The Piper

FIVE




‘Teddy, you and Winston stay in the car. Just for a minute. I’ll be right back.’

‘We’ve only been in the car two hundred million hours.’

‘Then another few minutes won’t hurt.’

Olivia looked in the pickup when she walked by. Chris’s orange UT ball cap was there, crammed into a corner of the dashboard.

The backyard was bound with a privacy fence, the gate slightly ajar, and Olivia thought she heard a voice. She listened, just for a moment. Crying, someone crying softly, and the hair rose on her arms, because it sounded so much like her mother. When Emily disappeared, there had been a lot of crying in that house.

She pushed the gate open, remembering how Hunter the German shepherd had been Lord of the Backyard, and King of the Mountain on the sloping hill. It would be good for Winston, too, a safe, fenced place to run. Not that Winston ran a whole lot these days.

The crying stopped. But Olivia saw her, a woman sitting on tiles beside the koi pond and fountain, cross legged, head in her hands, only now starting to turn and get to her feet.

Charlotte. Of course, Charlotte, her sister-in-law, driving Chris’s Ford, it made perfect sense.

Charlotte was one of the best things about coming back to Knoxville. She and Olivia had always hit it off, but lived too far apart for a true, intimate friendship. Olivia was home now, and she and Charlotte could be close. They could take care of each other when they missed Chris. Olivia had precious little family left.

‘Olivia?’ Charlotte was coming down the hill. ‘Did I get the day wrong? I thought you weren’t due in till tomorrow. I was just going to call you.’

‘I’m early. It’s me that needs to call you. Oh, honey, you’ve been crying. Are you missing Chris?’

Charlotte enveloped Olivia in a hug. She smelled like something sweet and lemony, and there was sweat in the creases of her neck, and mascara running down her cheeks.

Olivia felt better, like she always did, whenever she was around her sister-in-law. Charlotte was the kind of woman people gravitated to, her dinner invitations were never refused. Physically, she somehow managed to add up to more than the sum of her parts. Reddish gold hair, chin length and blunt cut. Brown eyes, skin a bit rough and pitted, generous in the hips and waist. The longer you knew her the more you noticed how pretty she looked.

Chris had always said that Charlotte’s only fault was that she fed their children oatmeal for breakfast, which both Chris and Olivia found grotesque. Olivia was not sure when she and Chris had developed their oatmeal prejudice. In truth, Olivia loathed almost all breakfast foods, and started her own days with microwave popcorn and coffee, feeling that life was too short for anything with bran.

Charlotte also drank white wine, another serious strike. Olivia felt that wine should only come in shades of red, but she never said anything about this to Charlotte. There was a need for diversity in the world, and there were people who found her own love of mustard sandwiches weird.

‘I came over to do some work on this yard before you saw what a mess it was.’ Charlotte held up a pair of pristinely clean gardening gloves. ‘You can see how much I’ve accomplished.’

‘Don’t worry about the yard, Charlotte. Don’t worry about any of this. You’ve got enough on your mind these days.’

Chris had been madly in love with Charlotte (in spite of the oatmeal) from the first moment he’d seen her, saying there was something sparkly about her, though she had lost a lot of that sparkle now. They had been one of those touchstone couples everybody else had envied, which made it all the more upsetting four months ago when Chris had insisted Charlotte and the girls move out of the house, and leave him there alone. Neither Chris nor Charlotte would talk about it, though they’d sworn the marriage was sound and intact, and Olivia had wondered but not intruded, aware the little family was in trouble, and watching helplessly from the sidelines, hoping things would work out. Things had been very wrong, and neither Charlotte nor Chris would tell her why.

Olivia noticed that Charlotte would not look her in the eye. There was none of the usual calm steadiness that was like an anchor for everyone else.

Charlotte ran a hand through her hair, and looked up at the fountain. ‘I meant to get things taken care of. I really did. It’s pretty awful. And look – see? Both of the apple trees are dead.’

‘It doesn’t matter. You know I don’t eat fruit.’

‘But Livie, that’s not all. Come look, come on, up at the fountain.’ Charlotte tugged Olivia’s hand and led her up the hill. ‘I didn’t want you to see this, it’s horrible. All the fish are dead.’

Olivia followed Charlotte up the hill, the uncut grass itchy on her ankles. The circle of tile and stone was chipped and broken, and there was a coating of dark green where the water had once spilled in a spray from the stone lion’s mouth into the little pool. The pond smelled like the river at low ebb, and Olivia saw lumps of floating things. Bloated koi, in advanced decay. The fish had been dead for months.

Olivia nudged Charlotte back down the hill. ‘Let it go, Charlotte.’

‘The truth is, Livie, I still need to clean out the freezer, and scrub the bathrooms, and it’s . . . it’s a mess and I can’t . . .’ Charlotte put a hand to her face, wiping the tears and makeup into another smudge. ‘How long before your moving van gets here?’

‘Four days. Don’t agonize about this, Charlotte, I’ll take care of things myself.’

‘I just don’t want you to think I’m upset about you taking the house. You understand I’m okay with the trust? I always thought it was great that your parents paid the house off and left it for you and Chris.’

‘And Emily.’

‘And Emily, of course. I don’t want you to think this is sour grapes on my part, because I had to give up the cottage. Because I promise that’s not it, Chris found us another house, right before he died, and it’s pretty and it’s new, so you have to promise me that you won’t think it has anything to do with that.’

‘Charlotte, I do feel bad about taking the house—’

‘No.’ Charlotte put both hands on Olivia’s shoulders, pressing down hard. ‘I don’t want this house. I hate this house. I spent all afternoon trying to get the nerve up to go inside and do some cleaning, and you know what? I made it to the back door, and couldn’t even put my hand on the knob. Look at my hands.’

Charlotte held her hands out. They were shaking.

‘Charlotte, come on, look, it’s okay to have a meltdown, anybody would with all you’ve been through.’

‘No, listen to me. The fish are all dead. Chris is dead—’ Charlotte looked over Olivia’s shoulder and froze.

Teddy had gotten tired of waiting in the Jeep, and come to find her mom, and neither Charlotte nor Olivia had noticed her, standing close and listening in. How much had she heard, Olivia wondered.

‘Mommy?’ Teddy pushed her glasses back on her nose. ‘Did Uncle Chris die in this house?’

‘He died in his sleep, Teddy,’ Olivia said. ‘He was sick. I told you that, remember?’

‘But was it in this house?’

Charlotte put a hand on Olivia’s arm, but Olivia shook it off. ‘Yes, it was in the house. That’s normal, in older houses. Families live there for years and years and it’s a natural part of life. He was very sick, and he went to sleep, and he didn’t wake up. It was very peaceful.’

‘But which room was he in? What made him sick?’

Olivia looked at Charlotte, who bit her lip.

‘A grown up sickness,’ Olivia told her. ‘Something that kids can’t get, so you don’t have to worry. Teddy, where is Winston?’

‘He won’t come out of the car.’

Hours later, at Charlotte’s new little house, when Teddy and her cousins had been fed, taken baths, and been tucked into bed, when Winston had relieved himself, stretched his legs, and sniffed through every interesting smell in Charlotte’s raw and new backyard, Olivia and Charlotte huddled together at the kitchen table. The dishwasher hummed, and they opened a bottle of pinot noir. Charlotte was no doubt being polite, because Olivia had seen a bottle of chardonnay, already open in the fridge.

The house was a mix of rosy tan brick and white aluminum siding, small, one level, brand new, in a subdivision off South Peters Road, three miles past the Baker Peters Jazz Club where Olivia and Hugh had their second date – a quirky, old brick southern mansion with a dental practice in one wing, a restaurant where Olivia could not afford to eat out front, and a jazz club and patio on the roof. The parking lot adjoined a gas station on one side, and an insurance office on the other, and there was a hive of suburban tract houses fanning out on either side.

Charlotte was calm now. Her hands had stopped trembling about halfway through making her trademark macaroni and cheese casserole, which Winston had tried and approved to the admiration of Teddy’s cousins, who sorely needed a dog of their own.

‘Where is Winston?’ Charlotte said, chin propped on her hand.

‘Sleeping with Teddy. Is it okay with you, that he’s up on the bed?’

‘Sure, this is a dog friendly household. I was just thinking, you know, how he wouldn’t get out of the car. Before. At that house.’

‘That house? Charlotte, that house was your home for the last, what, twelve years?’

‘I know. Are you sure you want to move in there?’

‘Charlotte, I grew up there, it’s my home. Not to mention that it’s paid off, there’s no mortgage, and I love it there. I get, you know, that Chris died there. I can understand that it brings up bad memories for you.’

‘It does. It was so weird. I was going to go in there and clean. Put some flowers in a vase in the kitchen. But when I was all set to go inside . . . it was like I panicked. I couldn’t make myself go in.’

‘Chris died there, Charlotte. Don’t you think it’s like an association thing? Because bad things happened when you lived in the house?’

Charlotte rubbed her forehead. ‘We used to be so happy there. But we’ve had a bad couple of years.’

Olivia put her palms on the kitchen table. ‘Charlotte, were you and Chris getting divorced?’

Charlotte looked up and frowned. ‘No, of course not, why would you say that?’

‘I just don’t get what was going on. Why Chris had you move.’

‘Chris was not . . . himself. But it wasn’t about the marriage.’

‘Then what was it about? Charlotte, he lost sixty pounds before he died. When did this thing, whatever it was . . . when did it start?’

‘When does anything start? It just creeps up on you, that’s what it does.’

‘Give me your best guess.’

Charlotte folded her hands in her lap. ‘I guess . . . really, I think it all started with Janet.’

‘Janet?’

Chris’s oldest daughter. Tall for her age, big boned like Chris, but thin and tiny waisted, where her father had bulk. She had been dry eyed and angry at her father’s funeral, the first eruptions of adolescent acne making bumps along her chin.

Olivia took a sip of her wine. ‘What did Janet do?’

‘Do? What do you mean by that?’

‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean anything. I don’t know why I said it.’

Charlotte ran a finger on the side of the table. ‘Janet didn’t do anything. Janet got sick.’

Olivia gripped the stem of her wine glass.

‘It started in the middle of the night. She would get these horrible attacks – high fevers, vomiting. They ran tests and found all kinds of weird stuff. But nothing would really add up. First her liver enzymes were sky high. Then they were normal. Then they thought her gall bladder was shot.’

‘At her age?’

‘I know. And then . . .’ Charlotte put her face in her hands and her voice caught. ‘Then a malignant tumor on her liver. Then it was a pancreatic tumor. An automatic sentence of death. Chris and I were just . . . we were so worried, so scared for her. We were literally just hanging on.’

‘But why didn’t you tell me?’

‘We told no one. We didn’t want to talk about it to anybody until we were sure. And then – then it was nothing at all. All those scary test results were some mysterious mistake. We got a clean bill of health for our little girl. I was so . . . grateful. So relieved. I used to stand outside her bedroom door after she and Annette and Cassidy fell asleep, and literally cry from happiness. I thought how good life could be. Back then.’

‘And?’

‘And . . . it seemed to affect Janet. She was different somehow.’

‘Well, come on, Charlotte, she’d been sick, all those tests.’ Olivia gentled her voice. ‘No matter what anyone told her, she’s a smart girl, maybe she was afraid she was going to die.’

‘But that’s just it. She wasn’t afraid she was going to die. She was worried about everybody else. And it wasn’t just Janet. It was Chris. He was more affected than anybody. He stopped sleeping. Stopped eating. Started having dreams, horrible dreams, about – how did he put it? Something evil sitting on his chest. And he would wake up choking, saying he couldn’t breathe. I thought it was some kind of stress reaction. I dragged him to the doctor, they tested his heart. Everything was normal, everything was fine. But he was so different. Our little girl wasn’t sick anymore, but instead of feeling the joy he was so . . . sad. He started losing weight. And then Janet started having nightmares, terrible terrible dreams that made her scream. She said someone was watching her. That it whispered to her when she was alone. It got so bad that she was afraid to go to sleep. She said if she didn’t keep watch, something bad was going to happen. First it was the fish. She was convinced that something was going to kill all the koi in the pond. And then the fish died. All of them. Just like Janet said they would.

‘And after that she started worrying about Annette. She could not sleep, she had to do certain things, or something awful would happen to her little sister. She was frantic some nights sitting up in her bed, rocking back and forth, trying to stay awake.’

Olivia put a hand on Charlotte’s arm. ‘Don’t you think it might have been some kind of aftershock, from being so sick, having to go to the hospital for all those tests? From being afraid she was really sick, that she was going to die?’

Charlotte nodded. ‘I did think that. For a while. I wanted to take her in for counseling, but Chris said it wouldn’t do any good. He stopped talking to me, he just kept losing weight, then . . . then one night, we were all asleep, and the attic fan came on. It was so weird. It switched on all by itself in the middle of the night.

‘We were all creeped out, but Janet was hysterical. She said it was some kind of a warning, and something was going to happen that was really bad. That there were voices that told her horrible things when she was alone. Chris sat up with her all night, she didn’t want me, just her dad. Janet said that only her father understood. And he held her, and told her over and over that it was just a glitch in the electrical switch of the attic fan, that she was not to worry, that he would take care of things, that everything would be okay. The next day he went out and found us this house. And he made us move.’

‘Did he explain at all?’ Olivia said.

‘He said he was a danger to us. Which was crazy, it didn’t make any sense. And when I tried to push him on it he . . . he cried.’

‘Chris never cried,’ Olivia said flatly. ‘Not even when he was ten years old and dropped a manhole cover on his foot.’

‘He cried, Livie. So I said fine, we’ll all go together. But he wouldn’t come with us. He said he had to deal with things. That afterwards, we could all live together again.’

‘After what?’

‘He never would say.’ Charlotte ran a hand through her hair.

‘And Janet? Is she okay now?’

‘She’s fine. Perfect health, no more nightmares. The only thing is when we were at the visitation, right before Chris’s funeral. I found her in a corner, by herself, crying, and she told me it should have been her who died.’

Olivia put her arms around Charlotte and gave her a long hard hug. ‘Charlotte, what a terrible terrible thing for all of you to go through. No wonder you’re upset. No wonder you can’t bear to go inside that house.’

Charlotte pulled away. ‘Chris was so happy when he found out you were coming home to Knoxville. He was so upset when you and Hugh got divorced, so worried about you on your own, and losing your job. I know you were worried about him, I know you were coming home to look after Chris, but he wanted to look out for you. He’d want me to look out for you too.’

‘Which you’re doing, Charlotte. By letting us stay with you till we get moved in. By offering to pick Teddy up after school when you get your girls, and letting her stay till I get off work. You have no idea what a relief it is for me, to have family here, and not be so alone.’

‘It’s a relief for me too. I’m so glad you came home, Olivia. It helps to have someone here who misses Chris like the girls and I do.’

Olivia nodded and smiled and thought about the phone call. She had always planned to tell Charlotte about it, thinking it would be a comfort, but that would have to wait. Her sister-in-law was too emotional, too frayed, too raw. Charlotte might look okay on the outside, but clearly, she was still a mess.

‘Listen to me, now, Charlotte. Before Janet got sick, were you and Chris okay? Were you happy in that house?’

Charlotte looked very tired. ‘Yes, we were, and I get what you’re telling me.’

‘You had a rough year. Your daughter got sick. Your husband died. It isn’t the house, it’s just . . . life. Don’t forget I grew up there. That for me, it’s my childhood home.’

Charlotte cocked her head to one side. ‘Were you never afraid there, when you were a little girl?’

‘Never. Not once.’