Page 79 of A Heart So Haunted
I thought of Hadrian. They were sick, my thoughts. How terrible was I, to consider someone else’s lack of living family a form of luck? Because hewaslucky.
No, not quite a sickness. But a rancid, evil form of jealousy. I was jealous of Hadrian. The way he had stood there while his memory played before him, how he’d been able to tell me to leave the boy behind—to leavehim. I never would have asked that.
Wasn’t that what I’d been doing all this time? Even in middle school and high school, as I’d attempted to beat my way into adulthood, hadn’t I begged the universe for help? I would have asked him to stay. Had I been him, I would havebeggedhim to save myself as a child.
Worse than that, I was jealous of everything he’d gained from his father. A home. A life alone. At one point, he had no family, no children, no spouse. No one. Everything I’d ever wanted.
It must have been easier to be Hadrian—even to be a creature, locked away in that closet. Even forced to live memories over and over again. At least he knew they weren’t real. And yet I awoke every day and there was always a little splinter in the back of my mind, reminding me of everything I hadn’t done. That I couldn’t do, couldn’t say. My memories followed me. And reality never escaped me.
Shouldn’t yesterday have been example enough? I couldn’t even talk to Emma, and she and Sayer were the closest people in my life, and I couldn’t handle a simple conversation.
Pathetic.
I grabbed the trowel, fisted it like a knife, and stabbed the fluffed dirt bed.
“I hate you,” I choked. I stabbed over and over and over. “I hate you I hate you I hate you.”
That was it—that was the problem. It wasn’t that I hated people, so much that I hated myself. I hated what I’d done to myself.
I hated what I’d let happen to me. I hated that I’d never said anything. That I physically couldn’t bring myself to do it.
I chucked the trowel against the shed with wet cheeks. It bounced off with aclangand plunked right into the grass.
Days began to bleed together. A Tuesday held no specialty to a Friday. The only way I kept track was by the TV shows I watched at night before midnight came.
Sometimes the closet opened, and other times it didn’t. Thankfully, the next time it did, the yellow eyes came with it. Paint prices were my topic of choice that night.
Each night he visited, I realized I liked talking to him more than I did keeping my thoughts to myself.
“He asked me if my husband was looking for something,” I complained, eyes closed, talking with one hand. The other hung limp over the side of the bed. The TV whispered, lower than it ever had, because I was worried Hadrian wouldn’t be able to hear me talking over it. “Couldn’t he see that I was alone? Not every woman has to be married to be in a freaking hardware store.”
Another evening, when Hadrian hadn’t shown yet, I pulled Irene’s copies out of the nightstand.
Maybe there was something I was missing. I started searching key words again, until I landed on the library’s contact page. I chewed on the inside of my cheek, then glanced to the closet.
Would he mind if I asked Irene if she knew anything? Surely he wouldn’t.
But what if she said no? What if she’d not wanted to help Aunt Cadence any more than she had? What if the idea of the house being haunted had scared her away?
I highlighted her email, copied it, and opened a draft before I had the chance to think twice. This wasn’t about pride or fear of being rejected anymore. This needed to be logical, and the only logical thing to do was at least ask Irene if she knew something.
I kept the email concise, out of fear that I’d scare her away:
Hi Irene,
I hope this email finds you well. I came in a while ago asking about my aunt’s house, Harthwait, and there have been a few developments while I’ve been here. Do these look familiar to you, by any chance? I happened to find a Reddit post that sounded similar to the issue I’m having, that I believe you wrote. Please let me know if you’d like to talk—if not, I understand.
I double-checked that I’d typed my phone number correctly and attached the photos of the doorframe before hitting send.
After that, I flopped back on my bed and glared at the ceiling.
“Hadrian.”
A scratching sound came from under the bed. It should have been concerning that I didn’t jump, only held completely still, until a familiar voice said, “Yes, dearest?”
I rolled over onto my side. One clawed hand edged out from under the frame. “Did you ever go to college?”
A dark laugh. “To be frank, I didn’t need to.”
