No One's Home Read online

  “You sure? I’m worried about you, sweetie.”

  “I’m okay.” He shrugged to prove it. After a moment’s pause, he decided to risk one question. “Are you okay, Mom?”

  “Uh, sure, honey. I’m fine.”

  Out in the hallway, Margot winced. Are you okay, Mom? She shook her head at the closed door and then at the ceiling. She debated changing her computer password and checked her watch. No time.

  She quickly returned to her studio and set up her equipment. Computer. Cameras. Music. Tits. Smile.

  “Good morning and namaste!” She pressed her palms together and bowed to the front camera. “Today we’re going to be turning up the heat on our thighs . . .”

  She spent the next hour talking to the tiny web cameras, bending this way and that, holding impossible pretzel poses. She did it all in a sports bra and skintight yoga pants, often pointing to her own ass or stomach to describe the tightness, the breath. “If it doesn’t burn, you’re not doing it right.”

  Forty minutes later, lying on her back, her legs spread eagled, she led her audience through a guided meditation. “You’re walking along a sandy beach. Do you hear the waves crashing along the shore? Mmmmm. Smell the salt in the air. Doesn’t that sun feel good?”

  The soundtrack turned to ocean gulls and rushing water as Margot’s voice faded until it was just her breathing. In and out. Chest up and down. The sun from the windows lit her serene face. After a full minute of silence, she sat up and smiled at Camera 2. “Doesn’t that just feel wonderful? Stay still until you’re ready to come back to reality. Until next time, friends, remember. The light in me sees the light in you. Namaste.”

  Her arm reached for the laptop and tapped a button. She grabbed a towel and wiped the sweat from her face, dabbing gently to not smear her makeup. After several gulps of water, she turned to her computer and scrolled down for feedback.

  A line of text made her smile.

  She clicked into a new computer screen and tapped a few keys, then turned her head back to Camera 2. “You missed me, huh?”

  A husky voice answered from the laptop. “Babe, I could watch you all day. You know what you do to me.”

  She raised an eyebrow at the camera and gave it a slow smile. “What do I do to you?”

  “You wanna see?”

  She turned back to the laptop screen and stared into the fleshy glow. An embarrassed laugh caught in her throat. “Is that for me?”

  “Why? You want it?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I want. I’m a married woman.”

  “I know. That’s what makes it kind of hot, right?”

  “How old are you again?” She glanced at herself in the full-length mirror, pushing her chest out ever so slightly. The camera sat beside it.

  “Old enough to know you’re the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Is that right?” Margot gazed into the lens as though debating. Then she got up on all fours and slowly crawled across the floor to Camera 1. Gone was the worried mother and the nagging wife.

  In front of the camera, she was someone else altogether.

  12

  The Rawlings Family

  Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929

  The back door slammed open at 5:35 p.m., and Mr. Rawlings stormed into the kitchen without bothering to close it. Not even glancing at the maid cooking at the stove or his son picking bits of apple off the kitchen table, he pushed past them and into his library, flushed red, reeking of brown liquor.

  Ella flashed a reassuring smile at little Walter, whose face had fallen so far down he looked ready to cry. His father often had this effect on the boy. Always stern. Always demanding. Always disappointed. A fist would drop onto the dinner table, making the silver jump. Hasn’t anyone taught this child how to hold a fork properly?

  Four-year-old Walter Junior was to be seen and not heard. This phrase was repeated at least once a week when the boy attempted to interject something during the evening meal or couldn’t sit still for lectures on law and commerce. Do not speak until spoken to, young man.

  Ella would wait until Mr. and Mrs. Rawlings were out of earshot to pluck up his spirits or give him a warm hug. Just a wink from her was enough to lift the anchors of the boy’s heart. They shared secrets, the two of them. Secrets little Walter would never tell his parents.

  “Walter.” Ella put her elbows on the table in front of him and whispered, “Did I ever show you the dukkerin? How to tell the future?”

  His eyes went wide as he shook his head.

  “There are many ways,” she went on, picking up her mug and drinking her tea.

  Three rooms away, Mr. Rawlings was slamming drawers and cursing to himself. The sound of papers rifling through his shaking fingers ruffled the air, and then his voice. “It can’t be . . . it just can’t.” He rubbed his red face, nearly purple now, and collapsed into his leather chair. “That son of a bitch! We should’ve gotten out. We needed to get the hell OUT! ‘Ride the wave,’ he says! God DAMN IT!” His fist slammed into the top of his desk hard enough to make the floor quake.

  In the kitchen, both Ella and Walter flinched at the sound of his voice. It was a curse on them all. The maid shot a fiery glare toward the library and slapped her tea on the counter, clearing her throat loudly.

  The only response from the other end of the house was the splash of liquor into a crystal tumbler.

  Rolling her eyes to the heavens, Ella muttered to herself, “Prikaza!” She excused herself from Walter and plodded loudly across the butler’s pantry and past the breakfast room to the library door the man hadn’t bothered to close. “I get you something, sir? Coffee, perhaps?” she asked sharply.

  Mr. Rawlings didn’t even bother to look at her. He just stared glassy eyed into his tumbler of whiskey and shook his head. In that moment, he resembled little Walter so completely she almost smiled. Little boy. Lost.

  “I leave you in peace then.” With that she quietly shut the french doors to separate whatever mess the man had made for himself from the rest of the house. She studied him through the glass for a frowning moment. Lost wallet? Lost deal? Lost client? The man is always gruff, but this . . .

  He must’ve felt her staring. His murderous eyes caught hers on the other side of the glass an instant before she turned and hurried back to the kitchen, clutching her heart as though stabbed, muttering, “Bengla!”

  Back in the kitchen, little Walter was waiting. “How?” he asked.

  She smoothed the stricken expression from her face. “How what, muro shavo?”

  “How do you tell the future?”

  “Ah! Yes.” Ella picked up her mug and swirled the last bit of tea before drinking it. She set the cup in front of him. “There. You see it?”

  “See what?” His cherub face scrunched into a question mark.

  “The tea leaves, yes?”

  The soggy brown leaves sat in the bottom of the mug in a half ring with several little lumps to one side. He stared at them. “What do they mean?”

  “It all depends, shavo. What do you see?”

  “Umm . . .” The boy looked so close he nearly put his nose in the mug. “I see a cow.”

  “Yes. What else?”

  “A . . . tree. That one there”—he pointed into the mug—“that looks like a fire.”

  She frowned at this, but the boy didn’t notice.

  “And a sword! You see it?” Walter was loving this game. “Look at the birds! In the sky. See ’em? They’re flying upside down.”

  Ella pulled the cup a bit closer to her nose, turning it this way and that, worry creasing her face deeper and deeper.

  “What does it mean, Miss Ella?” the boy asked eagerly. One look at the lines on her face tempered his excitement. His lower lip curled in dismay. “It is not bad, is it?”

  Ella forced out a chuckle and said, “Of course not! This means great adventures for you. Pirate ships, maybe.”

  “Like Peter and Wendy?” The boy’s face lit up.

  “Maybe with a
sword fight, yes?”

  “Really?” Walter laughed, leaping up and pretending to sword fight an imaginary pirate.

  “Good. You go practice your sword. I be up in one minute.” She took the cup and the apple plate to the sink as Walter scampered up the back stairs to his playroom. Once he was out of sight, she held the cup up to the light of the window and peered in again, slowly turning the fortune over, hoping for better. The frown returned, and she quickly rinsed the leaves out and all the way down the drain. Shutting the water off, she mouthed a few words and made the sign of the cross over her chest.

  She glanced back toward the office before waddling her thick frame up the back stairs. Walter’s battle cries, “Take that and that . . . ,” greeted her when she reached the second floor. Ella smiled at the ruckus, but the worry lingered on her forehead.

  Down at the other end of the long, dark hall, Mrs. Rawlings’s door was shut as usual. The woman had been in bed for days. There were never any words spoken about it in the house, but Ella knew. Ella knew from the hours in bed and the blood on the linens. Another baby lost. This was the third since Walter had been born. The maid padded lightly down the hallway to the closed door.

  “Missus Rawlings?” she called through the wood.

  Inside, the younger woman rolled away from the voice and gazed out the window into the treetops. She’d spent most of her time that month in bed, hoping for the baby to quicken, but it hadn’t mattered. Tiny birds flitted from branch to branch on the other side of the glass. Sweet little girls she would never meet. Fresh tears burned her eyes.

  “Missus Rawlings, I come and check on you in one hour. You must eat then,” Ella said softly.

  Georgina buried her head under the sheets as though the maid could see her through the wood. Doubled over in pain, she wept silently to herself, wondering what she had done to deserve such a curse. Somewhere from deep beneath the house, she heard a sound. She sat up with a start and listened. A song? A cry?

  With a heavy sigh, Ella turned and headed back to Walter’s room. He was lying on the floor when she opened the door. A wooden stick stood up from between his side and arm. His eyes stared lifelessly at the ceiling, his face frozen and pale. On reflex, Ella clutched her chest. “Walter?”

  “Shh,” he whispered, eyes not blinking. “I’m dead. Hook got me.”

  Ella inhaled sharply at this, still visibly shaken at the sight of him on the ground but unwilling to let on. “Aha, little mulo. Then you must rise up. Rise up and haunt his days and nights!”

  A floor below them, Mr. Rawlings downed his second glass of whiskey and yanked open the center drawer of his desk. The crumpled newspaper on the leather desk blotter screamed its headline.

  STOCKS CRASH! INVESTORS PANIC!

  He pulled a silver pistol from the drawer with a shaking hand. It dropped to the desktop with the cold metal thunk of a dead bolt hitting the strike.

  13

  The Spielman Family

  July 27, 2018

  Myron sat in the garage, staring at the closed door. The engine ticked as it cooled. He ran a hand over his face and picked up his cell phone to read the message on the tiny glass screen again. Finally, he pressed a few buttons and put the phone to his ear.

  “Paul? It’s Myron . . . Yes, I got the message. I know how it looks, but you have to realize that this is a matter of professional opinion . . . I know what the Mayo Clinic says, but they didn’t perform the examination. I did . . . Yes, I understand I’m under a microscope here, but that doesn’t change my clinical diagnosis. Okay. I’ll talk to you then.”

  He hung up and pressed his sweating forehead into the palm of his hand. “Jesus Christ,” he whispered. “What the hell am I going to do?”

  The house was quiet as Myron slipped in through the back door, locking it behind him. He was later than usual. “Hello?”

  The smell of the greasy take-out dinner Margot had picked up from the local Chinese restaurant still lingered in the kitchen. Pork and steamed vegetables. She’d stuffed the leftovers in their new refrigerator, which sat dejected in the middle of a blank wall, buzzing. Myron closed the fridge, not hungry. The flickering light of a television pulled him toward the glass doors of the den.

  Margot was curled up on the leather sofa, napping to some home-remodeling show. An empty martini glass sat on the coffee table in front of her. He peeked in on her a moment. Sleeping peacefully. Blissfully silent.

  He carried his briefcase up the front stairs, stopping at the top to gaze down the long hall of closed doors. A faint glow lit the bottom of Hunter’s door as usual. Myron frowned at it. Did the kid even leave the house today? At the bend in the hallway, the attic door stood slightly ajar. The light upstairs had been left on again. He paused, considering it a moment, before shuffling past four more closed doors to the master suite at the far end.

  His massive walk-in closet had its own entrance. Myron opened it and strode past the custom shelves of designer shoes and perfectly ordered suits to the door on the opposite side. Their contractor, Max, had transformed the seventh bedroom, originally designed as a dressing room or nursery, into an enormous master bath. A crystal chandelier hung in the middle of the vast expanse of brass and cold marble. The brightness of the white counters and flooring was jarring as he clicked on the lights. The floor joists strained painfully under the weight of the stone slabs and the oversize soaking tub beneath the window.

  Myron flipped on the in-floor heat and headed to his half of the room with his own sink, vanity, and private cabinets. He set his briefcase down and thumbed the combination into the two dial locks on the latches. Inside lay ten white boxes, each rattling with pills. The names of manufacturers splashed across the cardboard along with flashy brand names that promised high-tech chemistry and clinical results. Stacking the boxes up, he grabbed two brown plastic prescription bottles from his medicine cabinet and popped each open. Glancing at the reflection of the closed door in the mirror, he popped two white pills into his mouth and swallowed without water. He let out a long exhale of relief.

  After a quick inventory of his remaining supply, he began opening one sample box after another, prying pills from blister packs and spilling them from his palm into the half-empty brown bottles. He quickly snapped both childproof lids into place again. Once the two bottles were back in the cabinet, he gathered the torn boxes and swept them into his briefcase.

  Work done, Myron straightened up and checked his own reflection. He eased the loose strands of his wavy hair back into position. He checked the whites of his eyes and pulled back each lid to gauge the color of the red meat below. Baring his teeth, he checked his gums and under his tongue. Satisfied, he picked up the briefcase and left the bathroom.

  In the closet, he stopped to deposit the leather briefcase below a row of neatly arranged Italian shirts. Every shade of white hung in order as though in a clothing store. His shiny leather shoes were lined up in their steel racks like trophies. His silk ties lay neatly in thin custom drawers he and Margot had picked out together. The entire room smelled of Gucci cologne and sports deodorant.

  Myron carefully hung up the suit he was wearing, shifting the hangers to avoid crowding, touching, rumpling, ruining. He threw the clothes from his gym bag in the canvas hamper Margot had insisted on keeping separate from her own. It’s just simpler this way. Besides, your workout gear stinks! As he was setting his gym bag onto its shelf, the attic floor above him creaked.

  The sound straightened his spine and craned his neck up toward the ceiling.

  The white plaster over his head stared blankly back.

  Another squeak in the floorboards upstairs left him no choice. Barefoot, he padded over to his closet door and peered out into the hall. The setting sun streamed in through the leaded glass window, washing the wall next to him in shades of pink and gold, shrouding the rest of the hallway in murky shadows. He squinted at the attic door, half-hidden in the back hallway.

  A dark shape moved past the door.

  He startled
at the sight of it. Frowning, he took a cautious step out into the hall toward the attic door. “Hunter? Is that you?”

  A faint laugh echoed down the crooked back hallway, bouncing off the closed doors. Or did it come from outside? A passing car? A radio? He stopped breathing for a moment, his eyes searching for the source, his heart pounding loudly against his ribs.

  The air stood still.

  “Hello?” he said louder this time. “Hunter? Is that you? Margot?” Saying their names seemed to break the spell. He exhaled. Haunted house indeed, he chided himself and plodded loudly down the hall.

  The back corridor stood empty. He flipped on the light to be sure. He swung open the attic door and checked the stairs to find them empty as well. Up and down the back hallway, he walked a quick patrol, opening doors, snapping lights on and off. Nothing.

  He stopped at Hunter’s door, almost forgetting to knock.

  Tap. Tap.

  Inside the room, Hunter felt his father’s footsteps vibrate through the floorboards before he heard the knock. He removed his headset and lowered his plastic gun. “Yeah?”

  “Hey.” Myron opened the door and waved awkwardly at the boy. “Was that you in the hallway?”

  “Huh?”

  “Just a second ago. Did you . . .” No. That doesn’t make sense. Myron shook his head at himself. Hunter was in his room. “Did you hear anything just now?”

  “Uh, no. I had my headphones on.”

  “Huh. Must’ve been your mother.” Myron quickly changed the subject. “So . . . is that . . . that a good game?”

  “I guess.” Hunter shrugged.

  “Is it fun?” Myron seemed to regret the question before it was out of his mouth. He wasn’t a “cool” dad, no matter how much he’d like to be.

  “Uh. Sort of.” Hunter held up the gun. On the frozen screen behind him, a zombie’s face was caught midsnarl.

  “Right.” His father nodded as though they’d just decided something important.

  “You, uh . . . you okay, Dad?” Something in Hunter seemed to wake up, looking at the man. A sober awareness.