Chapter 2

The room tilts—time itself standing still. I am simultaneously watching Harlow fall, the splintered railing suspended midair right in front of me, and also watching her stumble back from that same railing, a look of confusion painted across her ethereal face. The cherry wood perfectly unsplit. 

Charlie blinks heavily beside me, a stunned expression on his face. Bryce appears in the foyer, Bethany on his heels. He looks from me to our child, planted safely at the top of the stairs. 

“What’s going on?” he asks, out of breath. 

“She was. . .the railing,” I look to Charlie for confirmation but he remains still as stone. “The railing snapped,” I go on. “She was falling over.” Bryce glances quickly between Charlie and I, a look of uncertainty in his eyes. 

“Are you sure it wasn’t just creaking?” he finally asks. “The house is a hundred years old.” 

“Yes,” I snap. “I know what I saw!”

“Okay,” he puts his hands up in surrender and turns, taking the steps two at a time. “Harlow, are you hurt baby?” He asks when he reaches her. She shakes her head but doesn’t speak, peering at the stair railing from the corner of her eye. I know she’s seen it too—my only corroborating witness, a four year old with an imagination far wilder than anything I could have just made up about the stairwell.

Bryce carries her down, her stuffed cow in one hand, the creepy doll in the other, and hands her off to Bethany. 

“You girls go get settled in the family room.” Bethany doesn’t hesitate but I notice her watching me as she turns to leave, as if she thinks I may have lost my mind. 

Have I? 

I follow Bryce back up the stairs, where he examines the railing closely. He pulls on it, then leans his own weight against it, but it doesn’t budge. As sturdy as the trees from which it came a hundred years ago. I trace my fingers over its polished surface, where, only a minute ago, I watched a fissure snake its way down the entirety of the rail—chunks of wood falling to the tiled floor below. 

Charlie is still frozen at the bottom of the stairs, the shallow rise and fall of his chest the only indication that he’s breathing. 

“What did you see, Bud?” Bryce asks him, descending to the foyer again. 

“I–I’m not sure,” he stammers. 

“Bryce, I’m telling you. The whole railing broke apart. She was falling over it, I know she was,” I plead. He wraps his arms around me, pulling me against him. 

“It’s okay,” he breathes against the top of my hair. “She’s safe. She’s okay.”

I shove off of him lightly, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes to stave off the tears.

“I’m sorry,” Charlie says, his voice barely a whisper. “I was just looking at the doll, I wasn’t paying attention.” His voice quivers with fear. 

“It’s okay, Charlie,” I say, forcing a smile. “It’s been a really long day. Dad’s probably right. The wood just creaked and I thought I saw something I didn’t.” 

I pull him in for a tight hug, planting a kiss on the top of his head. 

“Go join the girls, we’ll be right in.” Without another word, he sets off down the hallway towards the family room as I turn to Bryce. 

“I know what I saw,” I say again, as if saying it enough times will make him believe me. But I can see it written on his face. 

Worry. 

Not for Harlow and her near tumble down the stairwell, but for me. 

“We should have someone out to inspect it,” he says, nodding towards the railing. We both know it won’t be necessary. 

I follow Bryce into the family room and join the kids on the couch. I try to enjoy the movie but I can’t shake a new feeling that’s settled deep in my bones. 

The feeling that someone, or something, is watching us. 

Is watching me. 

***

It was late when the movie ended and all three kids had fallen asleep on various parts of the floor or furniture. Rather than wake them, we gathered pillows and blankets and tucked them in where they lay. Then we stretched out on couches ourselves and we all spent our first night in the new house in the family room together. 

Now I try to move about the kitchen as quietly as possible so as to not wake everyone else. The coffee machine on the counter, like all of the other kitchen appliances, is several decades old. No one has lived here in fifty years, but remarkably, everything still seems to function properly. 

I brought my own coffee grounds, optimistic that there would be a working coffee machine. The aroma of pumpkin spice now fills the room as the fresh amber-brown liquid drips into the waiting pot below it. 

I wash a mug from the cabinets as I wait for it, filling it to the brim once it’s done. I poke my head back into the family room to see everyone still fast asleep. The kids unfazed by Bryce’s dull snores. I smile in at them, some of the weary dread from the night before finally subsiding. 

Maybe I didn’t see what I thought I did after all. It was a long day of traveling, I was well past exhausted. I have finally convinced myself it’s true when I pass back through the foyer on my way to the porch swing I had seen when we arrived yesterday. 

I steal a glance back at the stairwell, a shiver running up my spine. I tilt my head and squint at a small pile of wood chips and sawdust, gathered right below where Harlow had been standing last night. A reminder that what I saw had been real. 

I shake the memory from my mind and pull the front door open, stepping onto the porch. I’ll show Bryce the debris pile when he wakes up, then he’ll believe me. He’ll have to. 

The trees surrounding the property are cast with a golden glow as the sun rises behind them. Brilliant reds, oranges, and golds as they shed their summer green and prepare to return to the Earth for winter. I take a deep breath, the smell of wet earth mixing with the cinnamon scents wafting from the mug in my hands. 

The air is still and silent this morning, save for the call of an owl from deep inside her forested home. The calm I felt staring up at our statuesque home last night settles over me again out here. It is easy to remember why fall in the Midwest is my favorite time of year. 

Back in Arizona, where we spent the last fifteen years, fall wasn’t a season we got to experience. Not in the traditional sense. Back here, I am reminded that nothing beats the peaceful quiet of the Missouri foothills. 

I tuck my feet beneath me as I settle onto the wooden porch swing. I could get used to taking a coffee out here and watching the forest wake up alongside me. The swing rocks back and forth gently, despite a stark lack of breeze. 

I close my eyes and let the gentle swaying lull me peacefully into a dreamlike calm. When I open them again, a bright yellow jeep is speeding up the gravel drive, a matching black one following behind it. A white cloud of dust kicks up behind them and shatters the beauty of my peaceful morning. 

I take a sip from my mug but the coffee has run cold. I walk briskly back to the front door, suddenly too aware that the jeeps pulling up must contain the college boys Bryce hired to help unload the truck. 

“Bryce,” I call down the hallway. He pops his head out from the kitchen. His hair is wet and he’s fully dressed as if he’s just finished taking a shower. 

“Where were you?” he asks, concern pinching his brow. “I thought maybe you went upstairs to sleep but you weren’t there either.” 

“I just stepped out onto the porch to watch the sunrise with my coffee,” I say, too defensively. “What time is it? Those college kids you hired are already here.” 

“I told them ten o’clock,” he says, glancing at the screen of his cell phone before he drops it into his pocket. “Right on time.” 

“It’s ten?” I ask, taken aback. “The sun was just coming up when I went out there. I must have fallen asleep on the porch swing! They can’t come in, I’m not even dressed yet.” 

Bryce chuckles and runs his hand over the back of my hair, smoothing it down. He pulls me in and kisses my forehead, taking the mug from my hand. 

“Go get dressed, I’ll make sure no one goes into the master until you’re done in there.” 

I follow his instructions and make my way back to the foyer. I pause at the bottom step and glance down, where the pile of debris had been just a few minutes—or hours—ago, but it’s gone. 

“Did someone sweep—”I start, but when I turn to find Bryce, I see the front door clicking closed as he goes outside to greet the movers. I try to swallow back the dread once again rising in my chest.

Upstairs, Charlie and Harlow are on the floor of his room playing with toy cars. Bethany’s door is shut, but I hear her talking to someone as I walk by and I think she must have finally found enough cell signal to get a call off. Probably to her best friend Mandy. 

I smile as I make my way to the master bedroom. Whatever has been wrong with me since we arrived, at least the kids are enjoying the new house. 

I can’t help but poke around in the drawers and closets. In the same way Bethany had found her room fully stocked with vintage clothing, mine is too. Dresses and skirts adorn the closet racks, and designer jeans, circa nineteen-seventy fill the dresser drawers. 

In the bathroom, the vanity is filled with makeup and perfume from the same era. The distant relatives who lived here last had expensive, lavish taste. What could have possibly caused them to leave all of their possessions here and never return for them? I shudder at the thought. 

***

The unloading of the truck is relatively uneventful. The boys spend most of their day moving things from the kids rooms to storage to make room for their own furniture. Bethany decides to keep all the vintage clothes in her room, but sends the outdated furniture and decor down to the basement. Charlie hangs on to the toys from his new room but lets everything else go and we let Harlow do the same. 

The sun is getting low in the sky by the time the truck is empty. Bryce pays the boys in cash and heads into town to get pizza for dinner. We’ll have to make a trip for groceries tomorrow. 

Bethany is talking to a boy who looks younger than the rest, twirling her hair around her finger—her signature nervous tic. I hear a loud laugh bubble out of her and she clamps her hand tightly over her mouth, her face turning an unnatural shade of red. 

Oh to be young again, I think. 

“Who was that?” I ask her as the boys pile back into the jeeps. 

“Oh my god, mom,” she starts, but she doesn’t walk away and after the jeep has made it to the end of the driveway she says, “his name is Tucker. I think he goes to my new school.” 

“Oh? Well it’s nice that you’ll know someone on Monday,” I smile. 

“I guess. It’s not like I really know him, I met him for two minutes.” The mask of disdain she spent much of the summer wearing slides back into place and she storms through the front door, letting it slam closed behind her. 

I try not to let her mood change affect me. Nothing strange has happened since the incident on the stairs last night unless you count me losing several hours of my morning to the relaxing porch swing as strange, but I’m trying to chalk both up to being overly tired. 

The house feels more like us now that the boys removed all the old photos of family members we never met from the walls while Bethany and I followed along behind them dusting and hanging photos of our own. 

The pumpkin spice candle burning in the kitchen paired with the breeze coming in the open windows has me practically skipping through the house putting finishing touches on the downstairs decor when Bryce arrives back with the pizza. 

I step into the hallway to greet him, a smile already plastered on my face, when my eyes land on something that sucks the air from my lungs.  

“Bryce?” I say, as he steps inside, my voice shaking. “Has that been there all day?” I raise one trembling finger and his eyes follow it to the wood paneled wall running the length of the hallway. 

Right there, in giant scrawled letters, etched directly into the satin-grained wall, are two words that chill me to my bones.  

Welcome Home.