Chapter 26 - The Woman of the House

Waves thrash against the shore as clouds cover the afternoon sun. Police officers are huddled together in groups of two or three while people from town have gathered along the path. It’s the largest number of people I’ve seen along the shore since we moved here. With strained necks and hushed voices, everyone is looking out at the sole boat anchored in the middle of the lake, waiting to see what the divers come up with.

As I make my way down, I spot Angela’s friends Krisha and Heather, who appear to be holding court by one of the piers. Every so often, someone from town will approach the pair, to which Krisha responds by putting a reassuring hand on the person’s arm, presumably thanking them for their support during this difficult time. Farther down the path, Vick is making his way through the small crowd. People shake his hand and pat him on the back as he passes. Standing off to the side of all the commotion is Jonathan Walsh. He has his hands shoved deep inside his jean pockets and is wearing a barn jacket that looks too small for his wide shoulders. He doesn’t take his eyes off the water as I approach.

“Jonathan?” I ask. “What’s going on?”

“Something of Angela’s washed up on shore, so they sent divers out again.” His voice is cold and robotic, but the whites of his eyes are red like he’s been crying.

“What did they find?”

Without looking at me, he takes his right hand out of his pocket and holds up a diamond ring.

“I’m so sorry,” I say.

He returns his wife’s wedding ring to his pocket. “They’re not going to find anything. They think she’s down there, but she’s not.” Jonathan tries to hide a sniffle. “I’ve told the cops a million times. Angela might be missing, but she doesn’t want to be found.”

“But what if—”

“This place, this town.” He takes a deep breath as if he’s taking it all in. “It was always too small for her. She talked about moving to Chicago or New York, but we got married, had kids. Time just slipped away. Before she left, she was talking about moving away more and more. I told her we couldn’t. The kids have their friends and school, I have my job, and she has her store. But she didn’t care. She wanted to leave it all behind and get away from here. I think what she really wanted was to get away from me. Well, she finally did.” He breaks eye contact with the lake for the first time, shifting his gaze to the ground. “Sorry. I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this.”

“No, it’s okay,” I say, too quickly. “I don’t mind.”

“Hey there,” Krisha says, suddenly appearing at Jonathan’s side. “How’re you holding up?”

“Okay, thanks,” Jonathan says.

Krisha doesn’t acknowledge me as she puts her hand on Jonathan’s arm. She strokes it gently, just like I watched her do with a couple neighbors just moments prior. But there’s something about the twinkle in her eye as she looks up at her best friend’s husband that feels different.

“I better check in with the cops, see if there’s an update,” Jonathan says.

“I’ll go with you,” Krisha says, following behind him.

I watch the rest of the search from behind the windows of the house while Brian tinkers with a broken lamp in the living room.

“I can take that into town and get it fixed if you want?” I offer.

“I can fix it myself,” he says, unscrewing the top from the base, revealing the electrical wiring inside.

Eventually, the sun starts to set. I wonder how long the divers will be out there before they call it a day, but then the police boat makes its way to shore. A group of three paramedics meets the boat at the pier and climbs aboard. They’re on there for about ten minutes before disembarking empty-handed. One by one, the divers peel off their wet suits before they, too, get off the boat and join the rest of the police on the shore. One of the divers shakes a cop’s hand. The cop asks him a question, and the diver shrugs as he motions back toward the lake.

I sink back onto one of the stools at the countertop. If Jonathan is right and Angela was tired of the small town, then maybe she wasn’t experiencing the same things I am. Maybe for Angela, there was no figure or looming presence watching her, there was just the desire for a different life. I imagine her throwing her wedding ring in the lake before she ran off. I chew on the inside of my cheek as uncertainty grows inside of me. What if there wasn’t a woman lurking behind me in the kitchen? What if I imagined the long fingers with sharp nails wrapped around my neck? When Dr. Smith asked me if I was having any hallucinations, I said no, but that was a lie. What if that’s really what’s happening here? When Brian and I fought the other night, I could almost see the word on the edge of his mouth, waiting to come out. Crazy. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I am.

—

“Of course Jonathan says she ran off,” Frances says, squinting her eyes in the sun.

Frances and I walk along the path of the lake while I tell her about the doctor’s appointment and the sleeping pills. I don’t mention that I gave them to Brian instead of taking them myself—that part I’m too embarrassed to admit even to Frances. As I talk, Frances nods with her thick brows furrowed. When I tell her about how I think the figure grabbed me by the neck during the night, she shakes her head and sighs deeply. I watch as Frances’s beady eyes go wide when I tell her about Roxxxy from the motel, how she recognized Angela. By the time I get to the part about the divers down by the water coming up empty-handed, we’re about a mile away from the house.

“Jonathan seems convinced that she was sick of this place and wanted something more. But then Paul says she’d never leave her kids.”

“Brothers,” Frances snorts. “I’m not surprised he thought his older sister was a saint.”

Frances never mentioned having a brother, but the hint of resentment in her voice makes me wonder if she’s speaking from personal experience.

“I don’t know who to believe. I don’t know if Angela is alive or dead. I feel like I’m going crazy.” I pull my hair back to show Frances the line of nail marks scratched into the side of my neck.

“Oh, Rose,” Frances says. She holds up one of her hands like she’s going to touch the marks on my skin, but once she’s close she changes her mind and retracts her hand like they are contagious.

“You’re sure Angela never said anything to you about stuff like this happening when she lived in the house?”

“No.” Frances buries her hands inside her pockets. “Nothing like that. As far as I knew, it was her dream house. She grew up wanting to live there.”

“Why would she want to live somewhere everyone around here thinks is haunted? She must have heard the stories I read in the paper about people dying there.”

“You’ve seen the wraparound porch, haven’t you?” Frances says out of the side of her mouth.

“That’s true. It’s a good house on paper, but if it was her dream to live here, then why leave it all behind like Jonathan suggested?”

“Everyone has secrets, Rose.”

“If only I could just talk to Angela and ask what happened to her…”

Frances shakes her head. “You don’t deserve what’s happening to you. Trust me, I could name a few people in this town who deserve to not feel safe in their own house, but not you.”

I swallow hard. Guilt gathers inside me, and for a moment I think about telling her she’s wrong. I do deserve what’s happening to me. But then the moment passes.

“Thanks, Frances,” I say. “I appreciate it.”

—

The next day, I’m eating peanut butter off a spoon when I realize we barely have any food in the house. I make a grocery list on my phone of what I’ll need to make dinner for the week.

I drive down the winding road from our house into town. The sky is overcast with no sign of the sun, and besides the small piles of leaves every few feet, the streets are bare. I drive past Angela’s boutique and am about to turn right onto Flossmore, which will take me to the grocery store, when I see a heavyset woman leaving the coffee shop on the corner. She has short brown hair and a large iced coffee in her hand. After a moment I recognize her. Heather.

She gets into a beat-up Honda and puts it in reverse. I grip the wheel, knowing I should ignore the curiosity building in my chest and go to the grocery store like I planned. It’s the same nervous excitement I felt the first night I followed Brian to his apartment.

Go on, you know you want to follow her.

I should go straight. The grocery store is just five minutes up the road.

It wouldn’t be the first time you stalked someone, and it won’t be the last.

No, it’s not stalking. I’m not a stalker.

What do you call what you did to Brian?

I take a deep breath.

Go left.

My knuckles are white.

What’s the worst that could happen?

I jerk the wheel and turn left, following the Honda. It weaves its way over the railroad tracks, past the local high school, and into a residential neighborhood full of ranch homes. We pass front lawns littered with overgrown plants, plastic kids’ toys, and beat-up patio furniture, until finally the Honda pulls into one of the unpaved driveways. Heather gets out with her coffee and walks up the two steps of the porch before pushing the unlocked front door open.

Not wanting her to suspect that I followed her here, I put my car in park and wait. Two minutes pass. I tell myself I’ll knock on the front door after five minutes. After four minutes, my hand is in a small fist, tapping against the screen.

Heather opens the door while my hand is still in the air.

“Hi,” I say.

“Hello there,” Heather says. Her voice is light and bright like a cartoon character. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m Rose. I was at your store the other day?”

A smile spreads across her face as recognition sets in. “Oh right, right. Do you want to come in?” she asks, and I’m glad I don’t have to come up with an excuse for why I’m here.

“Okay, yeah,” I say.

Unlike the neighborhood, which is run-down and generally unkempt, the inside of Heather’s home is an oasis. As soon as I walk in the front door, I’m greeted with a vanilla aroma that seems to permeate every surface. A row of plush beige pillows lines the couch, while a sign on the wall reminds the inhabitants to “dance like nobody’s watching.”

“Can I get you something to drink?” Heather says from the kitchen.

“Water is good,” I say as I ease myself down on the couch, not wanting to disrupt the pillow display.

A few moments later, Heather hands me a glass of water. “There’s fruit in the ice,” Heather says with a wink. “I put blueberries and cut-up strawberries in my ice trays and then, voilà, you have fruit-infused water.”

“Delicious,” I say after taking a sip.

“Now,” Heather says as she settles into an overstuffed chair next to the couch. “What is it I can do for you?” One of her French-manicured hands brings her large iced coffee to her lips.

“I live in your friend Angela’s old house.”

“That’s right, that’s right. Ugh, Ang just loved that house.”

“Really?”

“Oh Lord, yes.” Heather smacks a hand against her thigh. “She talked about buying that house and fixing it up for years. I gotta say, we didn’t think it was ever going to happen, but when it went up for sale no one else around here wanted it, so they got a deal.” She shrugs her shoulders. She paints a different picture from the one Jonathan did just the other day.

“Why didn’t anyone else want it?” I realize I won’t have to pry too much to get Heather to talk.

“Well, you know, we grew up hearing stories about that house.” She waves a hand in the air as if it’s nothing, but the pit in my stomach tells me otherwise.

“That’s funny, the Realtor never mentioned anything.”

“Oh, it’s just campfire stories. Kid stuff, really.” Heather is lying to herself. I can tell; I do it all the time. “You know, there’s some people who won’t even step foot in that place? All because of some superstition. Ridiculous.” She rolls her eyes for effect.

“That is ridiculous.” I take a sip of my fruit water while I think about Vick and his reluctance to come inside. “Did Angela think it was ridiculous too?”

“Well, at first she did. But then…” Heather looks up at the ceiling as if she’s thinking about what to say next. “Then she started saying weird stuff about things around the house going missing or doors slamming shut on their own. But she always had a wild imagination.”

I nod, even though I don’t know anything about Angela’s imagination.

“Anyway, I told her she was probably the one misplacing things, but she wouldn’t listen. Seemed like the worse things got with Jonathan, the more paranoid she got.”

“She and Jonathan were having problems?”

Heather nods. She leans in as if someone might overhear her, and I do the same. “After they bought the house, they started arguing more. Seemed like they were drifting apart. I suggested couples counseling. I’ve seen people on TV do it and it seems to help. Between you and me, I know she was staying at motels. She said she needed sleep, but, well, a motel?”

“You mean, like she was seeing someone else?”

Heather purses her lips and raises her eyebrows before leaning in even closer. “She always had her secrets, Angela. She never mentioned an affair to me, but I’m sure she wrote about it in that diary of hers.”

“A diary? What diary?” I try to keep my voice casual.

“Oh, Angela kept diaries since we were kids. We used to make fun of her for it ’cause she’d write down everything in it.”

A diary. My grip on the glass tightens. If Angela was diligent about keeping a diary, there’s a chance she wrote down what happened leading up to her disappearance.

I’m at Heather’s house for another hour, listening to her talk about how she sources all the inventory for the Lake House Home herself and how the next shipment of decor is supposed to come all the way from Norway. She asks me if I’ve ever been to Norway. I tell her I haven’t. Neither has she, but that doesn’t stop her from telling me everything she’s read online about it.

As I walk out to my car, Heather waves at me from the small porch. “Don’t be a stranger!”

—

“Angela had a diary,” I say to Frances, who’s sitting in one of the chairs of the boathouse. She drops her cigarette on the floor and stomps it out with her boot. “Heather said she kept one ever since she was a kid. What if it has clues about what happened? Or where she is?”

Frances sits up in the wicker chair. “Where is it?”

I shrug, feeling stupid for not thinking to ask Heather that question when I had the chance.

Frances walks the few steps to the window and looks out onto the water. Absentmindedly, she grabs hold of a piece of her frizzy hair and twirls it around her finger. Her profile is sharp, with her nose and chin sticking out past her lips.

“I bet it’s at Jonathan’s,” Frances says after a moment. “We should go there.”

“He’s not going to just let us read his wife’s diary. He barely wanted to talk about how she disappeared.”

“So we won’t ask him.” Frances’s nose is tilted upward, as if in defiance.

I shake my head, not liking where this is going. “No,” I say. “You can’t be serious.”

“Do you have any other ideas?” Frances asks. She raises an eyebrow. When I don’t protest, she continues. “It won’t be hard. We’ll just wait until Jonathan and the kids are out of the house. Then we’ll slip in and look for it.”

“Slip in? You mean break into his house and look for his missing wife’s diary? Frances, this is ridiculous. What if we get caught? We could go to jail. Brian would leave me. No, it’s too risky. I can’t do it, I just can’t.” I picture us picking the lock on Jonathan’s front door and moving through his empty house. Holding our breath. Peering around every corner. It’s absurd.

“We won’t get caught,” Frances says confidently.

“You don’t know that.”

“Okay. Say we don’t do it, right?” Frances shrugs. “We don’t break into his house and you just continue on, like Angela’s diary never existed. What happens next?” She raises her eyebrows like she’s waiting for me to respond, but I know she doesn’t want me to—not really. “I’ll tell you what happens: Whatever’s going on up there gets to you. For real this time. It gets to you like it got to Angela. And one of two things will happen: You end up disappearing, or you drive yourself so crazy that Brian leaves you anyway.” Frances takes a deep breath through her wide nostrils. “So what’ll it be, huh? Missing or divorced? Either way, you’re alone.”

My mouth opens in protest, but I realize I don’t have an argument. Frances is right. If I can find Angela’s diary and understand what was happening to her leading up to her disappearance, maybe I can avoid the same fate. If Angela experienced the same things as me, I’ll need her diary to convince Brian that we have to leave. It’s the only way he’ll finally believe me.

“Okay,” I say at last. “Let’s do it.”

Frances’s mouth curls into a smile.