ELLA DANE CLEANED THE ROOM while Lacey went outside to pick up the glass. Lacey kept looking over her shoulder, sensing Drew’s proximity. She never saw him, and the house had a dull, sulky feel that made her lower the thermostat, though it wasn’t exactly heat. The air pressed in through her pores and left a sour taste in her mouth.
Eric rolled his eyes at Lacey’s story about how the wind had thrown a branch through Ella Dane’s window, but he was glad to let Lacey take care of the repairs, and Harry Rakoczy’s handyman was quick about the window, though he kept promising to come back to finish the ceiling and then canceling at the last minute. Had something in the house disturbed him? More likely it was Lacey’s own fault, for paying him in full for the entire job instead of withholding half until the ceiling was done.
All through Labor Day weekend, Ella Dane filled the house with lavender candles and spent ten minutes in every room each day, meditating and singing lullabies. She phoned her friend Jack and told him her experiences. A chill in the kitchen, another in the hallway. Lacey didn’t think the candles and lullabies would help, yet there was no sign of Drew, so maybe there was something to it after all. She felt uneasily that Drew was only waiting, biding his time; lullabies would not sing him away.
Whatever their effect on Drew, the lullabies got rid of Eric very effectively. He spent the whole weekend holed up in his office, and he didn’t ask why Ella Dane had switched from “Om Mani Padme Hum” to “Hush Little Baby,” which was just as well. Lacey had no intention of telling him.
Lacey felt less married every day. The last time she’d felt truly in harmony with Eric was—when? Coming home from the hospital, when she saw the furniture—could she truly be that shallow? Now she was just a chore on his list: water the grass, answer e-mail, check on Lacey. Solitude gave her time to think, but the time did her no good; her thoughts chased each other in an endless circle. Was Drew a trespasser—was he a ghost, so tangible, so real? Should she ask for Ella Dane’s help or should she deal with Drew (whatever he was) on her own? Should she tell Eric, and if she did, then what should she tell him? The only way Eric would believe in Drew’s existence would be if they met face-to-face, and maybe not even then. Lacey imagined herself saying to Eric, “This house is haunted”—no, there was no possible way that conversation could end well.
She had to take care of Drew herself. To hand that responsibility to Ella Dane would be to abdicate control of the house. Whatever he was, she could handle him—civilize the trespasser, tame the ghost. Real or not, he was a noisy boy, and she a teacher who kept a lively room. By her third year, her principal knew her strengths and gave her the loudest of the loud, the unmedicated ADHDs, the brilliant and bored, the illiterate and belligerent, the squirmy worms. Usually those boys were separated, spread out two or three per room. This last year, Lacey’d had ten of them. They all ended reading at or above grade level, not one of them suspended or expelled. If she could handle that crowd, she could take care of Drew.
On the Tuesday after Labor Day, she went shopping for school supplies as if buying for a classroom: crayons, construction paper, copy paper, safety scissors—the talismans of her competence. Though she waited for Drew all day Wednesday, and Thursday morning, the house was quiet. Nothing fell but sunlight from the porthole window. On Thursday afternoon, she came home from her appointment with Dr. Vlk full of good news with no one to tell.
The baby weighed slightly more than a pound, by Dr. Vlk’s estimate, perfect for his age, and he could hear. Lacey laid her hand over the bump, and when Dr. Vlk clapped, the baby twitched. She didn’t want to disturb Eric at work, and Ella Dane had picked up a part-time job in the gift shop of a holistic spa. But she had to tell someone.
She paid off the taxi and stood in her driveway as it left. She really needed a car of her own. Dr. Vlk said she could drive again, and she was officially off the semi-bed-rest limitations, except she still should stay away from the stairs.
She’d been putting this off day by day, waiting for the perfect time to ask Harry Rakoczy about Drew. But there would never be a perfect time to say Did you sell me a haunted house?, and he had already deflected her earlier questions about Drew; she had no rubric and no plan for the conversation. What did he know about her house, and why hadn’t he warned her?
Music rang from Harry’s house, as always. He came to the door with a remote in his hand, and when he saw her, he clicked a button and the music stopped. “Lacey Miszlak!” he said. “What a pleasant surprise. I have a student soon, and I made coffee. It’s one of those students. About as musical as a constipated frog, poor kid. Come on in.”