On the opposite wall, a closet door stood shut. Papa Martin hadn’t bothered to open it. Given that there were only four of them living in the enormous house, they didn’t need the storage space. Odds were good that the room would stay cold and locked long after her punishment was completed. Staring at the closed door, Ava wondered all over again why Mama and Papa had bought such a big house. Whenever she asked them about it, she got strange answers. What’s wrong with this house, sweetie? Aren’t you happy here? I think it’s lovely. Besides, you just never know who might come along . . .
She crept over to the closet, checking her hands for paint before turning the handle. The light clicked on with a pull of the string, and a slow smile spread over the girl’s face.
“You’re still here,” she whispered.
RENOVATED FIRST FLOOR PLAN
RENOVATED SECOND FLOOR PLAN
8
The Spielman Family
July 18, 2018
No one mentioned the construction accidents, the thefts, or the smudging lady when the Spielmans arrived with their moving truck.
“Not too shabby, eh?” Myron nudged his son in the ribs and held out his arms in the expansive front foyer as though he’d built the place himself.
To be sure, after a tidy sum of nearly $200,000, the house didn’t at all resemble the vandalized “Hell House” they’d toured three months earlier. It stood like a revived corpse stitched together at the seams—some rooms old, some gutted and rebuilt. Scars mended. Holes filled. The obscene graffiti covered up or sanded away. The whole of it held together with new wiring and three coats of fresh paint.
The pimple-faced teenager turned a slow circle in the foyer. The morning sky rippled like water through the freshly polished leaded glass window overhead. Storkish and painfully awkward, the boy slouched his shoulders at his father’s hanging question: Not too shabby, eh? He shifted uncomfortably in his own skin as Myron waited for an answer.
Is he disappointed? Is he impressed? Is he still devastated at the move? Will he ever be okay? Am I a total failure as a father? Myron struggled with each of these questions as guilt pulled at his face.
Margot gave her floundering son an unwanted squeeze around his shoulders. Poor kid never wanted to move in the first place. Worry for the boy clouded her face as she shot Myron a grim smile and clacked past him into the unfinished kitchen to take stock and steel herself for the long road ahead.
The kitchen was enormous now, three rooms combined into a giant culinary theater. The size of it stunned her as she scanned the vast expanse of newly laid marble tiles. It suddenly felt cold and empty instead of warm and homey. What have we done? It’s all wrong. All of it. She bit back tears and searched the room for a way to fix everything that had gone wrong.
“Could we turn this into a cozy sitting room instead of a pantry?” she asked herself in the empty expanse, pacing out the idea. Fretting. None of the cabinets had arrived yet. There was still time.
Trapped in the foyer, Hunter struggled for something positive to say, squirming in the glare of his father’s attention.
“So? Hunter?” Myron tried again. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know. I guess it’s nice,” he muttered in a voice deeper than his years. Deeper than his father’s, even.
“Well, take a look around, kiddo! This is home.” Myron clapped him on the back and then began taking inventory. The paint in the hallway hadn’t been finished. Cover plates were missing from the outlets. The workers had scrambled the day before to clear away the plaster dust, but not enough to—
“Hey, hon?” Margot called from the kitchen in a strained voice, a thin smile forced through barely contained hysteria. “Could you come here a sec?”
Myron’s face fell an inch. The tension between him and his wife had tightened since their last trip to the house. “Coming, dear.”
In the kitchen, Margot was pacing. “I thought they said the cabinets would be delivered last week? The appliances aren’t even in yet. How the hell are we supposed to . . .”
Hunter grimaced at the sound of his mother’s shrill anxiety, and his oversize feet began to climb the front stairs to get away from it. The house wasn’t done. His mom was upset. None of this seemed to surprise him. A pained expression pinched his face as his mother’s voice pick-pick-picked at everything.
At the landing, he paused to look out the rippled glass to the foreign street behind the trees and sighed. He’d left an entire life behind. Friends. School. Some other house in some other place he loathed to leave. The plight of all children hung from his awkward shoulders, always being dragged somewhere they’d rather not go by forces beyond their control. Like luggage.
With a deep breath of resignation and self-pity, he turned from the window and trudged up the stairs to the second floor with none of the excitement that children brought to a new house. No running from room to room. No delighting in running down the second staircase at the far end of the hall. No exploring. No planting flags. No arguing for this room or that. No brothers. No sisters. No hide-and-seek.
His mother had called the contractor a week before with strict instructions. On the door of each room hung a handwritten sign. From his left to his right, they read, “Margot Closet,” “Master Suite,” “Myron Closet,” “Reading Room?,” “Yoga Studio.” Down the crooked hallway that led over the garage, there were more signs, “Game Room,” “Laundry,” “Guest Bath,” “Guest Room.” Frowning, Hunter traced his steps back to the main hall and a door marked “Hall Bath.” The door marked “Hunter” was at the very end of the house across from the back stairwell. He would’ve preferred the guest suite over the garage, but no one had asked. He barely gave his assigned bedroom a glance.
New basket weave marble tiles gleamed up at him as he flipped on the lights to the hall bath that would be his. He scanned the new drywall, light fixtures, and frameless glass shower with grim eyes, as though he sensed the violence of the renovation. The wood timbers still hummed with the vibration of the jackhammers. A mere five weeks earlier the room had been gutted bare. Fresh towels hung from the new antiqued brass towel rods. Shampoos and miniature soaps had been laid out like it was a hotel room. Hunter flipped off the lights.
He opened the door marked “Game Room” briefly but found only a stack of unpacked boxes the movers had left there. Anything in the attic? one of the burly men had asked his foreman. Doesn’t say here, but I ain’t goin’ up extra stairs for nothin’.
Hunter stopped at the only door without a label. The blankness of it drew him in more than any of the others, including the one with his name on it. He creaked the mysterious door open and gazed up the narrow stairwell leading to the third floor.
The smell of burnt sage still lingered there along with the sweat of the contractors who had laid ductwork into the crawl spaces. They’d demanded double pay after the old witch had left abruptly five weeks earlier. Something’s wrong up in that attic, dammit.
The general contractor, Max, had blamed it on the heat but agreed to hazard pay to shut the two guys up and to keep the rumors from spreading. Little good it had done. Whispers still hung between the muted glow of the window dormers. Did you see her face? Ran out of here like her hair’s on fire. Spooked, downright spooked. Yanni had walked off the job, leaving Max without a plumber for three days.