Page 33 of How to Fake a Haunting

I dumped pasta into the boiling water, humming along to the song drifting from the Echo on the other side of the kitchen.

In the two weeks since I’d told Adelaide the haunting was over, the smart speaker had become a welcome addition to the house, providing us with everything from the day’s weather to songs that inspired impromptu dance-offs.

Even Callum seemed to have forgiven the device for its initial—albeit manipulated—volatility, asking it to set cooking timers or reminders to take out the trash.

I hunted for a jar of marinara sauce in the cabinet and set the table for one. Bea was exhausted from an afternoon at the aquarium and had requested an early dinner so she could rest with her stories in bed.

I was tired too, and had asked Callum if he wanted to order takeout after Bea fell asleep.

He’d offered to cook instead, citing the pizza dough in the fridge that he wanted to use before it went bad.

He was down in the basement now, searching for a pizza oven I’d given him for Christmas several years ago and that he’d never unboxed.

I stirred Bea’s pasta and tried to take things one minute at a time.

Even two weeks later, it felt strange to sit with Callum at the dinner table.

Attributing the sense of tranquility that had settled over the house to the culmination of the haunting felt trite, but against every expectation I’d had, Callum had not had a drink since the day of the flies.

We’d been talking regularly, even civilly, and while I maintained he still needed help, needed to put actual safeguards to his sobriety in place, I’d been feeling my mindset shift from “waiting for the other shoe to drop” to cautious optimism.

Extremely cautious optimism. Still, being able to discuss the idea of outpatient counseling or our need for groceries without the conversation devolving into a fight was a new and entirely welcome development.

I set Bea’s bowl of pasta on a place mat and was about to call for her when Callum’s footsteps pounded up the basement stairs. When he pushed open the door, he looked perplexed and a little annoyed.

“It’s not down there.” He scratched his neck.

“Really? Are you sure?”

“I looked everywhere. I think it might be up in the attic.”

Every muscle in my body went still. “No,” I said, hoping I sounded merely certain as opposed to cagey. “I wouldn’t have put it in the attic.”

Callum raised an eyebrow as if to say, Are you sure?

and my stomach sank further because he was right; if the oven was in the attic, it wouldn’t have been him who had put it there.

Had I dragged it through the trapdoor after surmising Callum was never going to use it?

I racked my brain, trying to remember if I’d seen the pizza oven on any of my excursions into the attic, but all I could picture was the broken remains of mirror and Adelaide’s belongings centered around the peephole.

I swallowed around the hard, painful lump in my throat and tried to sound convincing when I said, “Seriously, Cal, there’s no way it’s up there.”

“I’m going to check.” He pulled his sneakers from the closet.

“Let me do it.” I wiped my hands on a dish towel and wrangled my hair into a ponytail.

But Callum shook his head. “Get Bea fed. I know how tired she is. Besides, I saw that new organizer you got for her closet. That’s a pretty convenient stepladder into the attic.” He finished tying his shoes and started down the hallway. “Be right back.”

I hadn’t been in the attic—or spoken to Adelaide—since the day we’d ceased the haunting, but the recorder batteries would be dead by now, and Adelaide’s slippers and blanket wouldn’t stand out among the piles of insulation.

I would have removed her things, but the idea of then having to contact her to return them was beyond what I wanted to deal with.

And I still didn’t want Callum up there, worried that the moment he pulled himself into that space, some bubble of safety would be popped, and all the negative energy and toxic melodrama that’d occurred during the haunting would be released back into the house, flowing along the same channels that the guitar chords and rotten smells had.

Since there was no way to stop him, I did the only thing I could do, which was to call after him, “Send Bea down for her dinner.” Then, on numb feet, I went to butter Bea a slice of bread to go with her pasta, my hands shaking more than I cared to admit.

Bea chattered cheerfully as she ate, and I strained to hear not just to the second floor, but to the attic.

Aside from Callum’s muffled footsteps—he was heavier than Adelaide and unable to navigate the plywood and joists with anything close to the stealth she’d managed—I heard nothing.

No grunts of displeasure or confusion, no cries of surprise or dismay.

Only a full minute of silence from above us, during which my brow and lower back pricked uncomfortably with sweat.

“Want to play Favorite Thing?” Bea prompted.

“Oh, um . . .” I mumbled. “One second, honey.” I continued listening for any sound that meant Callum was returning, but no such sound came.

“Let me get you something to drink,” I said, so I could avoid the game in lieu of the reprieve walking to the fridge and retrieving a can of seltzer would afford me.

It worked. By the time I was turning back toward Beatrix, I heard Callum drop from the attic to the floor above us.

I waited for his feet on the stairs, but there was only more silence.

Had he seen something of Adelaide’s? Something of mine that made him suspicious?

What was taking him so long? I opened Bea’s seltzer and sat on the stool beside her. Finally, Callum came downstairs.

He stepped into the kitchen, the overhead lights illuminating his face, and I saw his slack jaw and pallid complexion. Steeling myself for the answer, I forced my mouth to form the words: “Did you find it?”

Callum shook his head.

“What’s wrong?” If he’d seen something related to the haunting, I’d expect anger or disbelief, not this cold contemplation and quiet dismay. “Callum?” I pressed. Beatrix had yet to notice anything was amiss and was licking butter off her bread with gusto.

“Do you remember”—he paused, swallowed, blinked—“the mirror?”

“The mirror?” I parroted, stalling for time.

I could understand if Callum were surprised at seeing the broken mirror again; likely he’d believed it long gone.

But why would he care that, rather than putting it out with the trash the morning after the housewarming party, I’d squirreled it up to the attic?

Why did he look as if he’d seen a ghost?

“The mirror.” Callum’s voice was monotone, even robotic, as if repeating something he’d been turning over in his head. “The mirror from the housewarming party. The one that . . .” He trailed off, his eyes darting around the room as if looking for something in the corners.

“Yes,” I said, still not understanding. “The broken one. I remember.” I searched his arms, his hands. “You didn’t cut yourself on it, did you?”

Slowly, almost as if it caused him great pain, Callum shook his head. “I saw . . .”

Beatrix tossed what was left of her bread onto her plate. “Do you want to play Favorite Thing, Daddy? Remember the rules: It has to be funny and pretend!”

“I saw . . .” Callum said again. He closed his eyes and chewed his bottom lip.

“What did you see?” I pressed.

He blinked as he stared past me. Finally, he focused on my face.

“Remember the figure in the hallway? The one I told you about? I opened my door and there was someone standing right there. But it wasn’t an intruder; it was like my own shadow had separated from the rest of my body and kept on walking, down the hall, where it disappeared into the darkness.

” He continued to stare, his eyes pleading. “Do you remember?”

I tried to keep my expression neutral but knew I was failing.

“You never told me that,” I said. Then, because Beatrix was looking at him with a mixture of worry and fear, I nudged him.

“It sounds like a really wild case of Favorite Thing, though . . . Maybe you want to tell Beatrix the part where it gets funny? Since you already have the pretend part.”

Callum blinked again and licked his lips, his eyes coming to rest on Beatrix, who was looking at him expectantly. As if breaking out of a trance, his eyes lost their glazed-over quality, and he shook himself like a great, pensive bird.

“Right,” he said, still looking at Beatrix.

“Sorry. Right, my Favorite Thing. So, after I saw my own shadow”—he thought for a moment—“I jumped out the window and followed Peter Pan, Wendy, and the Lost Boys into Neverland. We flew around for hours, fought Captain Hook and, um, a ticking crocodile, and had tea with Tinker Bell. And that,” he said with theatrical finality, “was my Favorite Thing. Was that a good one?”

Beatrix clapped her hands. “Yes, Daddy. Great.”

Callum nodded, but he still looked distracted.

“Do you want me to check the garage for the pizza oven?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Maybe ordering takeout is a good idea after all. Chinese okay? I’ll call.” His gaze slid sluggishly toward the short hall to the staircase. “I know you wanted to shower. I can help Bea finish dinner.”

I still didn’t like the way he looked, but I had wanted a shower since coming home from the aquarium. “Yeah. Okay. Thanks.” I looked at Beatrix “When you’re done, have Daddy help with your pajamas, okay?”

I kissed her cheek and started from the kitchen, but turned by the coffee bar and regarded Callum again. He was staring at nothing, eyes glassy.

“Cal,” I said, “seriously, are you okay?”

He nodded weakly, then seemed to pull himself together. “Sorry,” he said again. “I must be hungrier than I thought. I’ll call for the food.”

In the shower a few minutes later, I tried to relax but couldn’t get Callum’s strange reaction to the attic—no, the mirror—out of my head.

I recalled how he’d trailed off in the kitchen: I saw .

. . And then that bizarre story about seeing someone step out from his own body and into the hall.

What the hell had he seen? Some sort of dream?

And why had he thought he’d told me about it already?

Duh, Lainey, I said to myself as I turned off the water. Because alcohol.

Alcohol.

I froze. Had seeing the mirror all these years later reminded him of why he’d smashed it in the first place?

Of what he’d seen on that long-ago spring day?

Or—and this was a thought too dark to comprehend—had he simply been confronted with the history of his alcoholism at a time when he was still too vulnerable to properly cope with it?

I hurried to get dressed, throwing on the same white leggings and white sweater as before. I was reaching for the bathroom door when I heard it: a garble of voices coming through the bathroom window, floating up from the back deck.

Heart thudding, I went to the window and peered out. Callum, swaying on the deck, a tall, glistening glass in his hand. Beatrix, riding her bike in jerky, wobbling circles, her stuffed koala poking out of the basket.

As Bea rode around, looking increasingly out of control, she lifted her head and said something to her father.

He said something back and waved his hand.

Their words were lost to me through glass and distance, but Bea’s fear was not.

Nor was the horrifying reality that she wasn’t wearing her helmet.

I didn’t wait; I turned from the window and sprinted from the bathroom, down the stairs, and through the kitchen, blood whooshing through my ears.

At the door to the deck, I could still see them, still see her, little feet pumping, handlebars jerking wildly.

I didn’t want to call out too soon and startle her.

She was too close to the deck rail. That damnable broken deck rail!

I gripped the door, my body as cold as if I’d plunged through ice and into arctic water. As I slid the door open, Callum again spoke to Beatrix. In response, she cut left, then tried to overcompensate and cut hard to the right.

I tried to scream, but the words lodged in my throat, and even if I’d been able to, I wasn’t sure Bea had the reflexes to squeeze her brakes that quickly.

She was careening toward the splintered rail like a runaway railcar, the curls of her ponytail bouncing along behind her.

The thing I’d been fearing for the past year was going to happen right in front of me, unless I did something to stop it.

On legs that felt weighed down by concrete blocks, I willed myself to take two giant steps forward.

Then I launched myself into the air in a desperate bid to reach Bea’s back tire.

If I’d managed two more inches, my fingers would have jammed into the spokes and stopped her, mangling my hand in the process.

I would have taken a hundred mangled hands if it meant stopping the horrible thing set in motion.

Instead, my fingers grazed the rubber of her back tire as the front one cleared the lip of the deck and dropped forward.

The rest of the bike—and Bea—barreled through the railing as if it were paper.

Again, I tried to scream, landing on the deck with a crash that sent shock waves through my rib cage and the air shooting out of me.

I crawled forward, silvery stars exploding across my vision, and peered over the edge of the deck.

Six feet below, Bea lay on the ground, her body crumpled and unmoving.

The earth tilted on its axis and so did the deck, spilling me over its side to the dirt.

Again, I hit the ground with a bone-jarring thud, but this time, instead of getting the wind knocked out of me, the pain spread, sharpened, angry and vicious.

I pushed myself up on one elbow to find a large splinter stuck deep into my left wrist. It must have gone straight into the vein, for blood gushed from the wound. I pushed the pain away and rolled onto my side to place my good hand on Beatrix.

I knew I couldn’t move her in case she had a head injury, so I cradled her as best I could, pulled my phone from the side pocket of my leggings, and dialed.

I ignored the sound of movement above me.

Asking him for help, letting him anywhere near her, would be like asking the man with a can of gasoline hidden behind his back for help putting out the fire.

I waited while the clouds and the fern fronds in the breeze and the kazooing of a mourning dove’s feathers streaked away like paint chased from the bottom of a sink.

In a world without color or sound, my blood hit the dirt, my fingers stroked Bea’s cheek, and my eyes saw everything and nothing at once.