Page 41 of How to Fake a Haunting

Chris, I thought wildly. Not Todd at all but the asshole plumber! I’d been completely off base that Adelaide’s lover had used what Adelaide had told him against me. Former lover, I corrected myself, and all because I’d been convinced he was the one leaving the notes.

But how could Chris be the blackmailer? That would mean he’d uncovered my secret.

My mind reeled, trying to make sense of what little information I had.

Amid the lies and confusion, the various people who’d gotten tangled in this sticky web, there was one undeniable fact: Adelaide was the only one who knew about last November.

The only one I’d told about the bear. If Chris knew about these things, he’d found them out from Adelaide, one way or another.

Adelaide had been sleeping with Todd and not told me. Might there be more to her relationship with Chris?

He’d reached the door and was raising his hand to knock. “Hey,” I called out softly, “what the hell do you think you’re doing?” He whirled around.

It occurred to me as he searched for the source of the voice in the dark that I may have gotten it wrong.

Maybe he wasn’t the blackmailer but was here because he’d been the one to rig the water line with blood in the basement.

But then I saw his face, features tight, mouth pursed with anger.

And he’d gone right for the windowsill, checked to see if his note had been found.

Had Adelaide trusted Chris with what we’d really been up to, the way she’d trusted Todd?

Could Chris be behind the blood in the shower and the blackmail?

Chris walked to where I crouched in the shadows, and I said a silent prayer that Callum was still struggling to wash up with a shower that was only spitting blood.

“Why did you leave the notes?” I asked, getting right to it.

His response was just as direct. “Money,” he said, and shrugged. “You have a lot of it; I want ten thousand dollars not to tell your husband what you and that hot-ticket friend of yours have been up to.”

I let out an incredulous laugh. “Callum and I don’t have any money.

Not like that. The only reason we live here and Callum golfs at fancy courses is because of his parents.

” I shook my head. “And you thought the way to get me to give you money for keeping quiet was to show up here while my husband is home?”

His face had gone pale at the revelation about Cal’s parents, but he recovered quickly.

“I came so you knew how serious I was after the last note. I was going to pretend you’d called for plumbing services.

Make you squirm a little in front of your sad-sack husband.

I knocked on the front door first, but no one answered.

” He gestured at my position against the house.

“What the hell are you doing out here, hiding in the dark?”

I ignored the question. “The blue stationery, where did it come from?”

He gave me a funny look. “Huh?”

“Where did it come from?” I demanded.

He thought for a second. “The Rhode Island Small Business Coalition. They gave it out at their last networking event.”

“Your office is in Connecticut.”

He raised an eyebrow. When I made it clear I wasn’t moving on without a response, he said, “I’m on the border, remember? I do business in Connecticut and Rhode Island.” He shook his head. “These are the questions you want to waste your time asking me?”

I gritted my teeth, but there were far more pressing matters. “How did you find out?” I asked softly. “Did Adelaide tell you?”

“No. Why would she have? Adelaide’s never liked me. I was surprised she came to me for help in the first place. It made more sense when I realized she wanted free advice.”

“So how did you find out?”

“I golfed in a tournament with your husband. He played like shit and got ridiculed by his buddies the entire time. He started going off about how he hadn’t slept in days and all the things going on at his house.

Knocking in the walls, other strange noises, weird smells, cold spots.

A rabbit head. What he said rang a bell.

Adelaide had mentioned those exact same things when you were in my shop.

Still, I didn’t know what the connection was, at least not then.

And the fake name you’d given me threw me.

But only until I found out where he usually played and ‘ran into’ him again a week later.

By that time, the coincidences were too many to ignore. ”

Goddamn small-state golf courses, I thought. Everyone knows everyone.

“This time, I heard about swarms of flies and moving furniture,” Chris continued. “I remembered what Adelaide had said about not wanting fake blood capsules and realized that, for whatever reason, you two were trying to scare your husband.”

I stared at him dumbly. “Scare . . . my husband? I don’t understand.” The blackmail notes had referred to my decision, to this past November. Was Chris going to stand here and tell me they were about the fake haunting all along?

He looked at me like I was an idiot. “What the hell else would it be about? Anyway, I didn’t give a shit why you were trying to scare him.

Maybe you had a new man. Maybe Callum beats you.

What I did care about was that if you were doing this in the first place, there had to be a good reason.

And if there was a good reason, I figured you’d pay to keep Callum from finding out. ”

I still couldn’t wrap my head around what he was saying. How had the notes been about the haunting?

“But what about the reference to November eleventh?”

His forehead wrinkled in confusion. “Huh?”

I dug the note from my back pocket and held it out. “You wrote, ‘Does Callum know where you went on November eleventh?’”

He snorted “That’s an m. It says May. My handwriting sucks, what do you want from me?

You and Adelaide came to see me on May eleventh.

You two were playing God by fucking with Callum.

I admit the whole ‘decision there’s no coming back from’ thing was a little dramatic, but the poor dude was essentially getting forced into a breakup in a pretty gnarly way.

I mean, we’re talking some next-level psycho-bitch shit.

As for what was buried in the backyard?” He shrugged.

“I heard so much about the damn rabbit head, I took a guess as to how you kept him from finding it.” He grinned. “Was I right?”

My head was spinning. I felt nauseous. “But what about the bear?”

“What bear?”

“You left the note with the teddy bear on the sill.”

Chris’s forehead wrinkled further. He looked genuinely confused. “I didn’t leave any bear.”

I was stammering out a reply when my phone lit up.

A text message from Adelaide. I saw that I’d also missed a call from her.

Chris started saying something about how I was crazy and Callum would be better off without me, but I wasn’t listening.

Adelaide’s text paraded across my screen.

The more I read, the more my head spun, until sentences were reduced to mere phrases, each more dizzying than the last:

. . . no idea what you’re talking about . . .

. . . the mirror mask was stupid . . . I never ended up wearing it.

Bloody handprints?

None of the recorders were set to play a metallic shrieking.

. . . told you a hundred times, I didn’t release extra flies!

And the bombshell:

. . . never went back to Chris . . . never went in your basement . . . gave up on the idea of blood in the shower a long time ago . . .

I think you need to get out of there. I think the haunting might be real.

“You . . .” I started, my tongue thick and useless. “You didn’t leave the bear with the note?” Still, my brain balked against Adelaide’s text. The haunting real? Ridiculous.

“No.” Another bewildered look from Chris.

“You didn’t leave bloody handprints on the door?”

This time the look turned pitying, as if he thought I might be legitimately insane. “No.”

“You didn’t . . . you don’t know about the abortion?”

The word hung in the air, as powerful as any of the knocks or shrieks that had sounded in the house over the last few weeks.

Chris’s face contorted. He appeared shocked, maybe even disgusted.

“Jesus Christ. Abortion? No.” He shook his head and started backing up.

“If there’s no money, then this is not fucking worth it.

You really are crazy.” He shot a quick glance up at the house, then a last, frightened look at me, as if he were afraid I might follow him.

“I’m out of here. Good luck to your husband, man. He’s going to need it.”

With a final “Psycho bitch,” Chris took off across the grass. I heard his truck start a moment later.

In the wake of his receding engine, there were only the sounds of the frogs and the crickets backdropping my own ragged breathing.

I walked across the deck on legs that didn’t feel like mine.

Part of me wanted to keep walking, through the grass, into the trees, to disappear into the woods for the night, only returning when Callum was gone in the morning.

When I could pretend that none of this was happening.

When I could pretend I had things under control.

I turned, and for the first time since coming outside, I was far enough away from the house to see there were lights on in some of the windows.

Including Callum’s bedroom. A strangled cry escaped me.

Callum stood, backlit by the bright orange light, a smudge of blood marring his neck.

He looked down at me through the open window with an expression full of contempt.

Full of knowing.