Page 5 of How to Fake a Haunting

I blinked at Adelaide across the coffee table. “Stage a haunting,” I repeated. “What the hell do you mean?”

“I mean, you start small. Rotten eggs in the wall. Strange noises. Flies on the windowsills. Nothing over the top. It can’t be something he could attribute to you; that’s critical.

No fake blood pouring down the walls unless you can hide the evidence.

Everything needs to be done in a way that Cal can’t accuse you of being behind the haunting. ”

Questions fired in my mind like fast-flipping pages, but what I landed on was, “Is this like the time you tried to get Kathy to hire Joe and Morgan Tallow?”

“What? No! This is nothing like that.”

I said nothing, but the defensiveness in her tone made me nervous.

Joe and Morgan Tallow were the Ed-and-Lorraine-Warren-wannabes of Rhode Island, a couple who’d pitched their “Haunted Newport” ghost tours to every employee at the Preservation Society, including CEO Kathy Barnes.

No one gave them the time of day. Except Adelaide, who maintained even now that there was something to the Tallows’ particular breed of “spiritualism.”

“Seriously, Lainey,” Adelaide insisted, “this is different.”

“Okay, fine. Whatever you say. But couldn’t Callum accuse me of leaving rotten eggs in the walls pretty easily?”

Adelaide shook her head, her eyes never leaving mine. “Not if you’re right next to him when the smell hits. Or out of the house. We plan everything down to the smallest detail.”

I wrinkled my nose. “How will the rotten-egg smell and strange noises happen if I’m out of the house or sitting right next to him?”

Adelaide sat back against the cushion with a grin. “That’s where I come in.”

“Why would you go to all that trouble?”

“You’re my friend. My best friend. I wanna help you bury this asshole.

” She winced. “Not in the ground. I mean legally. Get him to where he doesn’t have a sane leg to stand on.

Full custody for you, visitation if—and only if—he gets his shit together.

You’d be free. Bea would be safe. She could have the life you want for her. The life you both deserve.”

I shook my head, unwilling to get too lost in this unattainable fantasy.

“Why would Callum even buy the idea of a haunting here?” I ticked things off on my fingers: “The house is twenty-five hundred square feet, not some gothic mansion. We’re not on a cursed burial ground.

There wasn’t a murder here. We built it, remember?

There’s no body beneath the floorboards. ”

Adelaide waved a hand. “None of that matters. What matters is convincing him something evil has taken up residence here.”

“When did you even come up with this?” I asked. “We’ve tried all sorts of things, and if calling the police to alert them of a man ‘driving erratically’ and getting Cal pulled over didn’t work, why would this?”

“I still can’t believe that cop was Cal’s dad’s golfing buddy,” Adelaide growled.

“Though, after tonight, I’m hardly surprised.

” She shook herself as if to loosen the memory’s hold.

“As for when I came up with it, well, this has been affecting you—and by extension, me—for a long time. I figured to achieve something as implausible as getting full custody of Bea, we needed an implausible solution.”

“An ‘implausible solution’ is putting it mildly. I don’t understand how we could fake a haunting to the point where it drives him crazy. We’re not Hollywood directors.”

“We’re not. But we’re smart. And we’ve got something better than any Hollywood director.”

“Desperation?”

“Motivation. If we do this slowly, like the death he’s causing you, we can break him.

If we get this right, we can stage a full-blown Poltergeist remake here in this living room, and he’ll be so spun up over all the strange occurrences that preceded it, he’ll probably check himself into a mental institution.

What do you have to lose? Not time. As it stands, you’re shackled to this guy and his rampant alcoholism until he dies . . . or you do.”

I tried to picture it. Tried to picture Adelaide hopping ceiling beams in the attic, breaking rancid eggs by the air-conditioning vents and then slinking out of the house while Callum stood there, swigging from a beer can and scratching his head .

. . or maybe his balls. I could call Callum from work, proving my location, while Adelaide, who was remote three days a week—like all of us at the Preservation Society—rearranged the furniture ever so slightly.

That was all I could come up with. I wasn’t exactly bursting with ideas, and said as much to Adelaide.

“Whatever you do, don’t change your behavior,” Adelaide warned.

“Don’t let Cal catch you binge-watching all three—or is it four now?

—Conjurings to come up with ideas like you’re cramming for a final exam.

Don’t search anything on the internet. And get in the habit of deleting our conversation history.

I can communicate each stage of the haunting via text. ”

I scoffed. “Adelaide, do you hear yourself? This is ridiculous. There’s no way we can pull this off. No way it’ll work.”

Adelaide’s eyes narrowed. “How long have I known you?”

“Almost seven years.”

“And in that time, I’ve watched you go from putting the pieces of your life together and not having much—except Callum—to having everything”—she looked hard into my eyes—“except Callum. You’ve worked tirelessly to have this wonderful life—amazing daughter, fulfilling career, gorgeous house, great relationship with your parents—and he’s the one thing making you miserable.

Are you going to let him torture you until you start drinking alcoholically too? ”

Fear jolted through me at the thought. “That’d never happen.”

“It could, after another six years of Callum jeopardizing your happiness . . . your sanity. No way we can pull this off? How does a man with low self-esteem and a beer belly, and whose parents gave him everything he has, take advantage of the smartest and most successful woman I know? Because his denial is so strong that he believes you will continue on like this forever.”

Adelaide took my hands. “If you approach this haunting with radical acceptance and the unwavering certainty that it will succeed, no matter how crazy it is, you can have what you want. And we can go all in on this while we’re trying to make it work, and it doesn’t matter if we get caught.”

I uncurled my feet from beneath me. “What do you mean?”

“Callum’s behavior puts him at risk for consequences: say, if he got a DUI out of state, away from the protection of his parents, or hurt someone so badly that they couldn’t cover it up.

And he’s never going to file for divorce from you.

Abandon this cushy life and his in-home caretaker?

Not happening. So there’s no risk of having your behavior examined by someone who matters—say, a judge—because the only way you’d end up in court is if this plan succeeds and you initiate the proceedings.

“Prior to that, if Cal were to catch you propping up an iPad in a crawl space, ready to jack up the volume on a playlist of haunted-house sound effects, what’s he going to do?

Yell? Get mad?” Adelaide let out an exaggerated gasp.

“Drink? Who cares? He’s certainly not going to have his mother sic her fancy lawyers on you for trying to scare him.

That should give us even more motivation to attack this idea with all the blind faith of a drunk behind the wheel. ”

Adelaide grew solemn. “Getting caught only matters if this works.” She pursed her lips. “Once we send Cal over the edge, we destroy the evidence.” She paused, giving me time to realize that the stakes were surprisingly low, while the potential gain was enormous.

“So”—Adelaide’s eyes had that glint again, all fire and excitement—“what do you say? Shall we turn this place into a motherfucking haunted house?”