Ghost Mother: A Novel

by Kelly Dwyer

Genres: Ghost; Horror

Synopsis

Ghost Mother is a mesmerizing psychological ghost story that blurs the thin line between reality and delusion.

"Ghost Mother has so many pleasures: a gorgeous old wreck of a house, a charmingly flawed and sympathetic heroine, supernatural goings-on so real they feel historical, an incredible sex scene, no spoilers, and an enthralling story. It's the perfect summer book."
—Kate Christensen, PEN/Faulkner award-winning author of The Great Man and Welcome Home, Stranger

Lilly Bly desperately wants to have a baby. She is struggling with infertility and bad spending habits when her husband, Jack, gets a new job that moves them from Chicago to a small town in Wisconsin. Impractical Lilly falls in love with a decrepit mansion well out of their price range—she is convinced that she will finally get pregnant and have a baby in this house—and Jack reluctantly agrees to buy the wreck. But when Lilly learns that her dream house was the site of a gruesome triple homicide/suicide in the 1950s, she begins to experience strange occurrences that soon lead her to believe the house is haunted. Are her ghostly encounters real, or is this a cascading mental breakdown? As Lilly learns more about the deaths and her visions become increasingly vivid, her relationship with Jack deteriorates, leading to a dramatic and irreversible climax.

Perfect for fans of classic, gothic horror fiction, like Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw and Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, as well as contemporary suspense and horror fiction by everyone from Stephen King to Ruth Ware.

 

 

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Release date: August 6, 2024

Publisher: Union Square & Co.

Print pages: 329

Sample

1FALLING

DOES “FALLING IN LOVE” IMPLY that you fall and keep falling or that you fall and land into love? In other words, was love a dark, vertical tunnel without end, or more of a soft, cushiony feather bed? This was what I was thinking about while I opened cupboards and peeked inside closets, trying to feign disinterest, because the truth was, as soon as I’d taken one look at the 1920s Romanesque Revival mansion on Hill Street, a crumbling, ivy-covered brick-and-stone castle, I knew that I couldn’t live without it, that I was in love, that it was—or would be—mine.

Ours, I mean, naturally. Jack was with me, either feigning disinterest even better than I was, or else seriously not in love with the house. “What’s this water damage?” he asked the real estate agent in a sour, put-upon tone, and I began to rehearse how I was going to talk him into it. You dragged me out here to the middle of nowhere, at least let me choose the house.

They discussed the ancient furnace, the faulty electrical wiring, the dilapidated roof, and then finally I interrupted to ask Al Martin, the agent, a truly important question. “What’s the circus connection?”

He appeared to be in his mid-sixties, about the same age my father would be, if he were still alive, but while my father had thinning light brown hair, a champagne smile, and perfect vision, Al Martin sported a full head of fuzzy gray locks, a serious expression, and bifocals, which he now peered over to look at me.

“The what?” Jack asked.

“The listing said to be sure to ask about the house’s circus connection,” I told him. “So I am.”

“You’ve heard of the Lawrence Brothers?” Al Martin asked.

I looked at Jack, but he was on the floor now, inspecting a heating grate. “We’re not really from the area.”

“They owned a circus, a very famous circus. Wisconsin is the circus state, of course, all the big circuses came from right here.” He tapped his index finger toward the hardwood dining room floor so that I found myself gazing at his feet, as if searching for elephant dung. “It was the oldest son, I think he was the oldest, Edgar Lawrence. May have been the second oldest. There were four brothers altogether. Anyway, Edgar Lawrence built this house in 1921. It was very … unusual for its time. He was quite wealthy, and he didn’t skimp on a thing, as you can see.”

I could see, all right. From the outside, the house looked like a decrepit manor, or an abandoned château, complete with brick-and-limestone walls crawling with ivy, an ornate arched doorway, and three chimneys jutting to the sky. The front door was a large, heavy wooden monster, about twelve feet high, with iron hinges, and when Al Martin had opened it for us, I had been greeted by a sight that had taken my breath away; that is, I had sucked in my breath and had held it until I’d remembered to let it out and breathe. It was the most magnificent residential foyer I had ever seen, with a black iron chandelier dangling from above and a view of a grand wooden staircase. A quick tour revealed the downstairs alone housed a living room, formal dining room, kitchen, hearth room, library, conservatory, and two stone fireplaces.

Of course, the house was also falling apart. The beautiful pink-and-yellow Art Deco–print wallpaper in the dining room was held up by duct tape. The hardwood floors were stained, scratched, and streaky white from water damage, and a few of the downstairs windows were cracked and covered with plastic sheeting. Perhaps most distressing, in the middle of the dining room ceiling, there was a hole through which one could see up to a spare room above. Apparently, a chandelier had fallen, taking much of the ceiling with it, and no one had bothered to replace it—or patch up the ceiling/floor. A few of the walls seemed to be crumbling in on themselves, as plaster layered

the damaged floors like breadcrumbs from decades of white toast. But all this shabbiness was part of the house’s charm. It looked like the ancient manor home of an English aristocrat who had come upon hard times. I was falling. I had fallen. I was in love.

“Has anyone ever told you that you look like Jean Shrimpton?” Al Martin asked. In fact, quite a few people had told me I looked like the famous model from the 1960s, with her light brown hair, doe eyes, arched brows, and wide lips, but not for many years. I shrugged, though I was pleased, even as I knew the real estate agent was doing his best to sell us the house. “The first supermodel, the original It girl. You could bring back that glamour to this estate. You two must have beautiful children. Do you? Have children?”

I glanced at Jack, and this time he looked up at me and then quickly looked away. I used to say, “Not yet,” but I was getting old—thirty-seven—and I was afraid that the hopefulness that statement implied would begin to result in pity. The truth was, I was a sort of half mother, a ghost mother. I had a few dead fetuses, but that wasn’t what people meant when they asked.

“No,” I said.

Al Martin, a real pro, simply nodded. “There are seven bedrooms.”

“Seven!” Jack exclaimed.

“That’s a lucky number,” I assured him.

Al Martin looked uncertain, but said, “Sure it is. Of course, some could be made into studies, guest rooms. Apparently the third-floor attic was used as a ballroom as well as for circus practices.”

“Well, that’d be useful,” Jack muttered.

“I should also mention that the circus society is willing to let some of the furniture come with the house.”

He said this as if it were a favor, but I suspected that most of the furniture would not be up to the standards of the Salvation Army’s pickup truck. And yet, they were certainly up to mine. Would the society include the worn farm-style table in the kitchen? The wobbly dining chairs with their faded seats depicting ancient roses? The ornate secretary in the library with feet gnawed by hungry mice? Shabby, threadbare, damaged, I wanted it all.

“Would you like to go upstairs first or see the basement?”

Jack came over and put his arm around me, then squeezed my shoulder. He knew I didn’t do basements. Was he feeling protective of me from the reference to children? Or was he simply showing Al Martin that we were a united front, ready to wheel and deal and make something happen immediately? I almost said, “We’ll take it.” But Jack spoke first. “I’d like to see the basement.”

---

While the men went downstairs, I opened the back door and walked into the backyard. It was late afternoon, mid-September, one of those perfect early fall days when you feel that life is brimming with possibility. I stepped onto the

brick patio, stared at the ivy growing on the stone walls, and knew: this was the house I was meant to have. I felt as if something were pulling at me, as if the house and I were both magnetized, and it was drawing me toward it. Now that I’d seen this forsaken mansion, its neglectedness calling to me like the big eyes of a regal but mangy greyhound dog at a shelter, I could not imagine living anywhere else.

The backyard was made up of a sweeping expanse of lawn with a weeping willow cradling a tire swing, and an overgrown flower garden the size and shape of a kidney swimming pool. One side yard consisted of a steep, long slope of grass leading into woods, while the other side of the house consisted of the driveway, a fence, and more woods. I remembered reading in the listing that the property was surrounded by public land. There were houses across the street, but no others on this side. Edgar Lawrence had managed to build his mansion in the middle of a forest preserve.

On a hill. Hill Street. From my vantage point, I had a view of the quaint town square with its clock tower and nearby church steeples, and the majestic bluffs beyond. I looked in all directions and realized this was the highest point around. Then I heard a sound. Water running, a current. I could hear, but not see, the river somewhere below.

I walked closer and found that the land at the back of the yard ended in a precipice, a cliff above the river. There was nothing gradual about this drop. One inch there was land, and the next inch, empty space. I had never thought of myself as having a particular fear of heights. I’d grown up on the forty-fifth floor in a penthouse apartment overlooking Lake Michigan, after all. But this drop frightened me.

I stepped back a few feet and looked out. It was strangely beautiful, to see the edge of land leading to, well, air. I was both attracted to the cliff and repelled by it. But something made me continue to back away and then turn and walk until I was safely in the middle of the lawn.

I heard the back door open and shut. Jack. When he came up next to me, I smiled at him. We’d met at a New Year’s Eve party eight years before, on the night the centuries had changed, Y2K, at the home of a mutual acquaintance, while Prince sang in surround sound. Most of the guests had worn jeans and sweaters, but as an actor, I had always taken my costumes seriously, and I’d sparkled in a beaded silver dress, sheer stockings, and silver heels. Jack and I had sat by the fire, and he’d talked me into kissing him at 10:20 because, he’d explained, it was midnight somewhere.

“No, it’s not,” I said. “It’s 11:20 somewhere, or 12:20, not midnight.”

He had cropped hair and glasses that made him look smart and geeky and sexy and cool all at the same time, and he shook his head at me in a charmed way, as if I were very bad at math and he found it adorable.

“It’s done by gradations,” he explained. “It’s 10:21 somewhere, and 10:22, and somewhere

 it’s midnight, probably in Nova Scotia, which is a fine place, with hearty soup and strapping fishermen, and they’re all kissing the beautiful women beside them right now.”

He said it so convincingly that I half believed him—maybe he was right, maybe it was midnight in Nova Scotia—and then he leaned closer and kissed me. Eight years later, I still remembered that kiss: soft and gentle, and then a little less soft, a little less gentle. His mouth had tasted of port. I wanted him to kiss me like that now.

“Isn’t it lovely?” I whispered, standing beside him, gazing out over the trees to the newly risen moon. “Listen. You can hear the river.”

Al Martin’s steps came up the pebbled path behind us.

“Man,” Jack said, loud enough for the realtor to hear, and letting out a long, beleaguered sigh. “You’d need a fucking goat to mow this lawn.”

---

“Jack, I loved that house,” I said when we were inside the car. I was wearing a cotton sweater over a short-sleeved sundress and sandals, and I was getting chilly. I turned on the heat, which blew around cool air. Jack didn’t bother to tell me to wait until the car was warmed up to turn it on, but I knew it was what he was thinking from the way he glanced at the heater and then leaned his head back in the driver’s seat. I couldn’t help it; I got such a psychological perk from hearing that hardworking burst.

“Yeah, it was a cool house, all right.”

“Really? You liked it?”

“I mean, of course I liked it.” Jack was a sincere person. I’d never thought of him as a good actor, a good liar. He had never excelled at charades. I wouldn’t have suspected this poker talent, and for a moment, it distracted me from the house. But only for a moment.

“You did?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“You didn’t seem like you liked it. Were you just playing hard to get?”

He turned to me, as if realizing that we were talking about two different things. “But of course we can’t buy it, Lilly.”

“I thought you said you liked it.”

“It’s a cool house. Really cool. But it’s falling apart. A classic money pit. You know how much that thing would cost to heat in the winter?”

“There was practically a fireplace in every room!”

“Oh, I get it, you’ll lug wood into all those rooms and keep us warm that way. I suppose you’ll be the one to chop down the trees, too?”

“You can order wood, you know. It’s not hard. This is Wisconsin. They sell it at the gas station.”

“There’s water damage everywhere. Plaster’s crumbling from the walls. The electricity needs

to be replaced. There’s a hole in one of the ceilings!”

“Think of it as an investment. We could fix it up and sell it.”

“Because we’re so handy, and because there are so many millionaires in Haven, wanting to buy a renovated stone mansion.”

He had a point there, and I had to think for a moment. “Naturally, we wouldn’t turn it around right away. But, you know, eventually, it would be an investment. Our nest egg.”

“That roof is over thirty years old.”

“Oh, but what about the view from the main bedroom? Looking out into the woods. And that river. I mean, Jack, it’s on a river! And that staircase? Isn’t it amazing? It’s like it was built for a princess.”

Maybe it was the wistfulness in my voice, maybe it was the word “princess.” But whatever the reason, suddenly Jack touched my cheek. “You really want that house?”

I remembered that magnetized pull, making it painful to leave, as if this was the house I was meant to have. I remembered going into the nursery—the room we would use for the nursery, anyway, right off the main bedroom, with its pink roses wallpaper and view of the backyard—and I had been sure, I had known, I was going to have a baby in this house.

“More than anything in the world.”

“You know we can’t afford to pay anywhere near what they’re asking.”

“I could get a job.”

He looked skeptical.

“Really, I’ll get a job. I promise!”

He rested his forehead on the steering wheel and banged it about three times.

Then he turned to me and said, “Okay. Lowball offer. If they don’t take it, we walk away. If they do take it, you get a job.”

“I love you,” I said, throwing my arms around him.

When I broke away, he nodded, as if to himself. “Lowball offer. There’s nobody living there. It’s owned by the circus society, right? They need to get it off their hands. I bet they’re desperate.”

We had been house hunting for three weeks, ever since Jack had landed a position at the leading digital imaging company in the Midwest, and we had fled Chicago for Wisconsin. Jack’s job was to train people—radiologists, physicians, research scientists in university labs—how to use his company’s software so that they could detect cancer and identify promising therapies. He was part scientist, part computer guy, part teacher, part detective, and part soldier, working on the front lines of the battle against disease. He had to travel a lot, and the most central location of his service area was a town called Haven.

Since we’d been in Haven (population 17,334, plus, now, two more), we’d gone to four open houses, had been inside thirteen homes, and had made an offer on exactly none. As far as I could tell, we were the ones who were desperate, staying in the only motel in the area that charged by the week and allowed cats, surrounded by unopened cardboard boxes and a mini fridge that could only hold a pint of milk, a carton of

yogurt, and two beers at a time.

“In a normal place,” I reminded him, “that house would be going for about three million.”

He ignored my jab at our new environs and said, “They’re asking three-fifteen. I say we offer two hundred and see what happens.”

“You really think they’ll take two hundred thousand?”

“They don’t take it, we walk away.”

We offered two even. They came back with three. We didn’t walk away.

---

After many days of negotiating, we bought the house, and everything in it, for $279,000. More than we could afford, but in 2008, banks were lending to anyone with a 10 percent down payment and a W-2. Jack had needed to cash out some of his 401(k) to come up with the twenty-eight thousand down. (As a former actor, waitress, and teacher, I didn’t have a 401(k) myself.) A bowl of Hershey’s Kisses sat in the middle of the table at the closing, ostensibly to sweeten the deal. Jack, who never ate candy, popped the chocolates compulsively, pausing every so often to sign something or wipe the sweat off his brow.

---

Moving day was warm and sunny; the sky was periwinkle blue. I felt ebullient, a kite billowed by the wind. Jack made iced tea with honey and lemon, which we drank sitting on the floor of the conservatory. The room consisted of a glass roof and glass walls, and seemed to be in pretty good shape, with only three glass panels covered with cardboard. Olivier, our fluffy gray-and-white Persian rescue cat with his adorable squished-in grumpy face, seemed happy as well. He lay in the sun, belly up, as relaxed as any beach bunny lying on a towel in the sand. “We can have a garden here,” I said. “We can grow herbs, even in winter. And a piano. Wouldn’t it be great to have a piano in the living room?” The conservatory and living room were divided by French doors, and I could see through to the living room, which was enormous and nearly empty.

“Do you miss it?”

“What?”

“Playing.”

I shrugged. I was a depository of useless talents: music, drama, French, Italian, piano … one more thing that I no longer engaged in didn’t really matter.

“Someday we’ll get you one.”

“I know.”

“But in the meantime, we should get some chairs. Ouch.” He patted his rear as he stood, and then helped me up.

---

That afternoon, I was on my way down the long driveway to see if we had any mail yet when I noticed three children lugging windbreakers and backpacks along the road. It was a Monday in early October, and I felt like it was a good sign that we were on some kids’ route home from school.

I’d almost reached the bottom of the driveway when I yelled, “Hi there.”

“Hi,” they said back, stopping.

“You move here?” one of them asked.

“Just today,” I said.

“That house is haunted,” the boy said. The two girls beside him nodded.

“Oh, really? By whom?”

“A ghost.”

“Yeah, a ghost,” one of the girls repeated. She appeared to be the oldest of the three, maybe nine, and she spoke with a bored authority.

“Whose ghost?”

“Some lady.”

“We seen her in the window at night.”

“Is she a spooky ghost?”

They looked at each other, as if this were a dumb question, then shrugged.

The boy kicked a block of hard dirt a couple of times, and then they walked away.

Kids, I thought. But despite myself, I stared up at the window of our bedroom, searching, although it was broad daylight. I thought I saw something, and then realized it was just a flash of sunlight. Afternoon sun can play tricks upon the eyes.

2NEW HOME

THE FIRST NIGHT IN OUR NEW HOUSE we didn’t make love. I wasn’t ovulating.

Between the six months before the first miscarriage, and the eight months since the second, our lovemaking had been cool, calculated, timed precisely to body temperature, cervical mucus, and ovulation predictor kits. It was like work, tiring and passionless, only we didn’t get paid. In my twenties, I’d have thought one had to “christen” a house by having sex in nearly every room, on the floor, in the shower, on the big farm table in the kitchen. I would have thought it as unromantic as not having candles and chocolate on Valentine’s Day to simply say Good night, Good night, and fall asleep. But that’s what we did. I don’t know if it occurred to Jack to do otherwise. It didn’t to me.

In the morning, Jack whispered in my ear, “We own a house.”

“Do we?”

“How does it feel?”

I opened my eyes and smiled. “Good. I love our house.”

“Good. Because we’re stuck with it.” He kissed me on my forehead. Olivier meowed, stretched his legs, and immediately fell back to sleep. I took my temperature and recorded it in my fertility graph. Jack said, “I’m going to make you breakfast.”

The kitchen had never been updated. It included no stainless-steel fridge, no convection oven, no triple-tier dishwasher. In fact, there was no dishwasher at all, just a working fridge, a brand-new range that the circus society must have installed to sell the place (plain white, nothing fancy), and a deep, farm-style sink. But there were gorgeous mahogany built-in cabinets that I’d fill with the Pottery Barn dishes we’d received for our wedding. They were also plain white, nothing fancy, but they were the only dishes we owned, since my family’s good china (and French silverware and crystal wine glasses and just about everything else) had been sold at auction to pay off debts after my father’s bankruptcy.

We sat in the breakfast nook and drank coffee (decaf for fertility-minded me) and ate eggs, buttered toast, and bacon for Jack, soy sausages for me. I’d grown up in a skyscraper with half grapefruits and cold cereal for breakfast, and the scent of that American farm-style breakfast, in that kitchen, moved me. “I can’t believe that with our debt and everything, we own a house,” I said.

“The bank owns it. We’re just the caretakers. You remember our agreement.”

“What was that?”

“That you get a job.”

“Of course I’ll get a job.”

“Doing what?”

“Hmmm?” I said, my mouth full of soy sausage.

His lips were oily with butter. They twitched at one corner, which meant he was beginning to panic. “I said, doing what? What kind of job are—?”

“Don’t worry,” I told him. “I’ll get a good job.”

“This is a promise?”

“Scout’s honor,” I said, holding up three fingers, though I’d never made it past Brownies.

He gave me a quick peck on my cheek, leaving an unguent mark, and then grabbed his laptop case to go teach health care professionals at hospitals how to use his company’s software so that we could pay our mortgage.

“I’ll see you tonight,” he said.

---

My career, such as it was, had not turned out exactly as I’d planned. I was fifteen years old when I’d started working as a hostess at Lake Oyster Bar, my father’s hugely popular restaurant on the Magnificent Mile, where

sometimes men would slip me a hundred just for seating them at a coveted table. My dad, who’d once been a successful restaurant and nightclub owner, had always assured me that someday I would manage his half-dozen establishments and eventually inherit them. I’d envisioned a life after college in which I’d earn money as a successful restauranteur while acting in the city’s many illustrious theaters, maybe even becoming an ensemble member of Steppenwolf, like Gary Sinise, John Malkovich, and Joan Allen. That had been my dream, and I had spent my twenties working hard for it.

Then a combination of changing neighborhoods, tax issues, and a wee bit of a gambling addiction combined with an unlucky streak had managed to leave my father penniless. My mother divorced him, married a multimillionaire, and moved to Aruba, from where she occasionally emailed me Zen-inspired advice. About six months after my father lost everything, moved in with his brother, and started working as the manager of a seedy nightclub, he’d died.

That was over ten years ago. In the span of a few months, I’d gone from a Gold Coast starry-eyed darling living off minimum equity gigs, part-time waitering, and the plush cushion of my father’s generosity to a starving artist barely making it in a run-down studio in Bucktown, grief and bills piling up around me.

I threw myself into my work. I landed some of my best roles that first year after my father’s death (Viola in Twelfth Night, Maureen in Rent, Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), received some of my best reviews. And it almost seemed like I was going to pull off my dreams despite, or perhaps because of, having survived the worst thing I could ever have imagined happening.

But acting is a fickle business. And as I neared my thirties, I started losing roles to the “new” talent. I needed to waitress longer hours just to keep the lights on in my apartment. By the time I married Jack, the roles I was being offered were fewer and farther between, and we both agreed that it made sense for me to do something else. I’d always been good with children, and I had fond memories of playing school with my cat, pug, and stuffed animals as a little kid, and so I earned a teaching certificate as a “backup plan.”

I began to teach fourth and fifth graders while landing the occasional supporting role here and there. I’d kept that up for years, until I’d turned thirty-five, when my dreams of becoming a successful working actor had pretty much evaporated, and I’d shifted my hopes to becoming a mom. I now thought of myself (sometimes bitterly, sometimes with sweet nostalgia for all the amazing parts I’d had, all the great plays I’d been in) as an actor manqué.

So where did that leave me?

I could teach elementary school, but the mere thought made my skin feel prickly, as if I were about to break out in chicken pox. It was just so hard to be around children right now, when I wanted a child of my own so desperately. The only other practical job I’d had was as a server and cocktail waitress, and while I’d excelled at that work, making hundreds of dollars in tips a night, I was currently much too obsessed with my

fertility to carry heavy trays and stay out until closing time in bars hazy with smoke.

But I needed to make money. We owned a decaying castle, we were well past our ears in credit card debt, and if I didn’t get pregnant soon, we were planning on starting IVF. I decided I would pound the pavement, résumé in hand, and see what was out there, who was hiring. I walked up the grand staircase to get ready for a trip into town.

When I reached the second-floor landing, with its threadbare orange velvet divan and Tiffany-style lamp that had come with the house, I saw out of the corner of my eye that something was out of place.

I glanced down the hallway to the right. There were two closed doors on each side of the hallway—four of our seven bedrooms. All but my study was empty of everything but dust bunnies. At the end of the hallway was another door leading to the third-floor attic/ ballroom. The home inspector had called this room a “death trap,” with floors that were “structurally unsound.” Against the home inspector’s warning, Jack had insisted on seeing for himself. He’d gone up there with a sense of adventure and a flashlight and had come down ashen and pale. I clearly remembered him closing the door firmly behind him. But it stood halfway open now.

Maybe Jack had gone back up there this morning, I thought, though I couldn’t imagine why. I walked down the hall and then stopped in front of the open door. I felt afraid. Then I told myself not to be ridiculous. Why should I be afraid of an open door? I hesitated, then peeked through. A narrow set of stairs lined with cobwebs. I let out a deep breath and then inwardly laughed at myself. What did I think I’d find? The ghost the kids had seen in the window at night? I closed the door shut, and the latch clicked into place.

I walked back down the hallway, past the landing, and then found myself going inside the room I thought of as “the nursery.” It was empty now save for a Mission-style rocking chair that had come with the house. The chair arms, which were wide, dark-brown mahogany, were thick with dust. I needed to come up here with a bucket of soapy water and some rags and do some serious cleaning. I walked across the parquet floors and imagined this as a baby’s room, with a crib, a dresser, and pictures of vintage nursery tale characters on the walls. When I stood in this room, I felt a strange mixture of wholeness and longing.

I heard something behind me and instinctively turned to the door. I let out a deep breath. It was just Olivier, standing in the doorway. “Olivier,” I said, in my sweet cat-mama voice. But he didn’t move. I stared at his squished-in, grumpy-looking face, his fluffy white-and-gray coat, trying to feel the usual sense of calm and amusement I felt around him, but instead I felt tense. He was crouched, with his tail

wrapped around his body. His big eyes were staring at something to the side of me, and beyond me, unblinking. I turned to see whatever he was looking at. But nothing was there. “Olivier,” I repeated, in a sterner voice, trying to rouse him from his hypnotic stupor. He kept staring. I took a step toward him, and he met my eyes, appearing startled, as if he’d just awakened from a dream. Then he let out a “Hiss!” and turned around and ran down the stairs, feline fast. Stupid cat, I thought. But between his reaction and the open door to the third floor, a part of me was shaken, and I decided it was a good time for me to leave the house and go job hunting, as I’d promised Jack I would.

---

I drove into town wearing an old pale pink and black tweed Chanel skirt suit and black pumps and parked in the town square. Planters of autumn mums and pumpkins lined the sidewalks, a scarecrow and hay bales festooned the town green, and construction paper crows, witches, and ghosts decorated store windows and proclaimed “Boo!”

I grabbed my worn leather satchel, which held a few copies of my résumé and some ballpoint pens, and walked up and down the shops along the square. I went to the bookstore, the natural foods store, and the ladies’ clothing store, none of which were hiring. I avoided the taxidermist’s office, the toy store, and the bank.

Inside the fancy linens shop, I fingered damask throws, Egyptian cotton sheets, and velvet-quilted pillows while I waited for the salesclerk to finish helping a young woman with a baby sleeping in a stroller, a pacifier in its little rosebud mouth. I took one look at the beautiful baby and tried not to loathe the mother with all my heart.

“May I help you?” the saleswoman asked.

“Yes, are you the owner by any chance?”

“Yes, I am.”

“What a lovely store you have.”

“Thank you,” she said.

I detected enough of a French accent that I ventured to ask, “Vous êtes française?”

“Oui,” she replied, clearly pleased.

“I’d so enjoy working here. Are you hiring?”

“No, not at the moment,” she said, checking me out, and I felt satisfied that at least one person in this town would know a Chanel when she saw one, even if it was thirteen years old. “But you vould be fabulous here. Why don’t you fill out an application and I vill call you if I need you?”

I did. And I felt so buoyed by the possibility of landing a job in such a nice store, with such a nice boss, and undoubtedly such a nice employee discount, that I bought a sage green chenille throw for our living room, putting it on the card.

---

On my way back to the car, I passed a homeless guy—the first homeless person I’d seen during my time in Haven—holding out a tin can. Beside him lay a scrawny mutt that looked like a crazy cross between a black Lab and a dachshund. The two of them gave off a sour and dank scent. They smelled like the L in Chicago at about two in the morning, not like Haven, Wisconsin, at two in the afternoon.

“Miss, can you spare a little change?”

I thought of my father. At one point he had been so rich, he had no idea how much money he had. But he could have ended up like this. I could have. Let’s face it, still could. There were times when I’d felt we were one horse race, one paycheck, away from a tin can and a mangy dog and a plea for a little change. Instead, I had just moved into the grandest hovel in Haven. Besides, how could I say no when I was carrying around a chenille blanket that probably cost more than this guy had seen in a couple of months? (Never mind that I hadn’t earned a dime in nearly a year.) I searched inside my wallet. I only had a fifty. I considered for a minute. And then I handed it over to him.

He looked stunned.

“I hope this buys you and your dog a few good meals,” I said, trying to sound cheerful.

He stared straight into my eyes. “God bless you, miss,” he said.

The blessing of a beggar is no small thing. I felt lucky and alive.

---

That night, our second night in the house, I dreamed that someone was giggling. The voice was a female’s, but I couldn’t tell if it was a young girl’s or an old lady’s. I was trying to figure this out when I realized I wasn’t dreaming. I was awake. It was the middle of the night. A woman was laughing, a sound like falling coins. Suddenly the laughter died.

“Jack,” I said, my voice somewhere between a croak and a whisper. “Jack!” I repeated, shaking him. Then I turned on the light.

“What? What?”

Without his glasses, Jack’s blue-gray eyes were myopic and vulnerable, like something newly hatched.

“Someone’s here, someone was laughing,” I said.

He sat up in bed. “What are you talking about?”

“I dreamed someone was laughing, but then I woke up; I mean, I realized I was awake, and I still heard the laughter, and then it stopped.”

Jack looked like he wanted to kill me but was too tired. “I have to leave for northern Wisconsin at six in the morning, and you woke me up to tell me you dreamed some lady was laughing?” He lay down again, curling away from me.

“I never said it was a lady.”

He didn't respond. He was already asleep. I turned off the light.

3THE MURDER HOUSE

I WAS NOT A MORNING PERSON. The following day, I stumbled to the kitchen with crusty eyes, brain fog, and the memory of a woman’s high-pitched laughter echoing through my head.

I was putting on the kettle for tea when the kitchen telephone rang. “Hello?”

“Hey.” Jack’s voice. “What are you up to?”

He sounded curt, and I wondered if he was checking up on me, making sure I was following through on my promise. I immediately felt guilty. “Oh, you know, just … getting ready to … go job hunting again. Yes! I’m getting ready to go job hunting right now!”

I scanned the kitchen for a wall clock, but we hadn’t put one up yet. The cooking stains on the walls were yellowish brown, like nicotine-stained teeth, and I thought I saw one of them, face-shaped, move, as if it were yawning. I blinked. The stain looked normal again. It was funny how your mind could play tricks on you. (Ha ha!)

“Listen, one of the guys here has a wife who works in the Haven school district. He told me they still have a couple of openings for this year.”

I went into acting mode. I was playing the part of Model Wife, composed and not at all disoriented by lack of sleep, an unexplained open door, Olivier’s staring at something that wasn’t there, and the midnight sound of a woman’s laughter. I was the relocated teacher looking for a new elementary school position. “Oh, that’s wonderful!” I exclaimed. (That is, I thought to myself, the composed job-hunting teacher exclaimed.)

“Wonderful?” Jack said doubtfully; he knew me well. “It’d probably be decent pay. I mean, you’d have to find something temporary to tide you over until you could get your license renew—”

“I’ll take over my résumé today!” I was speaking in exclamation points.

“Lilly?”

“Yes?”

“Are you okay?”

Perhaps I was overdoing it. “Fine,” I said. “I’m fine.” I looked away from the stains and stared out the window, into the side yard and to the woods beyond them.

I took a deep breath, and, to change the subject, I asked Jack, “How are you? How’s the drive?”

“Pretty. Lots of green, rolling hills. They could have filmed The Sound of Music in Wisconsin.”

I kept gazing out the kitchen window into the copse of trees in the side yard. “It is beautiful here,” I said.

“And it’s not everyone who owns a … what did Al Martin call it? ‘A grand Romanesque Revival estate’?” He laughed. “Okay, so it’s about to fall on our heads, but still. Who would have thought? Jack and Lilly, caretakers of a grand, historic Romanesque Revival estate!”

Jack was right. It was pretty amazing for a boy who had grown up in a tract home in the suburbs and a girl who had come of age in a sterile luxury high-rise to now live in a place so rich with history. A mansion built by a circus baron. Who was this man who had built this palatial estate? I wondered. The question gave me an idea.

“I should go.”

“All right, honey,” he said. “But you know, things are looking up. I know they’ve been rough. But they’ll get better.”

I pressed my hands to my flat belly. I imagined it being round, the size and shape of a

beach ball, a baby inside, kicking and swimming. I remembered the certainty I’d had that I’d become a mother here, in this house. “I think you’re right,” I said.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you, too.”

I hung up the phone and went upstairs to get dressed.

---

It was a weekday around noon, and the Haven Public Library was humming with activity. Music wafted from the children’s floor above, and every seat in the computer area was taken. I stood in line behind a woman checking out some new releases, an elderly couple with a stack of DVDs, and a man in a business suit carrying Eat, Pray, Love and a slow cooker cookbook, and then it was my turn.

“I need some help,” I told the librarian behind the desk. Then I smiled awkwardly, because I realized I could have accurately used the same phrase at a psychiatrist’s office. I had gone that route once before, without much success, and with much financial cost, and I really didn’t want that to be my next stop.

“Shoot,” she said. She appeared to be about thirty, with bright-red braided Pippi Longstocking hair and a sweatshirt with a picture of the TARDIS on it. She had eyes that flickered with engagement behind black nerdy glasses. It occurred to me that, with her artsy mien and her probable love for books, she might be the sort of person I would like to be friends with, and I pictured us having coffee at the cool café on the square or drinking a beer together at one of the town’s dives.

“My husband and I recently moved here from Chicago, and we bought the—” I paused to think of the right words. “Crumbling castle”? “Condemnable manor”? Then I remembered the architectural term from the listing, which Jack had just used on the phone. “Romanesque Revival estate up on Hill Street. 217 Hill Street. I’m wondering if there’s any way to find out about the original …”

“Oh my God! You bought the Murder House?” Her eyes widened, and her mouth gaped into an expression that was half shock, half glee. She looked like someone enjoying a horror movie.

“The what? No, that’s not … you must be thinking of something else.”

A middle-aged woman with straight blond hair in a headband arrived at the circulation desk, and Pippi Longstocking said, “Patty, this woman bought the Murder House.”

Patty appeared to be trying to hide her shock, or at least surprise. She stood stock-still for a moment, not responding, and then she smiled and said, “Don’t call it that, Jess. It’s her new home!” Then to me, she added, “So you’re the one who bought the Lawrence Mansion?”

I was doing a timed puzzle, trying to fit all the pieces together to keep up. From the address, Jess had surmised I lived in “the Murder House,” and from that description, Patty had known it was the Lawrence Mansion. What the hell was going on?

“Listen, I just moved here, and I don’t know what you two are talking about.”

Jess still had that gleeful shocked look on her face, while Patty seemed to be checking me out, looking me up and down, as if curious about the person who had bought the run-down mansion on the hill. Maybe I should have worn something fancier than jeans with a growing hole in the knee and an old gray T-shirt that read “I Can’t, I Have Rehearsal,” which a director had given me when we’d done a Sam Shepard play together. He’d had his own reasons for wanting me to be at every rehearsal, but I still liked the feel of the soft cotton T-shirt very much.

A man with a service dog approached the desk, and Patty left our conversation to help him.

“They didn’t tell you about the murder suicides?” Jess asked.

“Are you sure we’re talking about the same house?”

“The castle up on the hill with cracked windows covered with plastic sheeting and ivy all over the place?”

“I … guess?” She was describing our house, but she had it all wrong. She was making it sound as if it was abandoned, when in fact it was inhabited. By us. By me.

She cocked her head to the side, as if she were talking to a child, or someone who wasn’t all there. It was a reaction I elicited a lot, even when I wasn’t in shock. “Look, not to be rude, but there aren’t too many castles in Haven. Is that your house, or isn’t it?” she said, enunciating carefully. Maybe we wouldn’t be having that beer or coffee after all.

“That’s my house,” I said. The words came out in a whisper.

“Well, then, I’m sorry, but that’s the Murder House.” I must have looked as horrified as I felt, because then her eyes softened, and she added, “Listen, all that happened a long time ago. It’s ancient history. That makes it cool instead of creepy, right? Like a murder podcast! But is it true what they say? Is it haunted?”

The kids’ words ran through my mind. The woman’s laughter. The open door. Olivier, standing there stupefied. I leaned back, away from her and the circulation desk, almost tripping over myself, and then faked a stretch, like a cat trying to convince you its clumsy fall was purposeful. “Haunted? I don’t think so. I mean, of course not. Who says that?”

“Um, everyone. I mean, not that I believe in that sort of thing.”

“I can help the next person,” Patty called.

“Right,” Jess said. “Is there anything else you need?” She gestured behind me, and I saw that a line had formed. A few patrons carrying books, magazines, and CDs were staring at me with expressions that ranged from dumbfounded to amused, and I realized they had probably heard everything. My house isn’t haunted! I wanted to tell them.

I turned back to Jess. “The reason I came here was to find out more about the house’s history …”

Jess nodded, her librarian training evidently kicking into gear. She typed something into the computer behind the desk, wrote something on a Post-it note, and handed it to me: April 15, 1955.

“That’s when it happened. I’m sure there are newspaper articles in the microfilm

archive.” She pointed to a glass door in the far corner of the library. “The instructions are by the machine. It’s a pain, I’m not gonna lie.”

---

The microfilm archives of the local newspaper were stored in a collection of small white square boxes, all of which were stamped with a red State of Wisconsin seal. The seal was quite detailed, with illustrations, images, symbols, people, and the state motto “Forward,” which I told myself was a good omen. I would move forward, beyond this day, this moment, of finding out my house was the Murder House.

I searched through the boxes until I found one that was labeled “January–June 1955.” Then I took the box to the chair in front of the machine and began to read the directions.

One of the many ways in which I find myself unfit to manage the world is that I am constitutionally unable to follow directions more complicated than those on the back of a frozen microwaveable dinner. I removed the canister from the box, stared at the directions, stared back at the canister of film, stared at the directions again, and then just sat there. I thought of Jack, who could assemble IKEA furniture barely glancing at the illustrations. Whenever I would ask him to do something like hook up the computer to the printer because I couldn’t figure out how, he would tell me I wasn’t trying, but the truth was, I had no understanding of how anything worked because I had no curiosity about how anything worked. Cars drove, planes flew, computers started and printed and took you to the internet, and if I had to explain how any of it worked, I would say it was done by magic.

I stared at the machine. A sticker read “Spool here.” That must refer to the film, I thought. I put the “spool” there, and it clicked into place. I felt a wash of accomplishment. Then I noticed another sticker that read “Take-Up Reel.” I looked at the directions, then placed the film under the glass plate, hooking it under a roller and into the Take-Up Reel. I turned the wheel, and an image appeared on the screen of a newspaper page. I felt quite proud of myself and couldn’t wait to tell Jack about my accomplishment, before realizing I would never tell him about my accomplishment, ...