Oak Avenue (Dark Corners collection) Read online

  “What’s not conservative about a sundress?” This one’s a basic A-line; there’s nothing sexy about it.

  “He wants to get into your pants.”

  “No.”

  “Yeah.” His words are like a twisting knife in my heart. This isn’t like my husband. He’s not the jealous sort. He unfastens his cuff links and begins to roll up his sleeves.

  “He knows I’m your wife. Why would he—”

  “Trust me. He’s always trying to get into someone’s.”

  “Oh.” The headache I’ve had since I spoke with Sophie Malcolm stabs at me between the eyes. I’ve been having a pretty hard time. No one seems to want to accept an outsider like me, and maybe I didn’t notice the guy’s ulterior motives.

  “I’m just saying.” Ed brushes past me, again ignoring our daughter’s outstretched arms, and begins up the stairs. “It’s not your fault. This place isn’t like the city, Ana. You’re not anonymous here. People are going to jump to conclusions. People are going to talk.”

  I follow him as he climbs. “What are they talking about? I had a two-minute conversation with the guy.”

  “Wow.” My husband pauses at the top of the stairs. “This is different.”

  “I just couldn’t handle that awful shag carpeting anymore.”

  “It looks . . .” His brow knits as he studies the upstairs hallway. He tilts his head, as if looking at it from another point of view.

  “Better, right?”

  He shrugs. “Unfinished.”

  “Of course. But better than the shag?”

  “I guess.”

  “You don’t like it.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “It was embedded with grime and cat piss and cigarette smoke, and our child plays on it. I had to get rid of it.”

  “In that case, I’m glad you did.”

  I follow him down the hall to our bedroom, where I’ve made more progress.

  “You put the bed together!”

  “I did.”

  “And the portable crib.” He gives me a wink. “When are we planning to let her sleep in the nursery?”

  “There’s a pitch in the floor that has to be fixed. The crib keeps rolling into the closet. Maybe we can nail some wood blocks to the floor to keep it in place in the meantime or something.”

  “Ah, the joys of owning an old house.” He leans in to me and pecks a kiss on my lips.

  The scent of Scotch lingers on his breath. “You stopped for a drink?”

  “Just a quick one. And actually, I was thinking, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to go back out.”

  “But we haven’t seen each other all week.”

  “I haven’t seen my high school friends in years.” He sits on the bed and pulls his shoes from his feet, trading his oxfords for a pair of tennis shoes. “It feels good to be home, you know? I won’t be out late. I promise.”

  “Okay.” I try not to sound disappointed, but after only having conversations with a baby all week long, and then treating myself to Ms. Malcolm’s near verbal abuse, there’s no hiding that I am.

  “If it weren’t such late notice, I’d ask my parents to come watch the baby, and you could come out with me.”

  “Next time,” I say.

  “And I won’t be out late,” he promises again.

  I wholeheartedly believe him. He rarely goes out, and he rarely has more than two cocktails when he does.

  He reaches for Sabrina, who happily spills into his arms and plants a sloppy kiss on his face. “Mommy looks tired anyway, doesn’t she, Brina?”

  I wish people would stop saying that.

  “It’s been a long week,” I say, by way of explaining the dark rings under my eyes, to say nothing of Ed’s decision to go out practically reducing me to tears. “Rough.”

  “Tell me about it. I wish I could sleep in. Just once.”

  I should let it go. I should let it roll off my shoulders, but I can’t ignore the implication that I’ve got it so easy. “You know I don’t sleep in, right? If I sleep until eight, it’s because the baby’s had me up several times in the middle of the night.”

  “Whoa. I didn’t say anything—”

  “Yes, you did. Even if I wake up at eight, I’ve probably gotten a fraction of the sleep you get, so I don’t want to hear it.”

  “That’s precisely why she should sleep in the nursery.” Edison rises from our mattress and places Sabrina into my arms. “I’ll be back by ten.”

  “Ed, come on. Don’t leave angry.”

  “Maybe you should take a nap.” He shrugs out of his button-down and pulls on a T-shirt. “Sleep when the baby sleeps. Don’t spend the evening yanking up old carpeting, especially when it’s going to leave the place looking half-finished.”

  “You don’t get it. You don’t have to live here.”

  “Oh, I don’t live here now?”

  “You live in Times Square. We both know that.”

  “Well, I’m here now.”

  “You’ve been here for two minutes! And you’re already leaving!”

  Without another word, my husband storms through the hallway and down the stairs.

  “Edison!”

  He ignores me and walks out the door.

  But I know it’ll all be better when he gets home, when he’s unwound a bit from a long week building databases in New York, and when I’ve had a moment to rest.

  I go through the motions the rest of the night: bathe the baby, read to her, build a village with blocks for the thirtieth time today. Finally, I find an On Demand movie to occupy her while I unpack another box.

  Ten o’clock comes and goes without a sign of Edison, and when I see Sabrina about to nod off, it’s time to stop waiting for him.

  As I pass the attic door, I pause. A creepy sensation dances up my spine. I can’t endure another night like last night, but I’m too tired to be afraid right now.

  And according to Sophie Malcolm, who has it on good authority, this house isn’t haunted anyway. What does good authority mean? How would anyone know what’s happening in my house unless she’s spent ample time here? If she weren’t an abrasive old biddy, I might have pressed her for further explanation. Maybe, once she has time to get to know me, or at least when she gets used to the fact that one of Parker’s Landing’s children married outside the town limits, she’ll offer more about her good authority.

  But I wonder . . . why the vehement insistence that the place isn’t haunted? Why did Ms. Malcolm immediately go there, unless there’s history of it?

  A few hours later, I awaken with a start when a gust of wind rushes into the room. Instantly, I know the attic door is open again.

  “Ed.”

  I roll over to wake him, but he’s not yet home.

  It’s nearly three in the morning, and—I check my phone—he hasn’t called or texted.

  Across the room, in the portable crib, Sabrina giggles in her sleep.

  I dial Ed’s number, but I’m kicked straight to voice mail. His phone battery must have died.

  The eerie whistling, the same I heard last night, echoes in the hallway.

  “I can do this.” My limbs tremble as I stand and approach the hallway.

  As expected, the attic door is wide open.

  “Just go. Close the door,” I tell myself.

  I begin my approach to the attic stairwell slowly, but the nearer I get, the more quickly I step. I reach for the door, but a second before I close it, a whisper: “Ana.”

  I jump, but this time, there’s a logical explanation for what I heard. Edison is sitting on the floor of the hallway, near the stairs leading down to the kitchen. I coerce the attic door closed. “What are you doing here?”

  “Lamenting.” His head hangs low, but he turns his eyes up at me.

  “Me too. I’m sorry about earlier. Come to bed.”

  When he smiles, it’s like no smile I’ve ever seen from him before—sinister and dripping with a leering satisfaction. “With you?”

  “Yes.
”

  “You expect me to come to bed with you?”

  “Yes.”

  He stumbles as he stands.

  When he smiles, it’s like no smile I’ve ever seen from him before.

  I reach to help steady him, but instead of taking my hand, he shoves me out of the way. My shoulder slams into the attic door, and I slip.

  Before I regain my footing, he pushes me again, and I’m helpless to catch myself before I tumble to the floor.

  He’s on his feet now, towering over me, and laughing.

  “Ed!”

  “Poor baby.” His laughter booms in the hallway.

  I scramble toward our bedroom, trip, and make my way on all fours, because I can’t stop shaking, can’t manage to stand without slipping back to the parquet. Tears blur my vision, but a glance over my shoulder proves he’s stayed put, pointing, laughing.

  “Poor, poor baby with no friends.”

  I look over my shoulder.

  The attic door pops from its frame and slowly opens.

  The wind filters down the hallway.

  “No friends.” Edison doubles over laughing. “No friends!”

  I cross the threshold and slam the bedroom door behind me. I turn the lock on the knob and, sobbing, take the baby from the crib. I hold her close and watch her sleep.

  Nothing will happen to her. Not on my watch.

  5

  THE DENIAL

  “I’m telling you, it didn’t happen.” Ed, not at all hungover, not at all repentant about his behavior last night, walks past in a towel, dripping with shower water and completely oblivious to the terror he inflicted on me. “I stayed later than I thought I would, but I had only one drink. I wasn’t, in any way, drunk.”

  “You pushed me.” I turn to once again show him the bruises on my back and shoulder. “You bruised me, and laughed at it all, to boot.”

  “Anastasia.” He steps into a pair of boxers and reaches for me.

  I pull away. “Don’t touch me!”

  “Look, you’re exhausted. How much have you slept the past few days? A few hours, maybe? I shouldn’t have gone out last night. The stress of the move, the house being less than we thought it would be . . . it’s too much for you.”

  I hate how he says it: as if anyone else could handle it with one hand tied behind her back, but I’m incapable, too delicate and fragile. “You. Pushed. Me.”

  “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “I know you normally wouldn’t do that, but you weren’t yourself last night.”

  He chuckles. “I was fine last night.”

  “Fine? Then how do you explain this?” I indicate the marring on my back.

  “I don’t know . . . maybe you were half-asleep and slipped and fell on the hallway floor.”

  “Again with the hallway carpeting! It was disgusting! It had to come out!”

  “Ana. Relax. I wasn’t talking about the carpeting.”

  My shoulders shake with my sobbing. I draw my knees to my chest and bury my head there. “It wasn’t a bad dream, and I didn’t just fall. Did I?”

  “I don’t know, but I know I wouldn’t hurt you. I came home around midnight. I looked in on you and the baby. I put a movie on downstairs, had a snack, and fell asleep on the sofa. Around five, I woke up and went upstairs, but the bedroom door was locked.”

  “I had to lock the door. You were out of your mind. Sitting there in the hallway, laughing at me, with that damn attic door opening on its own.”

  “The door . . .”

  “Yes, it opens on its own.”

  “It’s an old house. Things like that are going to happen.”

  “And if you’re telling me you weren’t drunk, then you don’t even have an excuse for acting that way.”

  “I think it’s pretty clear what’s happening. You’re stressed out. You’ve got a lot on your plate, and given the state of this place . . . When you’re used to making places beautiful, and you have to live in this monument to an era lauding bell-bottoms and tab collars, it’s no wonder you can’t relax. You’re working nonstop to make this place decent, aren’t you? For all we know, you’re bruised from bumping into things while hauling all that carpeting outside on your own.”

  His hand lands on my back. This time, I allow him to touch me.

  “I hate it here, Ed. I hate it. I hate that your parents still don’t like me after all these years, even after I had their first grandchild. I hate this town, I hate this house, and I hate that awful woman at the historical society who treats me like trash because I wasn’t born here!”

  “First, my parents will come around. They hardly know you. Second, Sophie Malcolm?” He starts to chuckle but cuts it off the moment I shoot a glare in his direction.

  “She won’t tell me anything about this house, and she was annoyed that I’d even walked through the door.”

  Edison sighs. “Honey . . . did you offer to buy her book? She wrote a book about this town and its settlers and its first houses and businesses. If you went in there asking for free information . . .” He shrugs. “Maybe that’s why she was frosty.”

  “How was I supposed to know she wrote a book? I would’ve bought the damn thing!”

  “Tell me more about the door you found.”

  I sniffle. “Bill’s crew brought it to the back patio so I could clean and strip it.”

  “And you like it? You want to incorporate it into the renovation?”

  “I think it belongs at the end of the hallway.” Finally, I look at him. A flash of the evil grin he sported last night revisits me, but only for a split second before it fades back into my memory. “Leading to the attic.”

  “Let’s go have a look at it, okay? I’ll call my parents. They’ll come get the baby, and then you and I will spend the day together. Want to clean up that door together? Maybe grab some lunch? A glass of wine in the afternoon?” He drops a kiss on my lips, then another, deeper this time.

  His hand is on my hip, so warm, so familiar, and he’s leaning over me, pressing his nearly naked body to mine, lowering me to my back.

  This is my husband. I don’t know who I encountered in the hallway last night. I can’t reconcile one man with the other.

  Either Edison is succumbing to whatever resides beyond that door at the end of the hallway, or I really did dream it all.

  I weave my fingers into his hair and hook a leg around his waist.

  Either way, it’ll all be better now.

  6

  CRACKERS

  We didn’t mention the episode again the rest of that weekend. Not when we stripped the door of its dirt and grime, not when we scraped a century’s worth of paint from its crevices and treated it to a turpentine scrub, and not when we carried it into our new home.

  The whole scene must have been a dream. A very intense, vivid dream.

  But the house feels happier this week, now that the door is propped against the wall in the front parlor, a drop cloth spread beneath it. The oppressive weight I’ve been feeling is gone now . . . or perhaps I really did just need to get a good night’s sleep.

  Ed will be home tomorrow. The week has passed without major incident. The attic door still opens, of course. But as everyone keeps telling me, I should expect things like that to happen in a house so old.

  With Sabrina on my hip, as always, I place a bag of groceries on the kitchen countertop, then carry her to the front room, where both the door and her toys are currently housed.

  I stand back, and from a distance, I study what has to be the architectural find of the century. The graining of the fir, raw and breathing for the first time in decades, is open and ready for stain.

  “Pretty door, isn’t it, pumpkin?”

  “Pretty,” Sabrina parrots.

  I set her down on the floor; she hugs me tight, her chubby cheek pressed to my leg, and looks up at me with her angelic blue eyes.

  “Zozozozo.”

  “What is zozo?” I ask.

  “Zo.” She grins.

  “Show Mommy
.”

  She walks over to the door and pats it with her palm. “Zo. Zozozozo.”

  “Is that right?” I crouch next to her. “Are you trying to say door? Brina, look at Mama.” I overenunciate: “Door.”

  “Zo.”

  Such a happy child. Even through last weekend’s turmoil, she remained content.

  “When Daddy comes home tomorrow, we’re going to refinish it and hang it upstairs.”

  She drops onto her diapered bottom, then rights herself on her feet again and toddles toward her bin of blocks.

  I spill the blocks onto the floor and touch the iTunes icon on my phone. “I’ll put away the snacks, and then I’ll be right back to play. Okay?”

  She nods, already engrossed with her toys.

  “Okay!” I pat her on the head and return to the kitchen.

  I feel an inexplicable cold the moment I pass through the hallway, an uncomfortable icicle stabbing at my spine. It’s as if the temperature dropped twenty degrees once I crossed the threshold. And once I round the corner, I turn numb.

  I can’t garner voice enough to scream.

  There’s a fine white powder coating the countertops.

  “What in God’s name . . .”

  Is it snow?

  The substance is room temperature and grainy, like sand.

  I look up at the ceiling to see if the tiles have begun to disintegrate. But of course they haven’t.

  At closer inspection, I see it’s crushed crackers. The box I just purchased is out of the bag and overturned. The cellophane sleeves that contain the columns of crackers are shredded, and the crackers themselves are pounded to dust.

  The music from my phone stops.

  The baby lets out a wail.

  Instantly, I dart back toward the front room.

  She’s not where I left her. “Sabrina!”

  My gaze trips over the unearthed door, which is now flat on the floor, as if it tipped forward over her pile of blocks. Oh, God. It could have landed on her!

  Her next shriek comes from the opposite corner of the room, and finally, I see her huddled there: tears streaming down her red cheeks, one white-knuckled fist tightened around a block.

  I scoop her up, and we take off.