Page 22 of Paper Ghosts

Every weekday for the next month, Tasha and her mother met the Westers downtown. Tug and Pam sat on a bench and chatted, and the girls played games Bailey made up. Tasha didn’t mind that she always had to be the invisible husband to Bailey’s wife in Wedding Bride. Or that she was the one who always fell into the canyon while Bailey managed to survive in Cliffhanger. But at least she got to be the girl chased by Bailey into the pink castle and saved by the old king in Lost Girl. Blind devotion was the only thing she thought she could offer their friendship. Until she became aware of just how desperate Bailey was for information about Willamena Wester.

Every time someone lingered to talk to Tug and Pam, Bailey would immediately stop playing and hide behind the park chicken sculptures to listen. She was always disappointed when Willamena’s name didn’t come up. Apparently, at home, Bailey’s grandmother was avoiding her, and Bailey didn’t like it. Tasha wasn’t sure why. Most people in town were glad if Willamena ignored them. But if Bailey wanted stories, that was what Tasha would give her. Tasha lived with a woman who loved anything to do with the Westers, after all, so there were many stories to tell.

Like how Willamena was sometimes called the Witch of Wester House, just like her grandmother before her. Some people thought she was capable of curses, because an engagement of someone Willamena once knew mysteriously dissolved after that person betrayed her trust. Others believed she was running an illegal operation of an unknown nature in her house. This was based solely on the story from a frightened furnace repairman who replaced the old basement furnace a few years ago, the only person outside of family who had been allowed entrance since the 1970s. Immediately afterward, he sold his business and left town. No one knew what happened down there in the basement, but it had spooked him so much that he was now living somewhere in South America, a hot, remote place chosen solely so he wouldn’t have to set eyes on another heating unit again.

Bailey ate the tales up, so Tasha started asking her mother at night for more. It made Pam happy to talk about them, and happy wasn’t something Pam often was. Tasha loved her mother more than anyone in the world, but she wished she knew what to do to fix her. There were times she thought she would give up her own happiness if it meant ensuring her mother’s. But now that the Westers were in their lives, she would never have to. Bailey’s dad even encouraged Pam to stop dragging her feet and get Tasha enrolled in kindergarten. Pam’s excuse was that she was so upset about Tasha leaving her alone all day that she wanted to homeschool her. So Tug asked around and found that Barry Gilford, whom he and Pam had known in school, needed a receptionist. No more excuses. Just like that, Tasha was enrolled in school, and Pam was practicing her receptionist voice at home by pretending to answer the phone, saying, Barry Gilford Insurance Agency, Pam speaking.

It was a heady time for Tasha. There was so much new happening, and with each new experience came its own scent. There was anticipation, which smelled like wintergreen. And hope, the rubbery, powder-covered scent of a balloon.

But in a matter of weeks, there would also be disappointment.

Which, interestingly enough, smelled exactly like candy corn.

CHAPTER TEN

The Wester House contained things that, for all Bailey knew, existed only here and nowhere else in the world. There were chipped saltcellars and cracked butter bells and tarnished cloches. There was also an unused butler’s pantry, and not just a regular piano, but a grand piano, jet-black and so polished it gave off its own light. They were things that her dad said were never used and should have been thrown out years ago, but Mim kept them because she didn’t want the neighbors to go through the trash and see her business.

This made Bailey wonder about the habits of said neighbors.

But after that first day, Bailey didn’t see the owner of all these magical things again. Over the course of the summer, Mim communicated solely by notes on ivory-colored paper. She placed them under a silver cloche dome on the dining room table. It always felt thrillingly formal to eat there, even though it was just takeout from the many touristy, hen-themed restaurants downtown—grilled cheese sandwiches from Scratch Grains, or waffles stuffed with strawberry sauce from Scrambled. Tug would lift the cloche to find the note from Mim. Sometimes he would read the note to himself without comment, but sometimes he would tell Bailey what it said. It was usually things like, yes, he could hang new curtains in her bedroom. Or that Mim was expecting a UPS delivery.

Bailey began to suspect that their daily walk downtown wasn’t just for Bailey to get tea ice cream. It was to give Mim some time alone in the house, like a feral cat who would only come out when no one was around. At this rate, Bailey feared she would forget what Mim looked like. What if she ran into her in the hallway one day, and didn’t know who she was? She might even walk right by, as if a random woman in the house would be less surprising than seeing her grandmother.

This was perhaps Mim’s intent, to make Bailey forget her. But her actions had the opposite effect. Mim became the candy in the upper cabinet, put there so Bailey couldn’t reach it. She was the Christmas gift hidden in the closet. She was the secret being whispered just out of earshot. It made Bailey even more curious about what delight she might find, if only she could get to know her.

Every night after dinner, Tug brought out a photo album with Bailey’s mother’s name, Maria, on the pink cover. He made Bailey sit with him to go over the photos, clearly a way of trying to keep her from forgetting. But that night Bailey finally asked what she’d been dying to ask for weeks: “Do you have photos of Mim?”

He looked at her curiously, then said, “There aren’t many of those, I’m afraid.” He set aside the album and then went to an antique rolltop desk in the corner to rifle through the drawers. He finally brought out a black photo album, an older one, the pages bound with a metal spiral down the side. “Before my dad died, he made me this so I would remember him, like that one of your mother’s I made for you.”

He sat down and opened it. The first few pages were black-and-white photos of Tug’s father, Terrence Sr., as a child, showing him at family Christmases and graduations. Then came photos of Tug as a baby, with Terrence Sr. holding him. Tug looked just like his father, the same blond hair and blue eyes, the same funny smile that revealed only his bottom teeth. Thrillingly, photos of Mim began to appear, and Bailey stopped her dad from turning the page so she could stare. There was Mim with a faraway look on the Wester lawn. And there she was, next to Tug as he blew out candles for his eighth birthday in the dining room.

“Has Mim always been old?”

Tug smiled. “I remember asking my dad the same question. It’s like she came into the world exactly as she is today. Apparently, she burned all the photos of herself as a child that her grandmother took. She told my dad she didn’t want to be haunted by them anymore. My dad took all these of me, and the few your grandmother allowed of herself.”

Bailey pointed to the photo of the three of them on the same velvet gold couch where she and Tug were now sitting. Young Tug was between his mother and father, and the timed photo had caught him with his eyes closed. Terrence Sr. had his arm over Tug’s shoulder, laughing, as if he’d just made it to the couch before the camera clicked. Mim was trying to smile.

“They don’t look together.”

“No, they don’t. Her grandmother decided who she should marry, and it was the only way she could inherit this house. But he was an easy man. She was the one to make it hard.”

Bailey turned to him seriously. “Why don’t you like her?”

“I love your grandmother, sweetheart. And I know she loves me, in her own way. But she only doles out small portions of herself, and then she seems surprised when it’s not enough. She’s not a demonstrative person, not like my dad was. When I lost him, I lost my only real parent. But one of the last things he ever told me was to go easy on her, because she had a story I knew nothing about.” He closed the album and handed both albums to her. “Here, take these to your room. They’re yours now. You can look at them any time you want.”

She took them and ran out of the room.

Once she was on the staircase, Tug called, “Bailey?”

She stopped and turned.

“No matter what, you can always count on me to love you, okay?”

She nodded quickly, then ran the rest of the way to her room, where she spent hours memorizing Mim. But it still didn’t alleviate her frustration over not being able to see her in real life.

Her big chance finally came when Tug had to take a call on the following Friday from his boss at the financial firm, to go over the logistics of working remotely after Bailey started kindergarten on Monday. He sat Bailey down at one end of the dining room table with her coloring books, and then he took a seat at the other end. Once he was distracted with his phone to his ear and his laptop in front of him, she slid off her chair in what she thought was an astounding feat of stealth, because her dad didn’t even look up. She crawled to the foyer, then stood and looked down the hallway to Mim’s quarters.

She squeezed her eyes shut, willing Mim to come out. When she didn’t, she went to the living room and circled the grand piano twice. She stopped at the keys and slowly reached out, letting one finger hover. If she touched it, maybe that would get Mim’s attention.