The Spite House(9)

“You want to know how much I’ve got?”

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I just need to know you’re not doing anything wild out there.”

“I’m not, like, charging randos fifty bucks a kiss if that’s what you mean.”

“There’s a lot of other stuff you could be doing that I would hope you wouldn’t do.”

“Such as?”

He leaned forward, pressed his stubborn gaze against hers, and lowered his voice. “Anything that could circle back to you and be a problem we can’t fix.”

Dess shook her head and lay back in bed. “I hate when you do that.”

“Remind you of something you should already know?”

She rolled her eyes. “No. When you sound like Pa-Pa Fred. Put on your deep voice and your super serious face. It freaks me out.”

“Well, if he was here he would…” Eric trailed off.

“You were about to lie and say he’d say the same thing you were saying,” Dess said.

Eric couldn’t help but smile. “I was. Truth is, he’d probably be proud of you. Except he’d probably be upset you weren’t carrying a knife or a little baby pistol, just in case you needed it for whatever.”

“Yeah, in case I needed to ‘make something happen,’ instead of just letting it happen.”

They both laughed quietly, though neither found it very funny, as if Frederick could hear them and they were being polite.

After a sigh, Dess said, “Dad, I think we’re already in the middle of a problem we can’t fix.”

“Maybe we can with this new opportunity. The thing in Degener. I think we’ve got a real shot here. After the talk we had today I’ve just got a feeling. That lady Dana could have just told me, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ or not even called me back, but she told me to come in. There has to be a reason for that. I think I have a shot at this. I really do.”

Dess looked at Stacy again, and Eric wondered if she was reminding herself why they were where they were, the decisions they had made, what was at stake. “I’ve been pretty careful, Dad, just for the record. I might be even smarter than you always say I think I am.”

At this, he smirked, as did she. Both smiles disappeared in a couple of seconds.

“I had to do something,” Dess said. “You were barely finding any jobs.”

“I know, I know. I understand. But whatever you’ve been doing, you don’t have to anymore. Look, driving to Degener won’t set us back any, right? I do this interview, they either make an offer or they don’t. If they don’t, we come back, we stick to the plan. I know it’s been a little sketchy but, believe it or not, it’s been working for us so far. On the other hand, if they give me the job, she said we’d get an advance just for moving in. Then we stay there, we power through it, I do the work, and we’re set. They want to hear about knocks and footsteps at night, I’ll tell them about everything I hear. It’s an old place, I’m sure I won’t have to lie about it. And afterward we should have enough money to probably get a house with some land and space. Hell, probably enough where neither of us would have to look for work for a while, let alone take a job that might be trouble.”

“Hm. You know, if I said something like that to you, you’d be like”—she deepened her voice, clasped her hands across her chest, and raised one eyebrow—“I heard a ‘should’ and a ‘probably’ just a few words apart.”

“That impression isn’t getting any better. You don’t work on it at all when I’m not around, do you?”

“It’s like ninety-nine percent there. I did the eyebrow and hand thing and everything. For a sec you almost thought I was you.”

They shared a laugh, with Eric’s being a little louder than it had to be. Part of him wanted to at least see Stacy stir at the sound of it. He never liked how deeply she could sleep. She didn’t budge, though, and he said to Dess, “Let’s call it a night. We got a drive tomorrow. And if the house actually has anything weird going on with it, besides the way it looks, this could be our last chance to get some decent sleep for a while.”

Dess shut her eyes. “You really think there could be something there?”

“Probably not. Hopefully not.” He waited for Dess to tease him about his choice of words one more time, but she didn’t say anything. Eric stayed awake a few more minutes, listening for Dess’s breathing to steady itself. It gradually did, settling into a rhythm that almost matched Stacy’s. After he was sure she was asleep, he laid his head on his pillow.

As was his custom since they’d been on the road, he slept fully clothed—keys and phone in his right pocket, wallet in his left—in case something happened that demanded a quick exit.





CHAPTER 4



Stacy



Stacy heard her name in her sleep and knew that the person who said it was a little girl named Libby who was the daughter of the nice waitress lady. Libby had thanked Stacy in her prayers, just like her mother had said she would, and now Stacy could see her. Libby slept with a night-light. She slept in a bed with purple sheets. She slept on her side with the paper bow Stacy had made for her clipped to her blond hair.

Stacy couldn’t see into Libby’s room until after she heard her name, and it must have taken her some time to get there, because when she did, Libby woke up like she heard someone come through the door. Libby wiped at her eyes and looked around, then rested her head on her pillow with her eyes open.