Starter House A Novel (23 page)

“Let’s finish the game.”

“Let me . . .” No, not that voice—she sounded like a frantic child. She opened the back of her throat and let the teacher voice rise out, alto and firm. “Let me get these eggs cleaned up.”

“I was winning. I want to finish.”

On her first day of practice teaching, her mentor had warned that children, like feral dogs, could sense fear and would eat her alive if they had the chance. She stopped herself from agreeing with Drew, anything he wanted if he promised not to hurt her and the baby, and she held the teacher voice, the voice that ruled the room. “You see those eggs on the floor,” she said.

“So?”

“So dried egg is way harder to clean than wet egg. It won’t take a minute.”

“So?”

“So I’m going to clean them up, and then we’ll play.” It was important to appear normal, to keep Drew in the mode of ordinary child, not angry ghost, until she worked out what to do next. She tried a smile and hoped it worked; the muscles above her lip didn’t seem to be moving right.

“You’re just scared of losing,” Drew said. “Scaredy scaredy scaredy.”

“Sweetie, it’s Chutes and Ladders, not the Super Bowl. I’ll get over it.” Lacey scooped up the eggs in a paper towel, sprayed cleaner on the floor, and scrubbed with another paper towel. Bibbits patted in, busy little feet rapping on the floor. He stood on his hind legs and turned a circle for her, then stood up, with his front paws paddling in the air. Ella Dane had gone out without feeding him. And he was on another brown-rice-and-vinegar purge, poor thing.

“Let’s see.” Lacey opened the pantry. To appear normal—feeding the dog, that was a thing she’d normally do. “There’s tuna, maybe.” Bibbits dropped to the floor and stood with his head down, panting. That short dance had exhausted him; there’d been days when he skipped from room to room on his back feet, poor old boy. She wished she had something better than tuna to give him.

“Play with me,” Drew chanted at the kitchen table, “play with me, play with me.”

“I’m just going to feed the dog.”

He stuck out his lower lip. “You said you’d just clean up the eggs.”

“And now I’m just going to feed the dog. It won’t take a minute.”

“You said you’d play with me. You promised.” Bibbits, seeing the can in Lacey’s hand, was dancing again. “Stupid dog.” Drew kicked out at Bibbits, and the dog’s feet slid away from him. He fell heavily on his side, with a yelp.

“Drew!” Lacey picked Bibbits up and felt along his sides. He wriggled in her arms, trying to lick her hands. “Drew, sweetie, we don’t hurt animals.”

“You promised.”

She popped the can of tuna and dumped it into a plate, stealing a chunk for herself and spreading the rest around with her finger for Bibbits. Her imitation of normalcy began to seem real. She was any woman on Forrester Lane, a woman with house, husband, child, and dog; she was feeding the dog, then she would play with the child. Bibbits had trouble with tuna, unless she broke apart the big pieces for him. He’d swallow it in chunks, only to regurgitate later, in her bed. “Almost done,” she said cheerfully.

“And then there’ll be something else that won’t take a minute. Like your stupid husband might call, or your stupid baby might kick, or your stupid dog might need to go out, and then something else and something else, and you
promised
.”

“Drew!” She put the plate down on the table, ignoring the now frantic dog, and wiped her hand on her thigh. “Look, it only took a—”

The telephone rang. Lacey made a motion toward it, but stopped herself. She couldn’t turn her back on him. He might do anything. He might rush into her, as he had done before; take her baby by the throat and choke it inside her. “What do you want?”

“Go on, answer the phone,” Drew said bitterly. “It’s somebody who matters. You don’t care about me, nobody does. And I didn’t even cheat.” He swept his arm across the table, and the game pieces scattered. Lacey flexed her hand. Had he done that through her, as he had played the game? She’d felt nothing. “Answer it!”

The phone rang again. Lacey let the answering machine take it, although she heard Eric’s voice. “I’m listening to you,” she said. “I’m listening right now.”

“Nobody
ever
listens.”

“I care about you.”

“Nobody cares.”

Lacey knelt in front of him, took his shoulders in both her hands, and looked into his face. What did he want, more than anything, what was all the noise about? He was the same as any other child. She knew about noisy boys because she had been a quiet girl; when she was little, she’d longed to do what they did, to demand along with them,
Look at me, listen to me, love me.
To be a person no one could ignore. She said, slowly and clearly, “I am paying attention to you, Drew.”

He wrenched himself away. “Nobody listens, nobody cares, nobody loves me!” He grabbed the plate of tuna off the table and whirled out of the kitchen. Lacey and Bibbits followed him.

Drew ran up the stairs. He did not float or swoop or drift; his feet pounded hard and solid on every step. Bibbits raced after him, yipping with hunger and excitement, an old dog, not used to such games. “I accuse you,” Drew shouted, from the darkness that gathered at the top of the stairs. Lacey held on to the curved edge of the banister and could not speak. “I accuse you,” he said again, his voice now deeper and older. “You are guilty, all of you guilty, all, all, all.” And Bibbits’s desperate bark mingled with Drew’s voice.

The front door opened and Ella Dane came in. “I meant to ask if you wanted . . .” she began. She stopped short, staring toward the noise. “Is that
Bibbits
? That noise?” She pulled the brown glass vial from her pocket. “Bibbits, honey, come get your meddies.” She headed for the stairs, and Lacey clutched her arm and pulled her back.

Drew was a dark form among the shadows, starred with a single white gleam, maybe his bright hair, maybe his eyes, maybe something else—light on metal, Lacey couldn’t tell—and he was taller, wider, larger. Or it was only the tumbling shadows that made him seem so big. “All of you,” he shouted. Lacey had an impression of sound, terrible loud sounds that her mind could not name or remember.

Something pale flew toward her out of the noise and the dark. The plate smashed at her feet, and the lumps of tuna scattered. Oh, the mess, the smell; Eric would be so unhappy—she tried to gather up the pieces, maybe the plate could be fixed, here was a big piece, maybe as much as a third of the plate, the round edge fitting in her hand and the long dagger of ceramic, which she had to be careful of—something fluttered around her, beat into her, darkness and hands and voices, and she struck out at it with the piece of broken plate. It was Drew. He wanted to take the big pieces and break them into little pieces, so that plate could never be fixed and Eric would be miserable and furious, and it was all her fault.

“Get away, get away from me,” she screamed.

Something caught her hands and wrists, something pulled the broken piece away from her.

Bibbits barked and barked. Strong arms held Lacey tight, crossing her arms across her body and holding both her wrists. “Hush, hush, baby, it’s okay,” somebody said.

“Drew?” she whispered into the black curtain that blew around her.

“Your fault!”

The black curtain blew over her. She threw off the binding hands. She was standing below the circle step at the foot of the stairs, and the banister should be at her right hand, but she couldn’t find it. She stood in a black circle, struggling for balance—the baby would die if she fell, he would fall into the spinning shadow beneath her, he would fall forever—with Drew blazing gold and silver in front of her. Sunlight on his yellow hair, his white T-shirt and shorts, his yellow sneakers.

“Your fault,” he said in his deep adult voice.

“Stop this,” said the other voice. “Make him stop.
Now
.”

“Stop!” Lacey slapped Drew. “Stop it now!”

Drew’s left hand flew to his cheek and he stared at Lacey. “You hit me.”

She stumbled backward, as shocked as he was. She had never hit a child, not even the one who tried to strangle his bully. “I’m sorry, Drew, I’m sorry.”

“You did it on purpose.”

“No, no.”

Tears kaleidoscoped her sight. The colors splintered, the child’s yellow hair and white shirt, the golden floor and the red runner. There was blood on the floor, and the other voice was Ella Dane, saying again, “It’s okay, baby, you made him stop.”

Bibbits had barked himself into a panting stillness. Blood ran down Ella Dane’s left arm, and Lacey’s hands were sticky. “Mom,” she whispered. “What happened? What did I do?”

“Can you bandage this for me?” Ella Dane was using her emergency voice, calm and competent and ready for anything. Something terrible must have happened.

“You need stitches.” Lacey remembered the broken plate. She’d picked up the broken plate, that big piece. And then what? Something had attacked her, and she’d fought it off with the weapon in her hand. “Did
I
do that?”

Ella Dane squeezed her arm above the cut. “There’s a first aid kit under the kitchen sink. We have to get out of here, Lacey; there’s no time. Bandages. And can you grab my laptop, and Bibbits’s blanket from the living room. Before he comes back.”

“He’s still here,” Lacey said.

Ella Dane picked Bibbits up and the dog pressed against her, shivering, too exhausted even to cough. “Are you sure?”

She felt it, all the air in the house pressing in against her breastbone, and the baby kicking in protest. Lacey closed her hands. He had used her to attack Ella Dane, stepped inside her as easily as entering an unlocked room. Never again. She was a teacher, and it was time he learned what that meant. It all began with control. You had to rule the room, first thing on the first day. Lacey had never had trouble ruling the room. It was all in the look. The teacher’s eye.

She’d let him get away with it. She’d let him think it was his house. “You go out and wait for me,” she said, and Ella Dane obeyed as unthinkingly as any well-trained nine-year-old, out the door before the echo faded.

Lacey faced the stairs. “That will be enough,” she said, in the mild but deadly pay-attention voice. Screaming never helped. The children who most needed discipline had been ignoring screams their whole lives. “Go to your room.”

All the upstairs doors opened and slammed together. The feeling of presence lifted, as if a too-tight mask had fallen from Lacey’s face. Something shook in her throat, a whimper fluttering to escape, and she held it down. Teachers did not whimper. Rule the room. She let her gaze sweep left into the living room, up the stairs, to the right of the stairs toward the dining room and kitchen, deliberately moving her head and not just her eyes. Nothing moved.

“Stay here,” she said, and she left the house.

Chapter Twenty-seven

ELLA DANE HAD PUT BIBBITS
in her car. She took her laptop from Lacey and said, “You drive first, I’ll follow you.”

“I have to call Eric.”

“First we leave. Call him when we get there.”

“Where?”

“Columbia, my friend Jack—he’ll know what to do.”

Lacey shook her head. Drew had forced her from the house; there was no way Eric would leave Greeneburg, so she had to stay. “Somewhere closer,” she said.

“It’s not your fault,” Ella Dane said.

Whose fault was it, then? Lacey had made cookies with Drew and taught him to draw. She had welcomed him without resistance into her loneliness; she had opened the door. She licked her lips, tasting salt. “Beth Craddock.”

“Who’s that?”

“She used to live here. She drowned her little boy. She said she couldn’t have done it, someone came into the house while she was asleep.”

No living baby since 1972.
A green landscape kept rising in Lacey’s inner vision, bright fields of sugar, populated by tiny dinosaurs. Tyler Craddock’s birthday cake.
Focus.
“Those hotels out by the airport,” she said. “They’re all less than ten years old. Let’s go there.” Maybe Drew couldn’t go to a new place, somewhere he’d never been in life, a building raised after his death. That made sense; she clung to it.

Ella Dane must have had the same thought. “How long has he been in the house, this spirit of yours?”

“Forty years.”

“What happened forty years ago?” Ella Dane asked as Lacey got into her car.

“I don’t know yet.” She’d found 571 Forrester on her Internet searches: she’d found maps, the property taxes they paid, their school zone, a list of nearby homes for sale, even some beautiful pictures before and after renovation on Grey and Associates’ website, but nothing about its history. No help there. How wide was Drew’s reach? They had to get away from Forrester Hills before he caught them—she saw it again, his hands on the steering wheel, his foot on the gas pedal, accelerating her into a house, a tree, another car. In a crash, the airbag might kill the baby. She shifted the seat belt: lap belt low on the hips, under the belly; shoulder belt around the belly, under the breasts. She slid the front seat as far back as possible, getting every possible inch between airbag and baby. “Let’s go to that new hotel by the airport. Skyview.”