The Girl in the Window (3 page)

She disappeared inside the house like a ghost.

Slowly, tentatively, the horse approached the sheaf of neatly tied grain, a stem of wheat binding it in a bundle.

He lipped at it and then took it.

It was the first time he had.

Josh looked at the other house in time to see the girl move away from the window. He hoped she’d seen it.

Stepping away from the window, Beth let the smile stay even as she wrapped her hands around her elbows and looked around at the bare walls of what had once been her childhood bedroom. It was stripped now of the faded flowered wallpaper she remembered – and hated – so well, and of the narrow twin bed.

These walls had never seen pictures or posters of childhood icons or teenage heartthrob. The faint pattern of the wallpaper had been blank and bare, with no paler squares.

It smelled musty, that room, but then it always had.

She was changing that.

As a girl, she could remember staring out this window to the property next door with its red-painted barn, the paddock and the green fields beyond.

The crops in the fields had changed every year. Some years they’d planted corn, sometimes winter wheat, and sometimes soybeans.

She didn’t sleep in this room now. Not since she’d returned.

In memory, she heard a thin wail.

She pretended not to hear it.

This house was a haunted place, filled with old ghosts and sounds she heard only in her mind, voices she’d heard long ago.

It had never been home. Not the way she knew home now.

An echo of memory returned. She flinched, shied away from recollection, and then resolutely walked out.

The faded rose-patterned carpet runner she remembered was gone from the hall, too. She’d thrown it out. Like so much else.

Sunlight filled the kitchen, though, the light and the smell of fresh paint still being applied.

With something like fondness, she noted the curves of the ancient refrigerator, so old its corners were still rounded. It was white once more.

She could hear her father’s voice in her head, growling. “It still works,” he’d said when someone had mentioned its age.

It did.

She’d patiently scoured ages of dirt from its white surface, inside and out, cleaned the coils in the back of cobwebs and removed a mouse nest or two. As she’d scrubbed the faux marble-patterned Formica counters and the white-painted cabinets, rinsed the green-tinted glass inset in those cabinets. She’d thrown out the old greasy and grimy throw rugs so she could sweep the floor. Then she’d scoured that floor until the pattern in the old linoleum tiles had become visible once more.

All the windows were open.
Every one.

She could hear a distant neighbor’s dog bark and the sound of voices calling to one another from next door. Those sounds were reassuring. At least she wasn’t completely alone.

She looked around the room, stripped bare to the walls and picked up her paintbrush once more.

With the sound of the wind, the distant sound of lawnmowers, farm equipment, and men shouting good-natured insults at each other as accompaniment, she stroked paint onto the walls.

The color was a pale yellow, warm.

In winter, it would look as if the room were filled with sunlight even when it wasn’t.

She was banishing the darkness that had filled the house for so long, stroke by patient stroke.

It had been a shock when the lawyers had come to tell her that this house was now hers after so many years of trying to forget it even existed. They’d handed her the keys almost gratefully, relieved of the responsibility.

The day she’d unlocked the door as she’d not ever had to do in all the years she’d lived here had been a strange experience.

Opening the door had been a revelation. She’d never thought to see this house again.

She’d stepped into the front hall cautiously, as if something might jump out at her. Nothing had.

Once a thunderous presence might have filled the rooms. Or a smaller sharper one.

Standing there, she’d felt nothing. No sense of welcome or rejection.

For long moments, she’d stared down the hallway in front of her that led back to the kitchen at the back of the house. The door to the ‘fine parlor’ as her mother had called it was on her right – a room she’d never been allowed to enter unaccompanied – with the dining room on her left. Before her to her left, too, had been the narrow stair that led up to the bedrooms and guest room – where she now slept – upstairs.

Her own room had been here on the lower floor.

The old coat tree – a huge piece of furniture with tarnished brass hooks, marble knobs and a deep bench seat that lifted so you could store your boots and shoes in it – had stood to the side on her right.

For as long as she could remember, the mirror in it had been so foggy it was like looking at yourself underwater.

Or dead.

It had been an antique.

Who knew
? She was fairly certain the two strangers who’d been her parents hadn’t.

Certainly she hadn’t, it had been there forever, a landmark in her life, in the house.

She’d sold it for a shockingly large sum of money as she had much of the other furniture. Enough so she could afford to take her time deciding what to do next, and not have to take from her savings. The house was paid for – the deed had been among the papers the lawyers had given her.

There had been a bequest, too. An inheritance.

But no apology.

She hadn’t really expected one.

This house wasn’t one either. She knew that, too. They’d simply meant to keep it in the family. Such as it was. The house. And her. All that was left.

Now the hall, like much of the rest of the house, stood empty. Only the wood floor remained, polished now as it never had been in her memory.

She remembered the near-frenzy that had overtaken her once the reality of it had sunk in. She’d rushed through the house tearing down the musty old curtains, the dusty lace sheers, and heavy damask drapes that had framed the windows in the front parlor and sunk it in gloom, desperate to let the light in.

All but two rooms.

The ones upstairs.

Nearly panicked, she’d wrestled with the windows, forced them up and open to let the fresh air blow through the empty, hollow spaces in the house. She washed those windows inside and out. Until finally she’d stopped, exhausted and shaking, in the hall to listen to the breeze, to the sounds the birds made outside.

She’d found herself standing outside this room on the lower floor. Her old bedroom.

The door was still open from her frenzy. The window was bare of the curtains she’d always hated and the dark shade that had always been pulled down to cover it, sinking the room even deeper into the thick gloom that had seemed to permeate everything.

It was the first time she’d seen the horse, framed by the window.

He’d been beautiful, sleek and black, gleaming like gunmetal in the bright sunlight.

The scene had been so peaceful as he stood there, alone, cropping grass. They’d staked him out for a time to allow him to graze on the fresh green growth and perhaps to give him the illusion of freedom, with only the rope on his halter to hold him.

For the longest time she’d just stood and stared, enchanted, until she calmed.

If she just didn’t think too much, if she just didn’t feel too much, then she would be all right, she knew, she’d be okay. One step at a time, just one step forward. Small steps.

She felt fragile inside, like glass, or a china cup placed too close to the edge. Teetering on the brink. The words of an old song rattled around inside her head, haunting her.

It was like stepping on broken glass. Except the glass was inside her.

It still was.

No one knew. No one understood.

Taking a breath on that not so long ago day, she’d looked around.

It was hers now, this place. All she had.

She had so much to do.

Pick a room and start
, she’d told herself.

So she had – beginning with the kitchen.

Kitchens were the most important room in a house, it was where family gathered. As she’d learned, over time. Just not in this house.

Memories crowded, but she put them away.

In between one chore and another, she’d worked on the yard, brought things to rights there again, too. She’d cleaned up the windblown debris that had scattered from the road, the old cans and bottles tossed from truck windows, the odd scrap of newspaper, and mowed the grass.

That had been a new thing for her, trying to start the mower as she’d watched her father do a thousand times, before she discovered there was no gas in it. Then she’d found the gas can in the shed, clearly marked ‘Mower’. That was like him.

When she’d finally gotten the thing started she hadn’t known whether to shout in triumph or to cry.

It had been amazing how satisfying it had been to see the grass neatly cut, while still leaving the patches of the wildflowers and long grass that had sprung up over the years along the edges. Even more satisfying had been the smell of the fresh earth as she’d dug into it to plant the flowers she bought. Tapping them out of their containers, grasping them firmly before she set them into the holes she’d dug had been surprisingly soothing.

If she’d been conscious of her need to stay out of sight of the neighbor’s house, she hadn’t let herself think about it.

When she’d been done, she’d sat back on her heels, sunburned and tired, her nails caked with dirt.

It had been gratifying to see the change her efforts made to the house. She’d felt a certain amount of pride in what she’d accomplished.

She’d gone to sleep exhausted night after night in what had once been the guest room.

That room had never seen any guests that she could remember.

Those first nights in the house had been unsettling at first. She’d never been in the house alone before, and each creak and shift had brought her awake in the darkness.

That had faded over time.

What had once been the guest room had become her room now, facing back across the open fields of growing grain. Soybean leaves fluttered silver and the corn seemed to grow before her eyes.

Even so, she was drawn to the window downstairs that looked out on the neighbor’s house, to the paddock, and to the horse.

She’d watched the men work with it, settling the training harness on it.

Or trying to.

It had refused their attentions, had denied them, fought them, no matter what they did.

Clearly, it knew the harness, but it had tossed its head at the attachment of the training cart, backing and fighting them every time they tried to guide it.

Early one morning she’d found herself walking across the grass, bending to gather some of the longer, greener stuff. Almost out of habit, she’d made a sheaf out of it, tying a longer stem of winter wheat around the rest.

At one and the same time she’d been both at peace and anxious as she approached. It had been one of those odd warm days in early spring, the air soft and filled with the promise of summer. The fields and the trees had been just touched with hints of green.

The horse had eyed her warily, but he was so beautiful, magnificent as he’d stood there bathed in the golden early morning light.

Conscious of his alarm at her approach, she’d moved carefully, slowly, until she reached the fence of the paddock.

She understood his fear.

She was conscious of the risk of rejection, and the anticipation of it had hovered in the back of her heart and mind.

More than once she’d seen the neighbor standing at the same fence, his strong arms folded on it, just staring at the horse.