“We talked about this, Joe,” Alan said. “This is our home. It’s the place where your mom had her fondest childhood memories and we want to ensure it stays in the family.”
“Who will get the house when you guys die?” Joe asked. Joe rubbed his head and squinted.
“What do you mean?”
“How is it going to stay in the family? I’m going to move away for college, right? Then I’ll go wherever I want.”
“And your mom and I will work here until we retire. Then we’ll get to enjoy all this luxury.”
“But what if I don’t want to move here when you die? The house won’t be in the family anymore.”
“Maybe someone else will want it—one of your cousins. We’ll work it out one step at a time,” Alan said.
“I just think that if I don’t want it, then why do we have to keep it? I don’t need it, and we barely know those other cousins. They only come here for Thanksgiving, right?”
“And some come for Christmas,” Alan said. “Look, Joe, some families have traditions. It’s how they make their mark on the world. This place is your mom’s mark.”
“I don’t think we should have to live here just because she came here sometimes when she was a kid.”
“How about we live here because it’s a good place to live? It’s a great community, and we have woods and a lake. We get to try snowboarding this winter—that will be fun, right?”
“I don’t know,” Joe said.
“I don’t see what the problem is, Joe,” Alan said. “Do you miss your friends? You seemed happier here with your new friends than you ever did down in Virginia.”
“I just don’t like this place,” Joe said. He set his fork down and leaned close to Alan. Joe whispered, “I hate it here.”
“Give it a chance.”
Alan fought the urge to take a nap after breakfast. He regretted the pancake impulse. It always seemed like a good idea when he was cooking, but afterwards he felt exhausted for the rest of the day. His body didn’t handle the huge influx of sugar well. With a bunch of tools collected into a bucket, Alan trudged up the stairs to the attic. If the lumber company came through and delivered the materials that afternoon as promised, Alan would only have a few hours to move them inside before the rain was supposed to fall.
The diagonal of the window opening was a little smaller than a sheet of the bead board. It would have to do. Alan needed to remove both the upper and lower sashes and maybe even some of the trim if he was going to fit the sheets inside. The result as he imagined wouldn’t look as tidy as drywall, but it would be a huge improvement over the insulation he’d hung.
His utility knife cut through layers of old paint around the molding. For the most part, it didn’t chip or peel around the blade. The paint accepted the cuts and adhered to the wood beneath. Regret bloomed in Alan’s gut. His knife was invading the integrity of the old house. He was destroying—albeit temporarily—a part of the history that his wife treasured.
Alan shook away the thought. It was an attic. There was no value to this old window, however hand-crafted or precise the workmanship might be. As he finished his cut around the perimeter of the first piece of molding, Alan wondered if the board he was about to pry away from the window had been installed in 1852. He wondered if the board had been milled from a tree felled to clear the field out back.
Fuck it, he thought.
Alan tapped his pry bar under the molding. The bar dented the edge of the board and the old nails groaned. The nails popped free, sounding like firecrackers going off in the still air. He tugged the board and released it from the window. Alan ran his hand across the back of the wood. It was dark with age. At the edge where the pry bar had damaged the wood, he saw that the board was a thick chunk of maple—denser and harder and more expensive than anyone would use in new construction. Alan tossed it to the floor and started on the next board. It only took a few minutes to disassemble the window and remove the sashes. He measured the opening and smiled.
This is going to be easy.
Alan walked to the top of the narrow stairs.
I’ll set up the ladder and get the strapping up here. That way I can keep an eye on the driveway in case they come early. I wonder if I should bother to shim out the strapping to make it all flat.
Alan was lost in thought as he walked through the bedroom and found the top of the main stairs. He realized what he was doing—he was stretching this little project out forever to delay the process of evaluating his photos. He could have worked in a cold attic. Now that the insulation was up, it was certainly tight enough up there to spend an hour a day arranging his photos so he could choose which ones should go in the book.
I wonder if should get rid of the sash weights and fill that space with foam. I could always put latches on the windows, and foam would definitely reduce the airflow around that window.
Alan walked down the stairs, running his hand down the thick bannister. When he was almost to the landing, a scraping sound made him turn around. It was the sound of a cinderblock being pushed across a rough concrete floor. It was the sound of stone on stone, grinding across a thin layer of crushed dust.
Alan stopped.
The dress, he thought.
He saw a woman, standing on the stairs. She was about halfway up and had her hand on the bannister, where his had slid just seconds before. She wore the rose-colored dress. Alan’s tongue felt like dry sandpaper against his lips as he licked them. He closed his mouth. This time he could see her face. Liz looked a lot like her mom, Emily. Their face had the same perfect shape—their cheekbones and chin formed a beautiful triangle to frame a smile; their eyes were perfect almonds, crinkled at the corners with good cheer. Alan had studied the picture of Emily in the old hoop dress and noted how pretty Emily had been.
This was not Emily.
The woman above Alan on the stairs was old and sour. Her chin pointed at Alan, like an accusation. Her eyes were beady black sparks. When the woman on the stairs smiled, Alan felt his testicles tighten closer to his body and a chill run down his back. The woman, no more than seven feet from Alan, took her free hand and raised a pointed finger to her ear. The finger pushed aside the white curls of cobweb hair. The woman kept her eyes locked with Alan’s as the pointed finger moved to her mouth. She laid the dusty claw of a finger across her pale lips and shook her head slowly.
Alan’s voice was little more than a croak as he formed three words. “Who are you?”
The woman’s smile widened. She shook her head back and forth and kept that finger across her lips.
Alan stood, looking at the woman. Outside, he heard a car coming up the driveway. He couldn’t turn his gaze away from the woman on the stairs. She stopped shaking her head and removed her finger from her lips. She tapped each of her fingertips against her thumb, starting with the pinky, as if she was counting to four. After the index finger, she flared out all her fingers. Alan heard a dry snap as one of her knuckles popped. He saw all of this with his peripheral vision because his eyes were still locked on her beady black pupils.
Alan felt a trickle of sweat running down his side from his armpit.
With all his will, he managed to lift his foot towards the next step.
The woman slowly moved her hand towards Alan. As soon as he was close enough, he meant to grab her.
“Alan?” Bob’s voice called from the kitchen.
Alan opened his mouth. No sound came out.
He moved his other foot and took another step towards the ancient woman.
Footsteps were moving through the dining room. “Alan?”
His hand was up and moving towards her outstretched hand. Alan took another step.