Maybe I’d made a mistake, not turning and running back down the path. But damn it, I didn’t want Wink to think I was a coward. I’d been a coward long enough.
“This is a bad house,” Wink said suddenly, looking up, way up, at the sagging roof. “The Roman Luck house is not lucky. It never was.”
The Roman Luck house was a mile from town, and a mile from the Bell farm, right in the middle. It had sat empty for years, and houses went downhill fast when no one was taking care of them. All the bushes were overgrown, the front lawn covered with pinecones. The gravel road that led to the house from town was nothing but a stretch of brown pine needles and saplings, struggling to grow in the gloom.
I joined Wink in staring up at the house. Big and gray and going to ruin. The bay windows were broken, and I could see the shadow of the decaying grand piano that I knew was inside. We’d all explored the Luck house when we were younger. Dared each other to go in, to put our fingers on the chipped ivory keys, to climb up the wobbly, creaking stairs, to lie down on the dusty, rat-chewed quilt that still covered the master bed.
I’d been surprised that Poppy wanted to have her party here. Fearless Poppy, who wasn’t afraid of anything . . . except this, the Roman Luck house. Not even the Yellows knew how much she hated the place. Just me. I’d been with her last summer, right beside her as she’d climbed the porch steps and then refused to go past the doorway, like a dog catching a bad scent. She laughed and said haunted houses were stupid. But her perfectly painted toes in their delicate, expensive sandals never crossed the rotting threshold.
Roman Luck’s disappearance was our town’s greatest mystery. He’d been young, and single, a doctor at the hospital where Poppy’s parents worked now. And when he bought a grand house outside of town, in the middle of the woods, and filled it with grand things, people thought he was going to marry some pretty girl and live happily ever after. But he never did. He lived in the house for two years, and he never threw a party, or invited people over for supper. And then, one morning, he didn’t show up for work. Days went by. When the police finally broke down the front door they found the inside frozen in time, as if Roman had just stepped outside for a breath of fresh air. There was a coffeepot on the table, stone cold, and a plate with a moldy, half-eaten sandwich. The milk had curdled in the fridge. The radio was even still on, playing sad old Delta blues songs . . . or so went the rumors.
“If I told you what happened to Roman, you wouldn’t believe me,” Wink said out of nowhere, like she could read my mind. Her shoulders shrugged up and disappeared into her messy red hair.
I took the bait. “Yes I would, Wink. I’d believe you.”
Wink shook her head, but she was smiling.
“Let me guess. Ghosts drove Roman Luck screaming into the night, and now he’s off in an asylum somewhere, stark raving mad.”
She shook her head again. “The house is haunted, but that’s not why Roman left. Sometimes people just leave, Midnight. They realize they are on the wrong path, or that they are in the wrong story, and they just go off in the middle of the night and leave.”
Here was my chance. Here was the opportunity for me to say that I knew all about people leaving, that my mom took my brother and left, not in the middle of the night, but she left all the same.
The moment was slipping by, slipping, and I was letting it . . .
Wink gave me a searching kind of look, like she knew what I was thinking anyway. “Mim once read cards for a very, very old woman who used to live in Paris. She told my mother that she had an apartment there, on the Right Bank, still filled with her furniture and dresses and everything. She hadn’t been back since World War II. She said that one day she decided she was done with Paris, and the war, and she never went there again.”
“Is that true, Wink?”
“Of course it’s true. All the strangest stories are true.”
And then we both abruptly stopped talking. We just stood next to each other and didn’t talk.
It was coming back, the feeling from earlier, the calm, peaceful feeling . . .
Laughter.
I looked up.
The Yellows were staring at us. Poppy too. She said something and they laughed again. And then she repeated it. Louder.
“I bet Feral Bell has little-girl underwear on. I bet she still wears white cotton panties with polka dots or butterflies. What do you say, Yellows? Should we find out?”
“Shut up, Poppy.” And I tried to say it cool, say it how Alabama would say it, but I must have done it wrong, because Poppy just smirked at me, long and slow.
I looked at Wink and her face was serene. Calm.
“Grab them,” Poppy said.