The Piper

TWENTY-FIVE




The dinner had almost gone off the rails when Jamison refused to come into the house. Olivia, who remembered the blond heartbreaker her big sister Emily had idolized, saw nothing of that boy in Jamison the man. He was tall still, big shouldered like McTavish, but stooped now, with an uncertain, sideways cant to his walk. He wore stiff, off brand jeans and a short sleeved plaid shirt, a UT ball cap, and Timberland boots that looked brand new. He was in his forties, but he looked older, and the shiny blond hair had dulled, showing gray. He was freshly shaved, jeans creased. He wore his clothes as if someone else had picked them out.

‘Go ahead, Jamison. You want me to go first?’ McTavish headed through the arched front door, pausing on the stoop.

‘Maybe he’s shy,’ Amelia said.

Teddy pushed her glasses back on her nose. ‘Shy people don’t like it when you say that, Dr Amelia. Are you scared, Jamison? See Winston, his tail is wagging, and there’s lots of people around. You know who only watches when there are so many people around. It should be safe if you go home before dark.’

Olivia looked at Amelia, who slid the cat glasses up on her nose and stared at Teddy.

‘Who is you know who?’ Amelia said.

Teddy frowned. ‘It’s better if you don’t say his name.’

Olivia looked at Teddy. Considered saying something, then decided to deal with it later, in private.

‘Come on, Jamison,’ Teddy said. ‘I’m icing brownies, want to help? You can wear an apron, like me.’

Jamison followed Teddy across the threshold and back to the kitchen. He did not look right or left, but focused on Teddy, like a man walking through the woods and whistling in the dark.

Teddy tied Jamison into an apron and handed him a table knife, and the two of them iced the brownies while Amelia drank a dirty martini, three olives, and critiqued their work. But Olivia could see that Amelia was watching Teddy, and sipping steadily, as if unaware there was high octane vodka in her glass. Olivia was watching Teddy too.

McTavish breezed past them after grabbing a beer. ‘You handle the brownies there, Jamison. I’m going to tackle that grill.’

Olivia made potato salad and baked beans, and McTavish grilled fresh asparagus along with the ribs, brushing them with the Bone Sucking Barbecue Sauce Olivia had found at Earth Faire. Olivia had to hide in the hallway just before they sat down to eat to wipe the tears out of her eyes. It was ridiculous, of course, but in her mind’s eye she imagined Chris, elbows on the table, eating ribs, and that knock at the door she had listened for all of her life, where they found Emily and Hunter waiting on the front porch, home at long last. Olivia was flooded with that mix of happy and sad that comes to those who move away and come back.

They ate in the sunroom, a late dinner as the sun went down. McTavish was sweaty in his tee shirt and jeans, the hairs on his arms smudged with the blackened grease he’d cleaned out of the barbecue grill. McTavish drank Killians, and Olivia had martinis with Amelia, and Jamison and Teddy had bottles of lemonade. By the second martini Olivia had forgotten to be mad at Teddy for acting weird. They would talk later, when their guests were gone.

They left the mess in the kitchen and piled into the living room. McTavish and Amelia amused themselves at Olivia’s expense by swapping Olivia stories, trying to mesh the Tennessee Livie with the Livie in LA.

‘I’m the same no matter where I live.’ Olivia threw an olive at McTavish, which he caught in midair.

‘Well, yeah, Livie, that’s kind of what’s so funny. The fish out of water, and Innocents Abroad. I need another beer. You ladies want to really go for it with a refill? One more martini and Livie’s going to sing.’ McTavish was heading past the staircase when he stopped and cocked his head. ‘Do you hear that?’

Amelia had just asked Olivia in a whisper if she’d bedded him yet. ‘Hear what?’ she said, talking loud.

They went quiet, and Olivia turned the music down. Sobbing, soft sobbing, distinctly masculine, coming from upstairs. She looked at once for Teddy, who had curled up in the red leather chair with The Sign of the Twisted Candles and fallen asleep. Teddy looked exhausted all the time now. She did not seem to sleep much at night.

‘Where’s Jamison?’ McTavish said. He glanced around the room, then headed up the stairs, taking them two at a time, Olivia and Amelia right behind. ‘Jamison? Where are you, buddy? You okay?’

The bathroom door was shut tight, and Winston was scratching at the door, whining softly. McTavish knocked once, then went in. ‘Jesus, man. Are you okay?’

Olivia looked at Amelia.

‘You need help or privacy?’ Amelia said.

‘He’s decent. But Olivia, you better look at this.’ McTavish pushed the door open wide. ‘I noticed you had a big hole in the ceiling when I was up here earlier, but—’

‘Oh, hell,’ Olivia said.

Jamison had clearly been washing his hands after using the bathroom, and a section of the ceiling had come down on his head. He had plaster in his hair, and blood running down his temple from a gash on his scalp.

‘Let me look at that,’ Amelia said.

But Jamison backed away. Pointed up to the ceiling. ‘Waverly,’ he said.

‘Will he freak out if I clean up that cut?’ Amelia said to McTavish. ‘It looks like it might need a stitch or two.’

‘Jamison doesn’t cry when he gets hurt, do you buddy? Jamison is the King of Stoic. He only cries when he’s scared. It would have scared me too, buddy, if the ceiling came down on my head.’

Jamison looked at McTavish and frowned. His face was flushed and there were beads of sweat mixing with the run of blood. ‘Waverly.’ He pointed up into the ceiling. ‘Names.’

‘What names, buddy?’

‘His name is up there, in the ceiling,’ Olivia said. ‘But I don’t know how he could see that from here.’

McTavish picked chunks of plaster off of Jamison’s shoulders and tossed them in the trash. ‘What are you talking about, Livie?’

‘Just what I said. There are names up there. Look, I can get you a stepladder and a flashlight and show you.’

‘Jamison, why don’t you go back downstairs, and maybe you and Teddy could watch a movie.’

Jamison folded his arms and put his back to the wall, shaking his head. He had barely spoken all day – McTavish said that was the norm – but he was talking now, repeating Waverly over and over.

‘Okay, Jamison, I get you. Olivia, darlin’, better get me that stepladder and flashlight. He’s not going to stop chanting till I take a look.’

Amelia matter of factly fished peroxide out of the medicine cabinet, and wet down a wash rag, then wrung it out. ‘Come on, Jamison, let me clean that cut while the two of them check the ceiling out for leaks.’

‘If you’ve got a plumbing problem, Livie, I know a guy. I’d do it myself but I’d probably flood the house. Remember my mother’s kitchen?’

‘There’s no leak up there, McTavish, I had a plumber out already. I have no idea why that ceiling is caving in. Or why there are . . . names.’

McTavish was already up the steps, and his head and shoulders disappeared up into the ceiling. They heard the click of the flashlight, saw him twist and shift as he played the light.

‘This is weird,’ McTavish said.

Jamison watched him, barely noticing when Amelia cleared the blood and plaster from his forehead, not even flinching when she dabbed the cut with peroxide.

‘You can get by without any stitches,’ Amelia said. ‘If you don’t mind a scar. But this is a nasty little gouge.’

‘Did you see this, Livie?’ McTavish said.

‘You mean the names?’

‘Yeah. Jamison, Chris, Emily. Allison, Bennington and Teddy.’

‘Teddy?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Get down, McTavish, let me look.’

Olivia took the flashlight, and McTavish steadied her arm as she scrambled up the stairs.

‘You see?’

Olivia was trembling so hard she wasn’t sure she could keep her footing on the ladder. Teddy’s name was written on a stud, just below Chris. But not burned in, like the others. This was new, written in what looked like blue chalk. Olivia touched the letters, smudging the y.

‘Yeah, you’re right, McTavish, Teddy’s name is here. But it wasn’t there before. It’s new.’

‘How could it be new?’ McTavish said.

‘I don’t know. Seeing as how it’s up in the goddamn ceiling. I don’t like it either.’

‘Waverly,’ Jamison said.

‘Do you know what he means by that?’ Amelia asked.

‘Yeah,’ McTavish said. ‘I kind of do. It’s that place in Louisville, Livie, you know.’

‘You mean . . . that institute? That crazy place? It’s an old abandoned tuberculosis hospital, right? The haunted one?’

‘Yeah. Chris never told you about it?’

‘Told me what?’

‘About what happened up there. At the Waverly. When they were all up in Louisville, you know, at that wrestling competition. Remember?’

‘I was five then, McTavish. But I do sort of remember the wrestling competition. Because that was when Emily disappeared.’