She waits for me to answer—and when I don’t, she keeps talking: “Anyway. I covered her body with leaves. I brought Flora home in my car. I told Ted what had happened and he wanted to call the police, but I convinced him we could make everything right. We were upstate in the middle of nowhere. The woman was an immigrant, she couldn’t speak English, I figured she was probably someone’s cleaning lady. I figured if we hid her body and kept the child, no one would notice her missing. Or people would just think that she’d run off with her daughter. Women do it all the time. So I sent Ted out to the park. He gathered the easel and the blanket and all of Flora’s toys, and he buried everything in the woods. With the body, I mean. He was gone all night. It took him forever. He didn’t get back until the sun was up.
“Now it should have ended right there—except Margit’s brother is actually a really big deal on Seneca Lake. He owns this stupid goat farm that all the summer people love, and he’s sponsored Margit and her husband, József, to move from Hungary to the United States and work for him. And worse, it never occurs to me that Margit must have driven to the lake in a vehicle—a Chevy Tahoe with a child safety seat, it turns out. The police found it in a parking lot and brought out their K9 unit. Within two hours, they’d found her body.
“Suddenly the whole community is looking for a missing two-year-old—the girl I’ve got screaming and crying in my cabin. So I run out to the Target, I buy her a bunch of boy clothes. Sports jerseys. Shirts with football players. Then I get some clippers and give Flora a buzz cut. And I swear it was like flipping a switch—all I did was change her hair, but you’d swear she was a boy.”
There’s nothing ragged about Caroline’s breathing anymore, and her hands have stopped shaking. The more she talks, the better she looks, as if she’s freeing her conscience of some horrible burden.
“Then we got in our car and drove. There wasn’t any plan. We just needed to get away, the farther the better. We didn’t stop driving until West Virginia, a town called Gilbert. Population four hundred, everybody’s retired in wheelchairs. I emailed our friends and said we’d moved to Barcelona, that Ted had an opportunity he couldn’t pass up. Then we rented a house on ten acres of land, no neighbors, just a nice quiet place where we could focus on our baby.
“And Mallory, I swear to you, it was the hardest year of my life. For six months, Teddy refused to speak. He was so scared! But I was patient. I worked with him every day. I showed him love and attention and affection. I filled our house with books and toys and healthy foods, and we made progress. He started coming out of his shell. He learned to accept us and trust us and now he loves us, Mallory. The first time he called me Mommy, I started bawling.
“By the end of our first year, we’d made some really amazing progress. We started bringing Teddy out in public. Just little hikes or trips to the grocery store. Normal family outings. And it was picture-perfect. If you hadn’t met us, you’d have no idea what we’d been through.” And then her voice trails off. As if she’s nostalgic for a time when she still had hope.
“What happened?”
“I just never imagined Margit would find us. I’ve always been an atheist. I’ve never believed in any kind of spirit world. But after our first year in West Virginia, Teddy started having a visitor. A woman in a white dress. Waiting in his bedroom during naptime.”
“You saw her?”
“No, never. She only shows herself to Teddy. But I could feel her, I could sense her presence, I could smell her disgusting rotting stench. We told Teddy she was an imaginary friend. We said she wasn’t real, but it was okay to pretend she was real. He was so young, he didn’t know any better.”
“Did she ever come after you? For revenge?”
“Oh, she’d love to. She’d kill me if she could. But her powers are really limited. I guess she can work a Ouija board and move a pencil but that’s about it.”
I try to imagine the tedium of being stuck in a lonely house on ten acres of land in the middle of rural West Virginia—with no companions except my husband, a kidnapped child, and a vengeful spirit. I’m not sure how long I would last without losing my mind.
“I knew we couldn’t stay in ‘Barcelona’ forever. We all needed to get on with our lives. I wanted to live in a nice pretty town with good schools, so Teddy could have a normal childhood. So we moved here in April, and by Mother’s Day Anya was back in Teddy’s bedroom, singing Hungarian lullabies.”
“She followed you?”
“Yes. I don’t know how. I just know running from her isn’t an option. Wherever we go, Anya will follow. So that’s when I had my big breakthrough: Bring in a third party. A new playmate to compete with Anya for Teddy’s attention. You were the perfect candidate, Mallory. Young, athletic, full of energy. Smart but not too smart. And your history of drug abuse was a big plus. I knew you were insecure. I knew that if you saw some crazy things, you would doubt your own judgment. At least for a little while. I just never counted on those stupid drawings. I never imagined she would find a way to communicate.”
Caroline seems exhausted, as if she’s just relived the last three years of her life. I steal another look at the clock, and it’s only 11:37. I need to keep her talking. “What about Mitzi? What happened to her?”
“The same thing that’s happening to you. Last Thursday, a couple hours after your séance, Mitzi came knocking on our door in a panic. She said her spirit board wouldn’t turn off. She claimed the plan-chette was spinning in circles and spelling out the same word over and over: ovakodik, ovakodik, ovakodik. Mitzi brought us back to her house and she showed us. She figured out that it meant ‘beware.’ She said you were right all along, Mallory: Our house was haunted and we needed help. Ted and I went home and argued about the best thing to do, but I finally convinced him to hold Mitzi down while I gave her the overdose. Then he dragged her body out to the woods and I sprinkled all those needle caps around her living room. Left the tourniquet on her end table. Just enough for the police to connect the dots. Then we made up the story about Mitzi having a late-night visitor, so the story wouldn’t be too neat.”
I check the clock again—only another minute has passed—and this time, Caroline catches me.
“What are you doing? Why are you looking at the time?”
“No reason.”
“You’re lying. But it doesn’t matter.” She stands and reaches for the tourniquet. Her hands are steady. She’s moving with renewed confidence and control, looping the tourniquet around my arm and knotting it tight. Within moments, my muscles are tingling.
“Please don’t do this.”
“I’m sorry, Mallory. I wish things worked out differently.”
I feel her soft gloved fingers tapping on the crook of my arm, coaxing my veins to swell up and cooperate. I realize she’s serious, she intends to go through with this. “You’ll feel guilty for the rest of your life,” I tell her, and I’m so scared I’m sputtering. “You’ll hate yourself. You won’t be able to live with yourself.”