When her eyes adjusted, she saw that the lawn at the far side glowed brighter, as if a room in back were lit. She noticed other things too, like a wraparound porch and a large barbecue on the patio, and her imagination bounded from rotting corpses to lazy afternoon teas and soft breezes, summer evenings filled with the heady scent of burgers on the grill.
She didn’t much like Victorians. Port Furlong was full of them, mostly the tall, narrow type that leered over sidewalks. They made her think of bitter spinsters wearing too-frilly dresses. But this one was okay. Wider and looser, without all the fussy curlicues. It was comfortable-looking despite its grand size.
After studying it awhile, she felt someone watching her. A presence peering from one of the windows on the ground floor. The gaze came from just above the sill, like maybe a little kid was looking out. But the papers said Daniel didn’t have any siblings, and even if he did, no one could possibly see her out there. They certainly couldn’t be staring right into her eyes, which was how it felt. She blinked and the presence was gone, just another window on a huge old house.
She wondered if she should worry about Daniel’s vengeful ghost. Wouldn’t he consider her at least partially to blame? But she dismissed the thought. Daniel knew what he’d done. He wouldn’t want to face her again. Besides, while the living had caused her endless grief, she’d never had the slightest trouble with the dead.
A light came on in the kitchen, and Daniel’s father shuffled in. She knew him right away from his picture in the paper. His gray head thrust forward with effort, as if it were dragging the rest of him, as if he had bowling balls chained to those storklike legs. He went to the refrigerator and pulled out a plastic container—probably a casserole some friend had dropped by. People around here did that sort of thing. He fished a spoon out of the sink and began eating the stuff cold and congealed, a duty to be done.
A blustery wind whistled through the trees, sent broken leaves showering over Evangeline. She unrolled a small blanket she’d tied to her pack and wrapped it around herself. She wondered how much cold a body could survive, but she already knew that someone had seen her and wanted her there.
She sat back against the gnarled tree, watching the old man eat at the kitchen sink. And she felt it again, someone in the room next to the kitchen, looking out at her. Looking right into her eyes.
10
The kitchen’s sink, long stacked with foul dishes, had begun to reek. While the mess offended me, it provided an odd comfort, as if the house were mourning too, had joined me in shunning the stifling conventions of cleanliness and health.
I forced down a few bites of stale bean salad and threw the container into the sink, not bothering to scrape it clean. It had begun to mold, and I wanted to add it to the greasy sea. The mold was alive. That is what I told myself. That was my excuse. I stood there, my reflection distorted in the old night glass, and watched as some beans sank and others floated to the surface.
I retired then to my room and fell asleep exhausted. At one in the morning, I woke to Rufus whining and pawing at the bed, nudging his head under my arm. I’d forgotten to let him out. As soon as I opened the back door, he raced outside, lost into that darkness. Twenty minutes later, he hadn’t returned despite many calls. I shoved my bare feet into cold work boots, pulled on a coat, and ventured out with a flashlight.
Halfway across the field, Rufus came tearing from the other side of the house, panting and wide-eyed, evading attempts to snag his collar. He barked as if instructing me to follow and ran back around.
On the far side, an animal of some sort lay under the old plum tree. As I approached, the creature reconfigured itself, turned human. Cutting the darkness with swipes of light, I pieced together an image—a girl, a teenager I guessed, her wild hair filled with pine needles and bark, her startled eyes squinting against the glare.
Rufus laid his head on her lap, and she wrapped her arms around him, her face twisted to the side as if in pain. When I switched off the light, she said, “Thanks.” A familiarity in her tone made me wonder if she was a student or the child of a neighbor. I knelt beside her. She was shivering in the cold. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she said, brushing dead leaves off her cheek.
She offered nothing more, so I asked if I could get her home.
“There’s no home,” she said.
“A friend then?”
“No friend. We were new here.”
“We were?”
“I mean me. It’s just me.”
“No people here then?”
She hesitated, then said, “No. No people.”
She said she’d been in town only a few days, had wandered up my drive thinking it was a park, hoping to find shelter. Rufus had led me to a foundling. What option was there but to bring her to warmth, to food, to a clean bed if she was in need? I led her inside to the kitchen table, but the stench and disarray of the kitchen embarrassed me, and I went to the sink.
“Don’t worry. It’s okay,” she said. She smiled and held my gaze in a way that didn’t feel right, and I glanced away for a long moment. When I looked back, she seemed more like what she was, an abandoned creature, small and vulnerable and fierce. She absently touched her left wrist, and her eyes darted to the battered pack she’d lugged in and set near the door.
Mud caked her jeans, and her dark red hair hung to the middle of her back, matted and dirty, weeks without a wash. Who knew what might be living in its knotted secret places. Her face, though smudged with dirt, was smooth and freckled, her eyes a startling yellow-green like new moss. She stroked Rufus with hands that were a horror—nails black with impacted dirt, sticky grime between her fingers, streaks of blood on hands and forearms, as if she had clawed her way through the dark earth to the spot where I’d found her.
She kept glancing at the refrigerator. She was hungry. Of course. I went to it, pulled out one of many plastic tubs, and peeked inside.
“Lasagna,” I said. “I think it’s still good. Let me heat it for you.”
“Cold is okay,” she said. She went to the sink, fished that frightful water for silverware. She pulled out a big spoon and two forks and started rinsing them. Something proprietary in her manner put me on edge, made me wonder how long she’d been under that tree.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Should I know you? Have I forgotten you somehow?”
Her head jerked around. “No,” she said, agitated. Then, more calmly, “No, like I said, I’m new here.”
She pulled her hands out of the sink. “Oh. Should I not have? I wanted to help. You’re being so nice. I wanted to help.”
“No. Of course it’s okay, but please, sit.”
I would feed her, but then what? There was no reason to involve the police, nor was there anyone I wished to frighten with a middle-of-the-night call. “Eat. Afterward, if you want, I’ll set you up in the guest room.”
I dished her up a large serving of the overly cheesy affair, one of the many casseroles thoughtful Friends had deposited on my doorstep after the memorial. With thick yellow grease coating the top, it hardly appeared appetizing, but she dug in, wolfing down a half dozen bites before she stopped and looked up.
“Would you eat some with me? Please?” The voice was that of a small child, her fair skin reddening.