The Ghost in the House by Sara O'Leary

Author:Sara O'Leary [O'Leary, Sara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
Published: 2020-07-07T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

AS A FAVOUR to me, Alec is calling my mother.

He says that he hasn’t seen her in a long time, even though she lives only twenty minutes away. I just need to see her once more. I hear him on the phone explaining that he has something he wants to give her. Something he thinks I would have wanted her to have. I’ve asked him to give her the photos he boxed up after I died. It was the first I’d mentioned knowing about them, and I saw a flicker of pain in his eyes as he remembered packing them away.

“I’m sorry,” Alec says into the phone. There is some response I can’t hear but then he catches my eye and nods. “I know,” he says. “No. Just me…Good. See you in an hour or so.”

I didn’t think she would come so soon. I don’t know if I’m ready for this.

I watch as Alec takes the banker’s boxes out of the study cupboard and stacks them neatly alongside his desk.

“Alec,” I say. Louder than I meant to.

He turns to me, startled. “What?” he asks.

“Nothing. Nothing, really. Nerves, I suppose.” For a moment I was suddenly afraid I might vanish again. I needed him to look at me so that I knew I was here.

When I was small, I had a fear of dying—of the earth opening up and swallowing me whole—but this stopped after my father died, and was replaced by a fear of my mother dying.

I used to go in and watch her when she was sleeping to make sure she was still breathing. One time she woke up and saw me standing there in my nightgown and screamed so loud she woke up Vicki. She made me promise not to do it ever again. But it took me years to trust that she would still be there in the morning. And when she left the house I would be uneasy until she returned. When I was away from her I imagined all sorts of terrible things happening to her. Once I saw a woman hit by a car and the noise that it made—the way the sound of the impact was both solid and liquid at the same time—stayed with me, and it seemed to me that my mother was impossibly vulnerable. Anything could happen to her.

I lie down on the psychiatrist’s couch and listen with my eyes closed to the sound of Alec shifting the boxes. He is humming something, but so quietly that I can’t make it out. He knows I am anxious and knows me well enough not to tell me not to worry.

The doorbell rings and I’m still not ready.

“Wait here,” says Alec. “Do you want me to tell her? Prepare her? What should I say?”

“Don’t say anything,” I tell him. “Just bring her in here.”

He goes out, and in a sudden fit of nerves I find myself hiding in the cupboard, leaving the door open just enough so that I can see into the room.

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