Page 105 of Haunted

He squints at her. “Why are you recording?”

“Insurance,” she says. “I figured the more I had recorded, the less those bastards could diddle us if the worst happened.”

Henry’s brow furrows. “Well, let’s hope it doesn’t.” He goes to the front door and peers inside. “Suzannah, for God’s sakes, you don’t need it! Would you please get moving?”

Alice’s camera pans to my house, and suddenly, there I am. Taking out the trash. Seventeen years old.

We both gasp. “How was I ever that young?” I whisper.

I watch my teenage self deposit the trash, look up at the sky, and freeze. On screen, I look really scared. This must have been the moment it sank in. I take my phone out—Lance is calling me, I realize now—but before I can answer, the front door opens.

Elliott comes out.

I go rigid. Lance grabs my hand and holds it tight. My brother’s face fills the screen—his dark hair, which he never let me brush without a struggle. “Oh my God, look at how big he is,” I manage. I’d forgotten that. And also how, even though he was fourteen, he still moved with the sweet, lumbering grace of a toddler. Oh, Elliott.

“On the TV they say everything’s bad,” he declares. “I don’t like this. Are people hurting?”

I watch myself square my shoulders, take a deep breath, and smile at my brother. “I think the people who lived there have all gone away now. Let’s go inside.”

“But all their stuff got burned up.” He looks straight up. “How come the sky’s still blue here?”

Alice must have felt she was intruding, because the camera pans back to the woods. Through the trees, I can see the gap between our house and the Drumms’, the garbage bin, and above it all, the billowing smoke like an ugly curtain.

As Alice records the other side of the street, my own voice carries in the background, gently coaxing Elliott to do what I need him to do.

“You’ve got Mr. Snail,” the boy on the recording says, and he sounds so certain about it. “Mr. Snail isn’t scared of anything, so we’re not scared either.”

Alice turns the camera back to us. I watch as I put my hand on Elliott’s back and guide him gently inside. “Hey!” Alice calls over. “You folks gonna be okay? Do you need any help?”

I turn and look right at the camera. “Thank you, ma’am. We’ll be fine.”

That is my voice. That flat, easy, unbroken voice, carrying across a street without any effort at all, and I have not heard it in ten years and I did not know it was gone until right now.

I sound like somebody else.

The front door closes behind us. The video ends.

Lance reaches out and stops the playback. Then he enfolds me in his arms and we rock together—I feel waves of grief for Elliott, for Alice, for the boy who squared his shoulders and smiled at his brother and walked back into a house he was about to lose.

It takes a long time before I can detach myself from Lance.

When we do, Lance wipes his face with the heel of his hand and makes an attempt at lightening it, because that is what he does.

“I’ll say this for Henry,” he says. “At least he was packing that car properly. Boxes flat, heavy things low. When I cleared out your mother’s car I threw everything into the back of my truck like I was gritting a road.”

I laugh, wetly, and then I stop laughing.

Because something has just gone past me and I did not catch it.

“Play it again,” I say.

He plays it again. Henry with the box. Henry crossing the driveway. Henry putting it carefully into his own trunk.

“Wait.” Lance leans in. “He’s taking it out of hers.”

“What?”

“Out of her car. Into his.” He points at the screen. “And look at the back seat of hers. It’s half empty. There’s room in there for everything he’s carrying and twice as much again. Why would you unpack a car that isn’t full?”