Page 32 of How to Fake a Haunting

It poured as I drove across town, a chaotic deluge against the windshield that matched the cacophony in my head.

Had I really put a stop to everything we’d been working toward?

But each time I wondered if I’d been too hasty, I thought of the blue stationery tucked inside my bag.

That, coupled with the memory of Bea—eyes scrunched tight, tiny hands covering her ears as I ran her through the house before she could be assailed by flies—was enough for me to know I’d made the right decision.

I got to my parents’ house a few minutes before nine, my exhaustion exacerbated by the chilly rain dampening my clothes.

Without an overnight bag of my own, I changed into a dry sweatshirt and sweatpants of my mother’s and climbed into bed beside Beatrix.

I thought my bone-deep weariness would win out and I’d be asleep the moment my head hit the pillow, but my mind was an endless loop of questions without answers: Was Todd the blackmailer?

Was Adelaide in on it? Could she alone be responsible?

And, worst of all: Did I make the right decision about the haunting?

I tried to push everything out of my head and focus on Beatrix, but that didn’t make things any better. When was the last time we’d spent quality time together? Not in the last month, that was for sure.

But the haunting was over now. No more distractions.

I’d resume my role of the parent who was there for Bea no matter what.

We’d go on all our favorite adventures—the library, the bookstore, the zoo, the children’s museum.

We’d explore lighthouses along the coast and hiking trails tucked away in small Rhode Island towns, and bird-watch and paint rocks and spend more time at the barn before her horseback riding lessons.

We’d tell ghost stories under the covers and do crafts and write our own picture books.

You were starting to lose yourself. Things were getting crazy. You were getting crazy. You still need to find a way to make things better, but haunting Callum wasn’t it. Starting tomorrow, you’ll be better and find a way to get through this that’s best for everyone.

I took comfort from these thoughts, but then another voice—deeper, darker—piped up from somewhere inside me:

You’ll find the way that’s best for everyone?

How’d that work out for you before? How many great—but ultimately futile—ideas did you come up with over the last four years?

There’s a reason you’re feeling down about pulling the plug, and that’s because haunting Callum was the final option.

Remember how Rosalie looked at you when you said something about Cal’s drinking?

Like you were a spider that’d fallen into her fancy lunch.

And what do powerful people do to inconsequential creatures that step out of line?

They squash them. If you try to take out Callum, his family will come for you with lawyers far more cutthroat than the one whose number your mother gave you. Don’t forget that.

My dreams were full of giant arachnids that Beatrix and I tried to escape by hiding out in Pinecone House. Instead of fangs or pincers, the giant spiders had teeth made of shards of glass. When I looked harder, I realized the shards were broken vodka bottles.

I woke to an excited Beatrix kissing my face.

“Mommy, Mommy! I wanted you last night. I missed you at bedtime.”

“I know, pumpkin. I missed you too. Did you have a fun sleepover?” I kissed her baby-soft cheek. “What would you like to do today? We can do whatever you’d like.”

“Anything?”

“Anything. What are you thinking?”

Beatrix chewed her lip, and I bit back a smile. Her face lit up. “I’d like to go to the mansions again!”

“Oh,” I said, taken aback. I knew she’d had fun on our last trip, but the preservation of Newport’s architectural heritage wasn’t high on a lot of four-year-olds’ to-do lists. “Are you sure, sweetheart? We could go to the children’s museum or the bike path or—”

“You said whatever I liked,” Beatrix said, not impetuously but curiously, as if confused as to why I was pushing back.

“You’re right. I did say that.” I ruffled her sleep-tousled hair. “The mansions it is, then. Shall we go to a different one this time? Maybe the Elms? Or the Carriage House? You could see where they kept the horses.”

“Could we go to Pinecone Hou—” she started, then realized her mistake. “I mean, Marble House.” She blushed. “Since it’s where we got the idea for our fort?”

“Not only can we go to Marble House, but guess what I saw in the gift shop the other day? Handmade ornaments, including . . . pinecones! As well as carved birds, angels playing flutes, all sorts of cool stuff. If we can’t find something new to hang from Pinecone House’s rafters, I know we’ll get ideas for some new crafts. ”

Beatrix’s eyes lit up, but I could tell there was something on her mind, something she was yet to relay as far as how she wanted the day to unfold.

Probably she figured if she mentioned ice cream now, it would become an unalterable part of the “plan.” Still, I would tread lightly, and pray she hadn’t seen more of Flypocalypse than I’d realized.

“Is there something else?” I asked. “Something more you want to say?”

Bea nodded but remained silent.

“Go ahead, honey. You can ask me anything.”

“Not this.”

A tiny knife pierced my heart. “Of course you can.” I wanted to say more but didn’t want to force her into telling me. Better to stay calm and quiet until she was ready.

“Umm, well . . . if we’re going to go to the mansions and have a nice family day together, I want Daddy to come.”

I inhaled so sharply I started coughing. “Your dad?” I said after I could breathe normally, stalling for time. Beatrix nodded.

What should I say? Where was this coming from?

Was her request really that surprising? Beatrix was sensitive, discerning, diplomatic, and overwhelmingly sweet.

Even with everything I’d done to shield her, not just from the haunting but from her father’s behavior, there was no way she hadn’t observed, maybe even absorbed, some of the chaos.

Bea needed to feel safe, and what other way to ensure a four-year-old she was safe than to surround her with the known, the familiar? I couldn’t rip apart Bea’s fantasy.

“Well,” I said, “that would be nice. Let me call Daddy and see what he says.” I lifted Bea off the bed. “I hear Gram downstairs. Why don’t you use the potty, then run down to see her? I bet she’ll make you a waffle and maybe even some bacon.”

“A waffle with strawberries?”

“If you ask politely.”

Beatrix scampered toward the bathroom. A minute later, her footfalls pattered down the stairs.

I forced my fingers to wrap around my phone, despite feeling like a concrete block was weighing down my arm. Was I really about to do this? Would he answer? If he answered, would he say yes? What were the odds he’d come sober and not embarrass me or disappoint Beatrix?

I looked down at my phone. No point putting it off. I navigated to my favorites, where Callum’s name and number still occupied the top listing. Taking a breath, I pressed send on the call and listened to it ring.

I was about to hang up when Callum answered, sounding tired and out of breath but surprisingly sober.

I didn’t bother with hello. “Beatrix wants me to take her to the mansions, but she asked if I’d call and see if you wanted to come with us.”

Suddenly, the phone was trilling with a request to accept a FaceTime call. I watched my expression on the screen, saw my lips curdle into a frown as I hit the button to accept.

“Why FaceTime?” I asked.

“I wanted to see if you were messing with me.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not messing with you, Callum.” I swallowed a rude retort. “Like I said, Bea asked me to call you. Do you want to come or not?”

“Yes,” he said without hesitation, and my eyes widened in surprise.

“You’re not golfing?”

“I was supposed to play yesterday, remember? I didn’t have a tee time scheduled for today, and it was too late to get one.”

“You’re not playing another course?” Or going to the bar? I added in my head.

“Nah.” He said it in a way that made me think he couldn’t get a last-minute tee time at another course either, but I kept that to myself.

“So you’ll come? This is happening?”

“I’m coming,” he said, and adjusted the phone, giving me a glimpse of what was behind him. In an instant, I remembered he was at Monty’s, and the reality of what was actually going on coalesced into a cold, unpalatable truth.

“Are you coming because you want to spend time with your daughter or because you think the house is haunted and don’t want to go back there today?” Are you sure you don’t want to not go back there at all? I thought ruefully. Like, forever?

“Can’t it be both?”

“Jesus Christ, Callum, no, it can’t be both, because the house is not fucking haunted.” Not anymore, anyway.

Callum pursed his lips “It is, whether or not you want to believe it.”

“Like when the furniture kept moving but stopped right when Bea and I walked in?” I asked sarcastically.

“I’m serious. But either way, I said I’m coming. What’s the plan? I assume you’re at your parents’?”

“Bea and I will pick you up in an hour. And Callum? If you’re drunk when we get there, don’t bother coming out. I won’t let you in the car. You got that?”

Callum’s lips pursed again. “I got it.”

I hung up before he could say anything more.

I pulled into Monty’s driveway an hour later to find Callum dressed and—at least for now—sober.

He stood before Monty’s open garage, and I saw the random detritus associated with single-guy living.

The storage bins and bags of old video game controllers, the dented surfboard and air hockey table, the cornhole boards and Wiffle ball bats leaning against the dusty walls.

A memory surfaced without warning: Callum, in his apartment, asking me to move in with him. I’d looked around the space skeptically, noting the unhung football championship banners and stray golf clubs, a gym bag exploding with clothes and kitchen gadgets still in boxes.

When I’d tried to point out—gently—that there was hardly room for me, let alone my things, Callum had begun grabbing random items and throwing them onto the front lawn—a beanbag chair, several fishing poles, a potted spider plant more dead than alive, and hand-me-down records that lacked a turntable—insisting he’d always make space for me in his life.

The earnestness of the moment had given way to hilarity as more things ended up on the lawn.

He’d been about to throw a winter duvet into the pile when I grabbed it away from him and laid it on the floor.

We’d spent the rest of the night there, giggling, making love, and talking.

The next day, I moved in. We’d lived together, if no longer sharing inside jokes, ever since.

I shied away from the thought, away from the memories, and turned to regard Beatrix.

There was an air of nervous excitement around her, and I was overcome with relief that Callum was sober, glad he hadn’t immediately put me in a position where I had to burst Bea’s bubble.

He paused at the passenger door, and I tightened my hands around the wheel, believing he was about to make a fuss about wanting to drive.

He reconsidered and opened the door. “Hi, girls.”

Hi, girls. Just like that. Like everything was fine.

The nerve Callum possessed shouldn’t surprise me, not with Rosalie Taylor as his mother.

But then Bea’s happy, albeit tentative, smile beamed out at us from the back seat, and I knew if someone was going to ruin her day, it wouldn’t be me.

Cal would go back to drinking tonight or tomorrow or the next day, that much was sure, but I could join him in his denial for one day if it meant giving Bea a chance to feel normal.

I parked in the lot near Marble House, and we walked across the pavement toward the stately building. I refrained from giving them the tour-guide spiel.

“Why are all these people here?” Bea asked.

I laughed. “Last time we came, the mansions were closed to get ready for a new exhibit, remember, sweetie?”

Callum opened his mouth then closed it, but I knew what he’d wanted to say.

He wanted to ask when we’d come, maybe even why we hadn’t invited him.

He wanted to ask if we’d had fun or if Bea had missed him.

He was probably also keen to know what else we’d been up to without him in the recent months, or even the last few years.

Instead, he said nothing, but I could tell it was a struggle to swallow it down, the shame and regret, the annoyance and anger.

Maybe I was giving him too much credit. Maybe he wasn’t experiencing anything close to these emotions.

Maybe he never did. Worse to contemplate was that maybe he never would.

I could only hope there was something left of the person I used to know, the person I’d fallen in love with, not because I wanted to mend things with him but because I wanted, needed, him to help me do the right thing for our daughter.

So he said nothing. And I said nothing. And Beatrix chattered on. We walked toward the mansion like we were walking into the past, Callum and I each holding one of Beatrix’s hands.