Chapter Five

chapter five

June 16, 2019

Itold the funeral home we were thinking of a short service there, Wednesday. Do you think that’s too soon?” Aunt Diane asked, clawing at the steering wheel. She looked stylish as ever: coppery red hair in a neat bob, beige purse matching her heels. Navy dress pants and a silk blouse. Even her manicure looked perfect.

“No,” I said, not having any idea whether that was too soon or not. I tried to imagine myself being ready for Lexie’s memorial service in just a few days, and it felt impossible. But even if we waited weeks, I knew I’d never be ready for it.

My head ached and my stomach was queasy. In the past twenty-four hours, I hadn’t had anything to eat or drink but coffee and the little bag of free pretzels on the plane. I’d offered to rent a car, but Diane had insisted on coming to get me in her black Lincoln Navigator. It was nearly a two-hour drive from the airport to Sparrow Crest, an hour on highways, the rest along back roads. I remembered the long three-hour drives from our house in Massachusetts to Brandenburg each June, the trunk loaded with bulging suitcases, stuffed animals, our bikes on the roof rack. Our father would be driving, fiddling with the radio, always looking for just the right road-trip music—anything to help him forget where he was going. And Mom would sit quietly, watching the scenery, her face getting and more tense the closer we got to Sparrow Crest. I knew once we arrived, Gram would invite them in for dinner, but our parents would make excuses, talk about bad traffic, an early morning, anything to get out as quickly as possible. They never stayed, just dropped and ran with lots of I love yous, have a good a summer, behave for your grandmother. My parents both hated Sparrow Crest. More than hating it, they seemed wary of it. Our mother said it made her cold, held too many bad memories. Our father said it was obviously haunted and creepy as hell. “Have a good summer in Dracula’s castle,” he’d whisper as he kissed us goodbye. “Watch out for the bats.”

Lexie and I spent the long drive from home to Sparrow Crest in the backseat playing the License Plate Game or Twenty Questions, but then, as we got closer to Gram’s and the landscape turned more green and mountainous, we’d start making plans—trips to the store for candy and root beer, who was going to jump in the pool first, if Ryan would be there at Sparrow Crest waiting for us or if we’d have to ride down to the bakery to find him.

Diane followed the exit ramp off the highway, and I remembered the little jolt I felt at the beginning of each summer when we got off at the same exit: the promise of great adventures to come. This time, instead of the happy rush, a weight in my chest sank deep down into my stomach.

Air-conditioning blasted out of the vents, turning the car into an icebox. A stack of business cards in the console read: Diane Harkness Real Estate.

“I spoke to your father,” Diane said as she put on the left-turn signal and checked for oncoming traffic. Her large-framed sunglasses and light application of bronzing powder couldn’t hide the fact that she was exhausted.

We turned onto the little two-lane road that would take us past farmhouses, fields, long stretches of woods, and the occasional gas station. “He’ll be here Tuesday morning. I’ll send a car to pick him up.”

I nodded. Diane and Ted had an interesting relationship. They’d always been close and remained in touch. But Diane made it clear, both to him and to the rest of the world, that she felt like he’d failed our mother and Lexie and me; like he should have tried harder, should have been a better father.

“Thank you,” I said, “for dealing with that. How did Ted sound?”

Our father had never been “Dad.” Jax started calling him Ted when she learned to talk, parroting what she heard our mother call him. When I came along, I copied Lexie, calling our parents Mom and Ted. Maybe calling him Ted was a way we both had of setting him apart, distancing him somehow because we both understood, on some subconscious level, that he wasn’t going to be part of our little family forever.

“He was sober enough to be making sense. I can’t promise he’ll be that way when he gets off the plane, though.”

Growing up, my dad was one of those guys who always had a beer in his hand. Sometimes he drank to bring himself up, and sometimes to bring himself down.

It wasn’t until my first psychology class at the University of Washington that I realized my father drank to self-medicate. That was also when I began to believe he was bipolar (though he’d never been officially diagnosed, and he’s always denied it). His mood swings aren’t nearly as bad as Lexie’s, but he gets himself into some serious funks and some serious periods of what he calls “creative energy”: no sleep for days, drawing and painting, playing music. His manic periods were fun to be around when we were kids—he’d take us out for late-night ice cream, or roller-skating, or out to the mall to watch two movies in a row, then fill a cart with art supplies. One time, we went into the music store and he bought us all ukuleles.

The last time I’d seen my father was a little over a year ago, when we moved Lexie into Sparrow Crest. The two of them were laughing, feeding off each other’s mania. They were drawing ridiculous pictures on the boxes instead of labeling them, overloading the rented hand truck and dancing around with it so that all the mislabeled boxes fell off. I took on the role of the taskmaster, made lists and tried to keep things somewhat organized so we could get it done quickly and I could go back home. I was exhausted from seething with resentment and pretending not to be.

My father and I called each other every month for obligatory check-ins—how’s work, how’s the weather, what’s new? It was like a careful dance we did, keeping everything easy and surface level, never prodding too deep. Unlike my relationship with Lexie, I had no problem establishing clear boundaries with my father.

“We’ll all have to make some decisions, of course.” Diane’s voice faltered. “About what we think Lexie would have wanted.”

“I know she didn’t want to be buried,” I said, remembering Lexie’s horror when we were picking a casket out for Mom three years ago. “Stuck in a box for all eternity?” she’d said as we walked along the display row at the funeral home, the tops so shiny we could see our own distorted reflections in them. “No thanks.”

I shivered at the memory. Diane reached over and turned down the AC.

“Cremation it is, then.” Gram had been cremated and had her ashes buried in the rose garden at Sparrow Crest.

“Maybe we can bring the ashes out to Lake Wilmore,” I suggested, remembering all the hours we’d spent swimming there as kids. The lake water felt downright warm compared with the ice water in Gram’s pool, and we spent many summer days going back and forth between the two. The lake was on the other side of town, a fifteen-minute bike ride away. Lake Wilmore was lined with summer houses and cabins, and there was a big public swimming beach with a snack bar that served fried fish and clams. Often Ryan would tag along on his bike, the basket stuffed full of rolls and muffins his mother, Terri, had made; she and her husband, Randy, owned the Blue Heron Bakery. She did all the baking, and Ryan’s dad handled the business side: the orders, the books, hiring and firing employees.

Sometimes Lexie and I would bring our blue-and-yellow inflatable raft down to the lake. Lexie called it the Titanic II. I’d accompany her on cross-lake swims—paddling along beside her in case she got tired, but she never did. I never attempted to swim across the lake with her; I knew I didn’t have the stamina and could never keep up with Lexie’s speed. Even when I tried my hardest, I wasn’t half the swimmer my sister was.

She never spoke to me or acknowledged my presence during those cross-lake swims. It was just her and the water.

Those summers in Brandenburg had started Lexie’s love affair with swimming; it was the one thing that would quiet her mind, drown out everything else. When we weren’t at the lake, she’d practice in the pool at Sparrow Crest, doing endless laps, learning new strokes. My sister, restless and ill at ease on land, was quick and graceful in the water.

“I reserved the Lily Room for the service; it’s the largest one,” Aunt Diane continued. “It should hold everyone.”

As far as family, only myself, Diane, and my father remained. Everyone else was gone. I pictured us, Terri and Ryan maybe. But who else might come? “You really think that many people will show up?” I asked.

“Your sister had a lot of friends in town.”

I had a hard time picturing it. In my experience, she could be the life of the party but had few real friendships. She was just too difficult. She’d pull people to her one minute and do all she could to push them away the next. We were in Brandenburg now, driving past the fire station, Four Corners Store, bakery, and the Methodist Church, which had hung a big sign: PICNIC AFTER SERVICES TODAY! I nodded and looked out the window at the people gathered on the church lawn, spread out on blankets with their sandwiches and bottles of soda. “A service at the funeral home sounds good. Lexie hated churches.”

She was suspicious of all religions, though she’d tried her fair share of them. She was a Buddhist for a few weeks, spent a summer at an ashram in upstate New York, went to silent meetings with the Quakers. She’d been searching for something, for the missing piece that might make her feel whole.

“Do you believe in God?” she’d asked me last summer.

“No,” I’d told her, and Lexie had said: “I believe in a thousand little gods.”

I thought of Lexie’s thousand little gods as we pulled up the long, circular driveway to Sparrow Crest, my grandmother’s ivy-covered stone house looming like a small mountain. And behind it, the two hills forming a perfect tree-lined backdrop: Lord’s Hill on the left, the slightly taller Devil’s Hill to the right. The story went that the earliest settlers named it Devil’s Hill because of the rough, rocky terrain. One of the first families to settle in town built their house at the base of the other hill, and their last name was Lord. Growing up, this explanation seemed far too boring, so Lexie and I would make up crazy stories about God and the devil battling it out in the woods behind Sparrow Crest. Lexie would point at the woods and say, “You see which hill is bigger, don’t you? The devil wins every time, Jax.”

Between the hills was a small valley that the stream ran through, all the way down to the river on the other side.

“What’s up with all the no-trespassing signs?” I asked, noticing them nailed to trees all along the driveway.

“Lexie put them up,” Diane said, lips tightening.

This didn’t fit with the image she was trying to sell me of Lexie being the most popular woman in town. I bit my tongue to keep from saying, Why, so she could keep all her good friends out?

And there, at the house’s foot, was my dead sister’s yellow Mustang. A ridiculous car for Vermont. Impossible to drive during the long winters. But it was utterly hers, and seeing it brought the tears again.

Aunt Diane put her hand on mine. “Are you ready?” she asked, looking from me to the house.

She’d already warned me that she hadn’t cleaned up anything. That the house was in a horrible state.

“Ready or not,” I said.

---

The summer I was ten and Lexie was thirteen, things truly began to change. She’d spent the winter sick with mononucleosis—holed up in her room with sketchpads and books and an old TV our father had dragged up there, hibernating. And when she emerged in the spring, she wasn’t the same. It wasn’t just that she was thinner and more hollowed-out looking. She had a hard time focusing on conversations. She was quick to anger and swore all the time. Mom let it slide and Ted was amused, especially when Lex starting using his own colorful curses: Cock-sucking pigs was a favorite. Mom said I should ignore my sister’s freak-outs. “It’s hormones,” she said. “Your sister is going through big changes.”

I thought the “big changes” meant Lex had gotten her period. I saw the wrappers from pads and tampons in the bathroom. Mom fussed over her. Bought her new clothes, special face masks, hair ties, and pills for cramps. Lexie was restless, couldn’t seem to hold still. On her sleepless nights, she’d stay with our father in his garage art studio, the two of them grooving out to classic rock and making sculptures out of wire, clothespins, and playing cards. Once, they stayed up all night making a working pinball machine out of an old card table, mousetraps, pieces of hose, rusted pulleys, and a lot of rubber bands.

That summer, when we went to Sparrow Crest, Lexie wanted to share her every secret with me—she kept me up until dawn some nights, talking and talking, telling stories, braiding my hair, painting my nails with fancy nail polish Mom had bought for her. Some days she wouldn’t leave her room. One night, I woke up to pee and saw the light on in her room. I went in, but she wasn’t there. She wasn’t downstairs, or anywhere in the house, even though it was two in the morning. I opened the front door and went out to the pool. It was pitch-dark, so dark I could barely make out her shape. She was crouched, whispering to the water. I moved closer, creeping along the side of the house, wanting to know what she wished for.

“Hello? Are you there?” She seemed to listen for a minute, then stood and tugged her nightgown off over her head and slipped naked into the dark water. I held my breath, watching, waiting, making sure she was okay. Fifteen minutes later, she was back in her clothes and on her way into the house.

I asked her about it the next day. “Where were you last night? I woke up and you weren’t in your room. Where’d you go?”

She looked at me like I was crazy. “You must have been dreaming, Jax.”

Now, as I stepped through the heavy wooden door of Sparrow Crest and surveyed the wreckage, I wished I was dreaming. “What the hell happened in here?”

“I know,” Aunt Diane said. “It’s bad. Worse than bad. Poor Lexie. I was here two weeks ago, and she seemed fine. All wrapped up in her genealogy project.”

I nodded, looked around at the family photos carelessly strewn all over the front hall. “Right,” I said. This was quintessential Lexie. At the beginning of a manic phase, she’d take on projects and seem like she had a handle on them. Then things quickly spun out of control.

Diane’s face tensed and she said in a low voice, more to herself than to me, “I should have checked in on her again. I should have at least called.”

I took her hand and gave it a squeeze. “You can’t blame yourself.”

“I know,” she said, pulling away from me, making her way into the living room. She walked slowly, hesitantly, like she was a little afraid of what she might find there.

I left my roller bag by the front door and moved down the hall, plowing my way through paper, envelopes, drawings, mail, a rusty bucket, batteries. The old slate floor had large puddles of water on it. The little side table on the left was overturned. Cherished pictures—the sketch of Sparrow Crest by my great-grandfather, a wedding photo of my grandmother and grandfather, a yellow cross-stitch done by my grandmother when she was a little girl that read To err is human, to forgive, divine—were off the wall and on the floor, the glass smashed. I picked up a tangled nest of rope.

My aunt’s phone rang, and she answered it. “Hi. Yup. She’s here. Yeah. Uh-huh. We’re at Sparrow Crest.” She turned from me, listened a minute, laughed.

I took out my own phone and looked at it. I’d had the ringer off. There were two new calls, one voice mail. I listened to the message. It was my client, Declan Shipee. All of my clients had my cell number to use in case of emergency. Declan had never called me before.

“You were wrong, Jackie,” he said, voice small and faraway sounding. “The things in dreams, they can follow you into real life. Call me back, please. It’s important.”

I blew out a breath. I’d have to call Declan later, when I was alone and feeling a little less frazzled.

“Yeah, I know,” my aunt was saying into her phone. “Thanks. Talk later.” She hung up. “Terri wanted to make sure you made it safe and sound.”

“Well, I made it. I’m not so sure about the ‘safe and sound’ part.”

I navigated my way into the living room, past a diving mask and snorkel, a shop lamp attached to a long, heavy-duty extension cord. Every surface was covered with loose-leaf notebook paper full of scribbles and sketches, old photos pulled from albums, photocopied documents covered in notes, half-full cups of tea, plates of fossilized leftovers. Pieces of clothing—a sweater, running shorts, a bathing suit, a terry cloth robe—were scattered and draped. There was a near-empty bottle of Ketel One Vodka on the edge of the coffee table.

“I didn’t think Lexie drank,” I said, picking up the bottle. Lexie didn’t like the way alcohol slowed down her thinking, said it was like putting on a thick, fuzzy bear suit that was hot and uncomfortable and made the world seem muffled. She claimed that marijuana leveled her out, helped slow her racing thoughts so the rest of her could catch up. I noticed a pack of rolling papers on the coffee table, a few spent joints at the bottom of drinking glasses.

Aunt Diane looked at the bottle in my hand now. “I’ve never known Lexie to drink either. She always hated the stuff.”

Sooner or later, I’d get used to Lexie being referred to in the past tense.

“Now this, on the other hand,” Diane said, picking up a baggie half-full of weed, “was totally her thing.”

I watched in total disbelief as my aunt began to expertly roll a joint. “What are you doing?”

“Baking a pie, Jax. What does it look like I’m doing?”

“I didn’t know you smoked.”

“You know me: full of surprises.” She licked the edge of the paper and smoothed it down.

“What on earth is this?” I asked, heading over to the antique sideboard that ran half the length of the room. It was where our grandmother had kept the silverware, the place mats and napkins, and all the fancy serving dishes and bowls we used on holidays. Now there were about thirty glasses and jars resting on top of it. The finished maple was stained with ghostly watermarks. Each glass was resting on a scrap of paper with numbers written on it. 6/1, 6/6, 6/11. I picked up a glass. The water—if it was water—was slightly cloudy but had no odor.

“Heaven knows,” Aunt Diane said, pushing aside a pile of papers so she could sit on the couch with her newly rolled joint tucked between her lips. “I was here two weeks ago. The place was a little messy, but nothing like this.” She reached forward, grabbed a lighter on the table. I set the glass down and picked up a sheet of loose-leaf notebook paper:

F9: 6/11 6 a.m.—7.2 meters

F9: 6/11 1 p.m.—7.2 meters

F9: 6/11 10:20 p.m.—over 50 meters!!!

*** Must get more rope tomorrow

There were other papers—backs of envelopes, Post-it Notes, torn bits from brown paper grocery bags—but most were loose-leaf, lined with three holes for keeping in a binder. Lexie had kept a journal this way for years. A haphazard combination of diary, shopping and to-do lists, and a place to capture random thoughts and ideas. I once bought her a fancy leather-bound notebook, but she never used it, saying she was intimidated by how permanent the pages seemed. “With my journal, I can go back through and remove anything I don’t like later on. Or restructure things,” she’d said. Like she could keep her life in some sort of order by rearranging a journal. Many were covered with similar codes, dates, times, and measurements: J2; A7; D10. It reminded me of Battleship: calling out coordinates, sinking each other’s submarines. Damn you, Jax! You sank my destroyer!

I picked up one of Lexie’s journal entries:

May 13

Deduction.

Reduction.

Redaction.

How much has been redacted from the carefully curated version of our story?

The story of we. The story of us. The story of THIS PLACE! The story of THE SPRINGS!

GRAM KNEW! Gram knew the truth and said nothing.

Another paper held all the details Lexie had been able to find out about Rita’s drowning.

Facts I know about Rita’s death:

Rita was 7 years old.

Mom was 10. Diane was 13.

Gram found Rita FLOATING facedown in the pool that morning. Rita was wearing her nightgown.

Gram, Mom, Diane and Rita and Great-Grandma were all at home. They’d had dinner the night before—beef stew, had watched some TV and gone to bed. No one heard or saw anything. At some point in the night or early morning, Rita must have gotten out of bed and gone down to the pool. Gram’s screams woke Mom and Diane the next morning. They ran down to see what was the matter. There was Gram with Rita in her arms, pulled from the pool, soaking wet.

I found the death certificate.

Cause of death: ACCIDENTAL DROWNING.

Like it was really that simple.

Like that was really what happened.

I let the papers fall back to the floor as I sank down onto the couch beside my aunt. She held out the joint to me, and I shook my head; pot was the last thing I needed. She took another hit, held the breath, then let it out slowly. “Two weeks ago she seemed fine.”

“How do you think it happened?” I asked. “She was the best swimmer I know. How did she drown? I mean, do you think…”

“That it was a suicide? That she drowned herself on purpose?” Diane’s shoulders hunched. “I guess we’ll never know. Maybe she just did too many laps, got tired, got a cramp, thought she was a fish. We’ll never know. We’ll never know what led Lexie out to the pool that night, or what was going through her head in her final days. Trying to figure it out, guessing… it’s a fool’s errand.”

My sister the whirling dervish, I thought as I looked around the trashed room. The cyclone leaving ruin in her wake. She’d go on massive shopping sprees, start a renovation by sledgehammer, or decide she wanted to delve into her Scottish roots by taking up the bagpipe—then she would decide everything was complete shit. She’d call me sobbing, despondent, and suicidal. I’d spent a good part of my life helping Lexie clean up her messes, coaxing her back on her meds.

I glanced at the floor, saw an old photo of Lexie and me as kids. We were standing in front of the pool she had just drowned in. Lexie looked to be about twelve, which would make me nine. We were wearing bright bikinis, arms around each other, squinting into the camera. Behind us, the dark water shimmered obsidian, our reflections watching to see what we might do next.

Closing my eyes, I sank back into the cushions.

The smell of the pot reminded me of Lexie and, with my eyes closed, I could let myself imagine, for a half a second, that it was her beside me, not Diane.

I could almost hear her: Hey, Jax. Long time no see.

Something brushed against my left calf, a tentative touch at first, then firmer, more sure.

My eyes flew open, and I screamed.

Diane jumped, dropped the joint.

“What the hell was that?” I asked as a small black blur raced across the living room floor.

“Pig,” Diane said. She sounded relieved.

“What? That was so not a pig,” I said. But it occurred to me that at this point, I wouldn’t be too shocked if Lexie did have a pig living in the house.

“It’s Lexie’s cat,” Diane explained.

“Lexie had a cat? Since when?”

“A couple of months now. He was a stray who just kept coming around, and she kept feeding him. They kind of adopted each other, I guess.”

I shook my head in disbelief. A cat. Lexie had a cat.

“She called him Pig,” Diane said.

I stood up, looking for the cat. He had hidden underneath the antique sideboard in the dining room.

“Who names a cat Pig?” I asked, getting down on my knees, peering at the little black cat. His golden eyes glared back at me. I’d clearly scared him as much as he’d scared me—he was up against the wall, flat on his belly, ears back. “Come on out, big guy,” I coaxed.

He hissed.

We were off to a great start.

“We’ll have to catch him and get him to the shelter,” Diane said.

“Can’t you keep him?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I’m allergic.”

“Well, don’t you know anyone who might want him?”

She frowned. “I can ask around. You know lesbians and cats—it’s one of those stereotypes that I’ve actually found to be true.”

“Let’s try to find a good home for him rather than drop him off at the shelter. In the meantime, I’ll take care of him.” I’d never had a cat, or any pet at all for that matter, but how hard could it be?

---

Why didn’t you pick up the phone, Jax? my sister whispered in my ear.

Then she had her hand around my wrist and was pulling me down, down under the brackish water of the pool. It was dark and deathly cold as I struggled against her. But Lexie was stronger. Lexie was winning. Water filled my nose, my mouth, my lungs, and Declan’s nightmare fish creatures were there: black with sharp teeth in open mouths, long tentacles reaching out, wrapping around me, helping my sister pull me down.

I sat up, gasping for breath.

A dream. A guilt-fed, grief-driven dream.

Forcing myself to take deep breaths, I saw that I was in my summer childhood twin brass bed where I’d fallen asleep exhausted hours before, intending to rest a few minutes, then get started on picking up the mess.

I rubbed at my wrist, sure I could still feel the tight grip of Lexie’s fingers wrapped around it like a manacle.

“You can’t stay here,” Aunt Diane had said, spreading her arms, gesturing to the chaos, her bracelets jingling. “It’s not fit for human habitation. Come to my place. I insist.”

“I want to stay here. This place was a second home to me growing up.” I swallowed my next thought: that I’d always thought it would be my home one day. Until my sister got it all. And now she was gone. “I can start cleaning. I need to be here,” I’d assured Diane. “It was Lexie’s home. If I’m miserable, I can switch to your place tomorrow. Besides, I won’t be alone. I’ve got Pig. We can look after each other.” I’d finally lured the cat out by leaving an open can of tuna on the floor. He gulped it down, eyeing me suspiciously between bites.

“There’s no way I’m leaving you here on your own,” Diane said, looking almost panicked.

“Please,” I said. “It’ll help me start to process everything. It’s what I need to do.”

Diane had relented at last, insisting that I call her if I changed my mind. “Or just get in Lexie’s car and drive over, anytime, even if it’s the middle of the night.”

Now here I was, deeply regretting my decision. The moonlight cast a dim blue glow over the room—the small pine dresser with a mirror above it, the shelves once lined with Nancy Drew books and the treasures Lexie and I found in the woods behind Sparrow Crest: a cut-glass doorknob, a silver fork, broken china, pieces of blue ceramic tile with a flower pattern, a porcelain faucet handle with COLD printed on it. We knew that years ago, before Gram was even born, an old hotel had stood in the very spot where Sparrow Crest now was: the Brandenburg Springs Hotel and Resort. People came from all over by train and car to stay in our little valley, to take in the healing powers of the water at the springs. I found it weird to think about—that something else had existed on the same land before Sparrow Crest, before our family. Gram didn’t like to talk about it, and whenever we asked her about the hotel, she’d shake her head and say, “That’s ancient history.” I remembered showing Gram our treasures, excitedly telling her that they were from the hotel.

“You shouldn’t play back there,” Gram warned. “You don’t want to cut yourself on old metal and end up with lockjaw.”

The bookshelves were empty now. I sat up, listening. The house seemed to be holding its breath. Lexie’s was the room next to mine, our beds pressed against the same wall. We’d go to sleep tapping out goodnight codes, knocking again in the morning to say we were up. Lexie wanted to build a trapdoor in the wall. “Like what priests have for confessing. A secret door for whispering the things we’d never tell anyone else. Not even each other in the light of day.”

I tapped lightly on the wall and listened.

Nothing. No one.

What had I expected?

---

Falling asleep again felt impossible. It was odd—being all alone in that big house. I missed my mother fiercely and wished she were still here. She’d been the rock in my life, the picture of clear thinking and sanity. I missed Gram and the way she’d always called us Jacqueline and Alexia; the afternoons we’d spent with her working in the rose garden while she told us the name of each variety: Snow Queen, Old Blush, Apothecary, Queen of Denmark.

And my sister. I missed my sister most of all.

I lay in the dark, listening to the house tick and hum around me. A sink dripped; the sound amplified as it traveled the still house. Outside, something made a high-pitched screech, then banged—once, twice, three times. My heart jackhammered. The sound broke out again. An eerie screech, then a bang. Moving as if underwater, I forced myself out of bed to investigate.

I flipped the light switch. No light. I slowly made my way out of the room, shuffling along with bare feet, my body knowing the way by heart. I felt for the hall switch and flipped it. Again, nothing. I stood at the top of the stairs, holding still in the dark, listening, willing my eyes to adjust. Was the power out? Had Lexie forgotten to pay the bill?

There it was again: squeal, thump; squeal, thump; squeal, thump.

Maybe it’s a banshee, Lexie whispered, trying to scare me. Always insisting ghosts were real.

No, not actual Lexie, the memory of her.

Being back at Sparrow Crest was blurring the lines, bringing the past to life.

What’s the difference, I wondered, between a ghost and a memory?

I reached for the banister, made my way carefully down the curved wooden steps. At the bottom of the stairs, my feet got wet. The puddles I’d noticed when we first entered the slate-floored hall hours ago. But… was there more water here now?

A smell, a terrible, damp, rotting smell filled the hall.

I fought the urge to run back up the stairs, crawl into bed, and pull the covers over my head just as I’d done as a child.

Don’t you hear that? That squish, squish, squish of footsteps? She’s coming for you. Coming for us both.

But I wasn’t a little girl anymore. I was a grown woman. A social worker, for Christ’s sake. I took in a breath, steadied myself.

My eyes adjusted enough to see the cat standing in the hall, back arched and fur raised.

“Hey, Pig,” I said, the sound of my own voice calming me.

The cat looked past me, golden eyes focused on the front door. He let out a hiss.

I kicked at the papers, clothes, the overturned table. Tried the front hall lights, but they were out, too. “Shit.” I stumbled in the dark.

I made my way to the front door, shuffling through the debris to keep from tripping, and looked out the tiny square window: the driveway was empty except for Lexie’s yellow Mustang, which seemed to glow, casting its own pool of light. The yard around it was dark. The only movement was off to the right. The door in the white wooden fence that surrounded the pool was open, swinging in the breeze, the hinge squeaking as it banged against the fence. I let go of the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. It was only the gate.

“Nothing out there,” I said to the cat in my most comforting voice. “It’s just the gate.”

He hissed once more, then turned and ran, unconvinced.

“Wuss,” I called after him.

I let myself out the front door, walked the paved steps to the gate and closed it, sliding the metal latch into the place, keeping my eyes averted from the pool. I was not ready to acknowledge the pool. But I felt it there, waiting for me, taunting me in the dark.

“Not tonight,” I said, and went back in the house, closed and locked the heavy front door, and clicked the dead bolt into place.