Page 139 of A Heart So Haunted
“What?” he wheezed. “Hurry up before I drop something. You’re both in my way.”
Landry stepped aside. Suppressed a little smile.
“I said ‘I hope this email finds you before I do.’ ” Emma smirked.
Landry’s eyes widened, her mouth formed an O. Sayer froze midstep.
“Emma, you didn’t,” Landry breathed.
“Oh, but I did.”
“So that’s how you got fired.” Sayer pushed around both of them, knocking the doorway when he entered. “I shouldn’t be surprised.” He fumbled through the living room, straight to the kitchen.
Harthwait strained—just for a second.
The light over the sink flickered on.
Sayer froze. Glanced about. Carefully, slowly, began unloading the bags with a gradual urgency.
If Harthwait could have smiled, it would have. But it didn’t have the energy for much else. Not with him gone—not anymore.
“Hey, Lan?” He tossed the milk in the fridge and beelined back to the foyer.
“… so he didn’t fire you—”
“—a promotion, is what I was getting at—”
“Hey,” Sayer blurted. His knuckles whitened as he clutched the doorframe.
Emma stopped in the foyer, the front door open. A country silence, the type that felt cushioned with swaying grass, chirping crickets, and cicadas, filled the room.
“What’s wrong?” Landry glanced up the steps out of habit.
It made Harthwait shrink in shame. Just a little.
“I swear the kitchen light just came on by itself.”
Emma’s eyes went wide. She gasped. “Really? Do you think it’s—”
“I replaced the bulb today,” Landry cut in. She deflated. Brought her bags into the kitchen while the other two trailed behind her like chickens after their mother. “I’m sure it’s a bad circuit.”
A bad circuit. Yes, that’s what it was.
And after that, Harthwait worried that’s all it ever would be: a house with a thousand possibilities, where one day it would be left, with no family that could hear it. Where Landry might leave and take her sister and friend with her.
Her family.Itsfamily.
So until it couldn’t anymore, Harthwait might let them know that it was still there. Somehow. Until what little festering life drained away completely.
Then it would be as if the boy had never been, the house had never felt, and Landry had never heard anything—anything at all.
Chapter Thirty-One
One Year Later
“No, Mom. Please don’t paint the kitchen without asking the landlord,” Emma groaned. She pushed her pointer finger into her temple, squinting into the high sun. I took a seat beside her on the last porch step, Harthwait’s new FOR SALE sign wobbling from where I’d just stuck it into the front lawn. It was hot outside—the muggy kind of hot that came with humid inhales and sticky shirts.
“Tell her she needs to ask him on a date,” I whispered, just loud enough for Penny to hear on the other end.
