Chapter Twelve

While Ashley gets her father resettled in his room, I'm down the hall, making sure Henry gets back into bed. Not a problem, it turns out. Henry's a far cry from how I acted when I was his age and bedtime rolled around. I'd wheedle and cajole and beg to stay up just five more minutes. Ironic, seeing how I now long for a full night's sleep.

Henry, maybe anticipating a similar situation in his later years, simply crawls under the covers and grabs a book from the nightstand. He's moved on to a different volume in the Goosebumps series, The Ghost Next Door.

"Won't you get scared reading that before bed?" I say.

"No," Henry says. "It's just fiction. Also, I like reading about ghosts and monsters."

"I had a friend who liked that, too. He was obsessed with ghosts."

"Billy Barringer," Henry says, the name sounding foreign coming from someone so young.

"How do you know about him?"

Henry pushes his glasses higher onto his nose. "My mom told me about him. She said he was a good kid who disappeared, which is why I should always tell her where I'm going."

I shouldn't be surprised that even Ashley has turned Billy's story into a cautionary tale, yet I am. Surely Billy meant more to her than that. Or maybe she's like Russ, limited in both memories and mournfulness. When it comes to Billy, maybe everyone is.

Everyone but me.

"Don't stay up too late reading," I say as I switch off the overhead light. "Sleep is important."

When I reach the doorway, Henry stops me.

"Mr. Marsh, do you think I'm weird?"

I turn to face him, surprised by how young he looks half under the covers, bathed in the warm glow of his bedside lamp.

"Do you?" Henry prods when I don't have a quick answer.

I cringe. The truth is that, yes, I think Henry is weird, but to tell him would be cruel. Then again, I don't want to lie to the kid. Too much of childhood is spent being lied to by adults because they think it'll spare your feelings.

"Does it matter if you are?" I say.

Henry nods. "A little."

"To who?"

"Whom," he says, correcting me. "And I guess the answer is other people."

"Like kids your own age?" I say.

"Yes," Henry concedes. "I should have been more forthcoming."

Hearing someone so small use such a big word—correctly, even—makes me smile. Sometimes weird isn't so bad.

"I'll let you in on a little secret," I say as I cross the room and sit on the edge of his bed. "Something most people don't realize until they're older. But everyone is a little weird. Some people hide it more than others, but it's true. Everyone is weird."

"Including you?"

"Including me," I say, trying not to give too much thought to how true of a statement it really is.

"So I shouldn't care that I'm a little weird?"

"All you should care about is being yourself," I say. "No matter who that person is. Some people might not like you for who you are, but a whole bunch will. I promise."

I pat his leg beneath the covers and take my leave. Again, Henry stops me at the doorway, this time to say "Good night, Mr. Marsh" with a formality that makes me feel compelled to play along.

"Good night, Mr. Wallace."

Henry nods, pleased, and I leave the room. In the hallway, I find Ashley leaning against the wall right outside Henry's door, where she no doubt heard every word.

"You're good with kids," she says.

"Am I? I've never thought so."

"You're a pro. It's shocking you don't have one of your own."

I follow her downstairs to the kitchen, where she opens a cupboard and pulls out two shot glasses and a bottle of tequila. The tilt of her head is a question. Should we? My answer is yes, especially if we're going to continue talking about children.

I take a seat as Ashley moves about the kitchen, placing the bottle and glasses on the table before pulling some limes from the fridge. With her back toward me as she slices them, she says, "Did you and your wife want kids?"

"She did," I say. "I didn't."

"I can see that."

Claudia couldn't. Not that I was, to borrow from Henry's vocabulary, forthcoming with the reason I didn't want kids. When we argued about it, which was often toward the end, I refused to tell her. It was only during our final argument that I revealed all.

"Tell me why you don't want to have a child," she said.

"There's no specific reason."

"There has to be, Ethan."

"Lots of couples choose not to have kids, for a whole slew of reasons."

"Is it me?" Claudia said, her voice wounded.

"Of course not. I think you'd be an amazing mother."

I tried to pull her into a hug, but she slipped out of it and stalked to the other side of our bedroom. "Then why? You know I want a baby. You just said I'd be an amazing mom. I think you'd be an amazing dad. We have good jobs. We're financially secure. There's absolutely no reason why we shouldn't at least try except for something you're not telling me."

"I just don't want to be a father," I said. "Isn't that reason enough?"

"Honestly? No."

"Well, it should be. But I guess in this situation, my feelings don't matter."

It was a shitty thing to say. I realize that now and probably did then, but the heat of the moment had made me angry. With Claudia, yes, but mostly with myself for refusing to be honest with her, even though it made her more upset with each passing minute.

"You won't tell me what you're feeling!" she yelled, her eyes wide and shining with newly formed tears that had yet to fall. "And you have no idea how much that hurts. I'm your wife, Ethan. You shouldn't be afraid to share anything with me."

"Even if it's something you don't want to hear?"

"Especially that. Because how can we fix it—together—if only one of us knows what the problem is?"

"There is no fixing it," I said. "That's the problem."

"Then just tell me. Please." Claudia stared at me from across the room. One of the tears had slipped free and was sliding down her cheek. "Ethan, I need to know why you don't want kids."

I wearily dropped onto the bed, knowing I was about to break my wife's heart.

"Because kids disappear," I said, the truth feeling not like a weight had been lifted from me but like it had suddenly been doubled.

Claudia touched my cheek and kissed my forehead. "I understand," she said softly, and I believed her. She knew what happened to Billy. She knew how much it had fucked me up. And she knew that, because of it, I would never, ever change my mind.

"I'm sorry," I whispered.

"I know," Claudia said.

Then she left our bedroom for the very last time.

"Here we are," Ashley says, jerking me back to the present by setting a plate of quartered limes and a saltshaker on the table in front of me. She pours us both a shot. We lick our hands and sprinkle them with salt before licking it off, downing the tequila, and ending with a suck of lime wedge. The tequila, cheap but strong, burns its way down my throat. I bark out a cough. Ashley slaps the table.

"God, I needed that," she says. "I bet you never thought you'd be doing shots with your old babysitter."

"I can honestly say I never did."

"Life is full of surprises, isn't it? I mean, I never thought I'd be back living in this house. I bet you didn't, either. You, of all people, had every reason to stay far, far away."

"There weren't many other options," I say, pointedly not getting into the why and how of it all. It'll take more than a shot of tequila to get me talking about that.

"It's scary how little the place has changed." Ashley looks around the room, and I know she's really gesturing to what's beyond the kitchen walls. To Hemlock Circle. "The houses are the same. The people are the same. In some ways, it's like I never left. When all I wanted to do was get the hell out and never come back."

"Why didn't you?"

"Dad needed me," Ashley says. "I mean, he needed me after my mom died, and I stayed a few weeks, but no more than that. I knew how easy it would be to get sucked back into life here, and I refused to do it. But then Dad started forgetting stuff and getting confused, and it seemed to get worse and worse every time I visited. Once Deepika Patel found him standing at her door saying he couldn't remember which house he lived in, it became inevitable."

She refills the shot glasses and we do it all over again. Lick, shoot, suck. This time, I manage to refrain from coughing, but the tequila loosens me up enough to say, "So all that stuff your father said—about seeing Billy in your yard and following him into mine—is just his imagination?"

"More like confusion."

"Are you sure?"

"Of course." Ashley gives me a curious look. "Are you drunk already?"

"No. I just thought—" I stop myself, trying to think of a way to say it without sounding crazy. And delusional. And utterly pathetic. "I thought I sensed Billy's presence. A few nights ago."

"Where? In your house?"

"The backyard. And all around Hemlock Circle. I've…seen things."

"Is that why you bought that camera?"

"Yup," I say. "To try to figure out what's going on. Because ever since your father said he's also seen things, I've been wondering if—"

"It's true?" Ashley says, her tone making it clear she's skipped past crazy and delusional and gone straight to thinking I'm pathetic. "Oh, Ethan. It's nice to think about those we love still being near after they're gone. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because it's science. As for what my dad's been saying, you can't believe any of it. I hate to say something like that about my own father, but it's true. He's not well. Which is why I had to come back, even though it was the last thing I wanted to do."

"What about Henry?" I say. "Does he like it here?"

"I think so? We'll see how it goes when he starts school. As you've noticed, he's kind of an odd kid."

"There's nothing wrong with that," I say. "Being different was a liability when we were his age. Now, it's a badge of honor."

"Still, I worry. He's so sensitive. Smart as hell. Certainly smarter than me. But kids can be so cruel. Since it's only me looking after him, I'm in a constant state of fear that I'm going to fuck it up."

We do a third shot. After humiliating myself a moment ago, I need it. This time, I don't even bother with the salt and lime. It's just the tequila, knocked back without hesitation.

"Where's Henry's father?"

"He's not in the picture," Ashley says as she takes an extra slurp of lime. "Hasn't been from the start. He doesn't know Henry exists. And I, well, I don't exactly know who he is."

"Oh," I say, wishing I could take back the question. "I didn't mean to—"

"No, it's fine." Ashley twists the lime wedge until it's just pulp. "It is what it is. Mom had just died, and I was in LA, where I'd been living since college, still fooling myself into thinking I could make it in the music business. But out there, thirty-five is considered ancient. I was competing for internships with twenty-year-olds. The whole time, I kept on being the same stupid party girl I was in high school and college. Nothing numbs disappointment quite like alcohol. And then, oops, I got pregnant and had no idea which one of the multiple anonymous douchebags I'd hooked up with was responsible. In short, I was a total fucking mess."

"It doesn't seem that way now," I say.

"You can thank Henry for that. As soon as I saw the plus sign on that home pregnancy test, my whole way of thinking changed. It wasn't just about me, you know?"

I can't help hearing the echo of Claudia in my memory the night she told me she wanted to have a baby.

We're just us.

As if that wasn't enough.

"Do you ever regret it?" I say. "Becoming a parent?"

Ashley shakes her head. "Not for a second. Raising a boy like Henry isn't easy. Not in the least. And I know I didn't need to go through with it. I had options. But every time I look at him, I know I brought something good into the world."

"So what's next?" I say, my brain buzzing from too much tequila. "You plan on staying here awhile?"

"Not sure." Ashley screws the cap back onto the tequila bottle. "My dad's not getting any better. And something will need to be done about it sooner rather than later. After that, who knows? Turns out, there are worse places to live than Hemlock Circle. How about you?"

"I have no idea. Especially now that Billy's been found. There are too many memories to know what to do with them all."

"I thought I was going to get away from all this," Ashley says, which is exactly what I've felt all week but haven't been able to articulate. "It's like it was destined or something. That, no matter how far I ran, this place insisted on dragging me back here."