jacob, even for poor, deluded Connie. “Then we’ll leave.”
“Chloe can stay.” Connie’s voice shook, now. “But you have to go.”
“I need to talk with her, Connie.”
Instead of answering, Connie fled the kitchen, but didn’t go upstairs after all. She collapsed onto the couch, next to Jacob, and wrapped her arms around him, her living boy.
Mark climbed back up the stairs. Brendan’s bedroom door was still tightly shut. He didn’t know how much time to give Chloe, so he sat in the chair inside the turret office and waited. He stared out the windows, down at the roundabout; at the streets under their patina of snow and ice; the occasional falling snowflakes, like warping stars, that bent through the cones of light dropping from the streetlamps. Superimposed over the window was the reflection of the lit hallway behind him. If Chloe walked out to greet him, he’d see her right away.
If he saw a little boy, approaching him in the hall, he supposed he’d see that, too.
He closed his eyes.
Here I am. Your mother’s here, too. And this is it. If you don’t come now—
He loosened his mind. He thought good thoughts. He opened the portfolio at his feet and pulled out the drawings of Brendan’s face and held them in his lap. He thought of reaching out and catching a fistful of Brendan’s shirt, both of them swaying at the edge of the cliff in the hot summer wind above the deep green abyss.
Come on, little man. Here I am. Prove me wrong.
Going once. Going twice—
Mark opened his eyes. The hallway behind him was empty of little boys.
Gone.
He waited a long time, maybe half an hour, maybe more.
Finally he stood, walked down the hallway, and opened Brendan’s bedroom door. Chloe was sitting on her cushion beside the window, her back against the wall, her head tipped back; she’d turned off all the lights except the single lamp on the crate, which had painted her long throat a tawny gold.
She turned her head, slowly, and blinked at him. Her face was puffy. He knelt beside her; she slumped against his shoulder. She reeked of alcohol—and Mark saw, then, the bottle of Maker’s he’d brought to the house the other night, empty beside her foot. She must have secreted it up here, the night she’d come by and cleaned up after him.
“He won’t come see me now,” she said. “He’s mad at us.”
“No, he isn’t,” Mark said. “We need to leave now, honey.”
“No.”
“It’s for the best.”
“I can’t leave him,” Chloe said.
“There’s no one to leave.”
She lifted her mouth to his ear.
“Stay with me. Please.”
Chloe put her hands on the sides of his face, and tilted her head back to smile at him in the eye. Her skin had gone a deep, buttery white. One of her slick palms was pressing something hard and smooth against his cheek.
She dropped her hand, pressed it against his; the hard object was inside it. He closed his fingers around it and knew what it was: the vial of Brendan’s teeth, from her purse.
No. It wasn’t.
She slumped; he caught her around the waist, eased her back against the wall. Her head lolled. Her eyes were opening and closing. He looked down at the bottle of pills in his hand: Valium, two-milligram tablets. Quantity fifty. He opened it. Only a handful of the pills were left.
She’d taken the rest of them with the whiskey.
He pulled his phone from his coat pocket, his fingers already starting to shake. Chloe’s hand fluttered between them, swatting at it. “Wait,” she murmured. Her hand settled damply onto his forearm. She spoke again, with all the love he’d ever wished: “Mark.” With her other hand she closed his fingers around the bottle.
“Come with me,” she whispered. “Let’s go find him.”