Page 2 of How to Fake a Haunting
The rain fell in a steady drizzle, stinging my skin and wetting the white lace sleeves of my dress.
I held Beatrix tightly against me, an action that’d been easy when she was two but was much more difficult two years later.
She shifted in my arms and murmured something unintelligible, her lips soft and warm against my cheek.
“I know, baby, I know,” I cooed. “We’ll be home soon. Ten minutes. Then you can get in bed.”
She nestled farther into me, and I forced myself to hold her steady, the taffeta of her dress making it even tougher to get a good grip.
A car pulled into the circular drive of the stately mansion, and I squinted through the mist, heartbeat rising at the prospect of escape.
Don’t be so dramatic, I chastised myself.
It was a sleek gray Porsche, not my dinged-up and dusty Subaru.
I spun around looking for Callum and caught sight of what appeared to be the sleeve of his suit jacket behind one of the clay-colored pillars. A figure stepped out of the shadows beside me. The jasmine and ambergris of her expensive perfume snaked down my throat, thick as smoke.
“Lainey,” Rosalie Taylor said. She pursed her lips and glanced at a nonexistent watch. “Leaving so soon?”
I stared, a little incredulous, despite an intimate knowledge of Rosalie’s tactics of manipulation. “It’s after eight,” I said. “I’ve got to get Beatrix to bed.”
I hated the defensiveness in my voice, a by-product of my worry that I’d not done enough to ensure Rosalie and Dustin had seen their granddaughter over the course of the evening.
No matter that I’d brought Bea over to their table several times, or that they couldn’t be bothered to tear themselves away from their “esteemed” guests.
The simple fact that Rosalie had insisted on a four-year-old’s presence at the gala—held annually in honor of the Rhode Island Police Chiefs Association—was ridiculous.
“The night just started,” Rosalie said. “We haven’t even given out the scholarships.” She sipped from her champagne flute, and I cringed.
Why did the Taylors have to hold the gala here, at the Elms?
But I knew the answer. It’d been a little over a year since I’d been promoted from director of visitor experience to director of museum affairs and chief curator, a position Rosalie interpreted as my now holding power within the Preservation Society of Newport County.
And power in my hands was to be met with a display of power in her own.
You may curate the mansions’ contents, her actions said, but I can rally a small army to fill any one of them for whatever purpose I deem fit.
I shifted where I stood, feet aching in my too-high heels, the muscles in my arms and neck burning.
Still, I refused to put Bea down, filled with an irrational fear that if I did, Rosalie would snatch her up and disappear into the mansion like an evil fairy after delivering a changeling.
I shook away the thought, noticing as I did that more partygoers had spilled from the Elms’ cavernous front entrance.
They mulled about, laughing and puffing on e-cigarettes.
I had to refrain from yelling through the drizzle that there was no smoking allowed on Preservation Society properties.
Rosalie kept her attention on me, but I looked past her to where the suit-jacket sleeve was emerging from behind the pillar to reveal Callum.
He was laughing with one of the valets, slapping the younger man on the back.
Cal handed him something that winked silver in the misty gray.
The man returned the palm-size item to an inside breast pocket.
It didn’t take a psychic to know they’d been sharing a flask.
Anger flared within me. Callum had been drinking martinis all night.
The last thing he needed—as usual—was another drink.
I patted a pocket in my dress, relieved to feel the bulk of my belongings beneath the lace: glasses, phone, wallet.
Looks like I’ll be driving home, I thought as the valet pulled up with my car.
Callum reached us a moment later, grinning lazily at me and then at Rosalie.
“Good timing,” he said. Beatrix stiffened at the sound of his voice.
“If you say so,” Rosalie responded breezily. “I still think it’s awfully early to be taking off.”
I swallowed my retort and opened the back door, depositing Bea gently into her car seat. I secured the buckles with swift, practiced movements, aware that Callum still stood on the sidewalk and had not yet moved toward the car.
“Where’s Love?” Beatrix asked.
“Right here, sweetheart.” I plucked the koala from the seat-back pocket in front of her and nuzzled it against her cheek. “Remember, ten more minutes and we’ll be home.” I kissed her forehead.
“’Kay, Mommy.” Bea nuzzled harder against the koala and closed her eyes. I straightened and shut the door. Callum had stepped off the sidewalk and was circling the front of the car.
“What are you doing?” I asked him, aware that Rosalie was studying me intently.
Several of the partygoers had migrated toward us, shooting clandestine looks at Rosalie, eager to get a word in.
Between their great personal wealth and their admittedly generous philanthropic efforts, Rosalie and Dustin Taylor were one of the most well-known—and sought-after—couples in Newport.
“What do you mean, what am I doing?” Callum asked, confusion rippling across his features. “I’m driving. Get in.”
I froze, thoughts firing: Damn the event’s valet parking—the keys in the ignition, the engine primed and whirring. “You drank tonight,” I said, delivering the words without the judgment I knew would incite him to anger. “I’ll drive.”
Callum scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m fine.” He took another step around the front of the car, and I moved in that direction as well, coming alongside Rosalie in the process. I felt her bristle beside me, an attentive fox in the undergrowth, all pricked ears and glittering eyes.
“Callum,” I said through gritted teeth, cursing the revelers who’d moved closer, desperately hoping to avoid a scene even as I knew we were in the midst of one, “I didn’t have anything to drink.”
“Didn’t you, though?” Rosalie spoke the words with enough pointed curiosity to make it clear it wasn’t a question. “Surely you had at least a few glasses of wine.” She laughed and gestured vaguely around her. “I mean, who didn’t?”
My mouth fell open. “I didn’t,” I insisted, but she wasn’t listening. She jerked her chin at Callum, indicating he should get behind the wheel.
“Get your family home.” Her tone was final. She smiled and smoothed her dress.
These stupid people, I thought, panicking.
This sick, secretive family. How deep their denial ran, how perfect and complete their delusions.
Callum and his mother were so committed to the belief that he was “fine,” that his drinking was “normal,” that they were willing to put Beatrix’s—and my—safety in jeopardy.
Anything to keep from having to glimpse the truth, to keep the skeletons locked in the closet even as they rotted and discolored the floorboards.
Callum gave his mother a nod, mumbled “night,” and slipped into the driver’s seat. I shivered on the sidewalk, not just from the rain but from the rage that threatened to consume me.
“No way,” I said, though Callum could no longer hear me. “He can’t drive in his condition. I’m not letting him drive Bea.”
The group of gala attendees had inched closer, and a scream was rising in my throat, a command for them to back off, to give us space. Rosalie leaned forward, the scent of her perfume overwhelming, her words like flames that curled into my ear, burning away rational thought.
“I cannot imagine they’d want someone so prone to drama in charge of things at the Preservation Society. Kathy would likely be very interested to hear about it. Or, you can stop making something out of nothing, and get in the goddamn car.”
She pulled back with a shark’s smile and nodded at the door.
Lead-limbed, certain I was in a nightmare, I yanked the handle and practically fell into the car.
Rosalie slammed the door and spun toward her guests without another look at me or her son, who had put the car in drive and was inching it forward.
With the smell of vodka permeating the air and the metallic tang of dread in my throat, we left the bright, festive lights of the Elms behind and ventured into the dark.