Shit. Shit. Shit.

I could blame my father or McCafferty on the fact she dragged us out for that ridiculous history lesson from the annals of Friday the 13^th, but really, I should place the blame where it truly belongs—square on my shoulders.

I told Allison, rather conveniently, that Hannigan, this man from work, my old work when I still was viably employable, was threatening to come out to help with the search. He meant to say he can’t wait to show me what he can stomach. I had told him no in an earlier, verbal conversation—that not even I could stomach what was happening.

The deception flowed from me like oil. How quickly my mouth had become a hot sewer of deceit.

You see, once you tell a lie you need to cover it with another lie, and that lie quickly blossoms into a tangled web of deceit the size of the damn universe. It’s like a game of telephone gone bad. You’re so far away from the truth, you almost want to laugh or in my case claw your eyes out at the very same time.

Hailey Oden is having somebody’s baby. For now, she wants me to believe it’s mine. It very well could be, and that alone scares me almost as much as having Reagan out there in this world, God only knows where. And speaking of which, since God does know where and isn’t opposed to keeping it a secret, one of the local morning shows has offered to hear our story, and they’ve tossed in a psychic just to sweeten the deal. Both Allison and I outright refused. The last thing we want this circus to turn into is, well, a bigger circus. But both Rich and McCafferty said it would be a good idea to try to regain the trust of the public once again. As of right now, my wife and I are the two most hated people on the planet. The Western world has pegged us for the crime, hung us by our ankles in the very public square of the comments’ section in just about every online article, and don’t get me started on the fact we have been the brunt of tasteless late night television jokes as well. Nothing is sacred anymore. It’s open season on the Price family, no matter how big our loss.

At five forty-five Halloween morning, Allison and I march ourselves down to KWTV for hair and makeup. We have another shot to make things right with the imbeciles who have chosen to judge us, and this is our shining moment. Sons of bitches, bastards. I wish I could kill them all. A visual of that brain-stained dining room fills my mind like a screen saver that refuses to dissipate. I’d love to take them all on one by one. God knows I have the pent-up rage to do it. My blood boils like a lava current through me. All I see is red.

An employee from the studio meets us at the gate and escorts us to the makeup lounge, an over lit room with a few stray women all waiting to greet us, but it’s the tall brunette with knife sharp teeth that sends a chill up my spine.

“Well, look who the cat dragged in!” Monica Phillips dances over with her boobs swinging side to side like a pendulum underneath her sweater. “You handsome devil, you. I knew you would be here today!” She throws her arms around me in a strangulating hug, and Allison rolls her eyes at the sight. “I put a good word in to the boss for you and your wife,” she whispers directly into my ear, her lips molesting the hell out of it while she’s at it and I shudder.

So this was Monica’s doing. “I’m not sure if I should thank you just yet.” I offer up a forced smile.

“I’m doing you.” Her tongue does a quick revolution of her lips. Monica dusts my nose with her finger while pushing me back into a waiting chair. I give a nervous glance to my wife. Women coming on to me is what got us into this nightmare to begin with. Little did I know one tug at the string of lust and my world, our worlds would unravel like a cheap sweater. Allison pitches her brows, bemused as she settles next to me. A demure brunette with thick red glasses wordlessly gets to work on her, and I cringe at the torment that’s about to begin for me.

“Handsome here and I used to date.” Monica smacks my forehead with a sponge before aggressively dotting my face with it. “Isn’t that right? We were in l-u-v.”

Allison twitches a smile, but she’s too sane to give it. We are grieving our missing child for shit’s sake. How does any of this feel appropriate to this woman? She’s batshit all right. I called it years ago.

“But life happened, didn’t it?” She reaches for a pair of tweezers and gives a few quick pinches over the bridge of my nose, clipping over my eye like a fire line and I grunt through it.

“Painful.” I try to tough it out without squirming. This right here is why I could never have been a woman. I would have made a lousy tranny, too, failed Woman 101 right off the eyebrow plucking bat. She gouges into my skin, and I reflexively move her away. “Shit. Sorry.”

“Play nice.” Allison warms the room with her voice. I really do love that woman. I wish with everything in me that I could go back in time and say no to the damn pool party for two. The affair never would have started. Hailey would not be threatening to show me her stomach. God forbid. And we never would have moved to Timbuktu, Idaho to get the hell away from her. Reagan would be safe in my arms.

A wave of emotion sweeps over me and my insides buck in lieu of weeping.

And just like that, I forget how to breathe. I cheated on my wife and now my child is missing. My father’s favorite words come back to me—the wages of sin is death. I’ve done this. My randy balls and I have effectively taken down my entire family, and the most innocent party of all is suffering greatly for it.

A deep, guttural twist of grief envelops me. It churns inside of me until I can no longer breathe under its weight.

“So tell us about it.” Allison gives something just this side of a wink to Monica. A sign of eminent danger. That partial ocular twitch is what she likes to invoke while she’s sharpening the claws, out for blood. Her enemy just doesn’t know it yet. “Lay it all out. How did it go down? Was there a messy breakup involved?” Her voice is jubilant and light, but I see her ready to pounce and eviscerate. She’s just as pissed at Monica as I am.

Monica bucks with a laugh.

Shit.

“The prince and I dated for almost four years.” A smug look crosses her face with something vindictive layered just beneath. She pulls a comb from the drawer and rakes it over my scalp, hard, like razor blades.

“Four years?” Allison leans over to get a good look at me, her eyes wild with disbelief. “That’s incredible. You’ve never mentioned her. We’ve been married for six.”

“Almost seven.” I glower up at Monica. Obviously, she’s getting her sick little jollies off while extracting a little revenge.

“It was like a marriage.” The words strum from her lips almost catatonic. “At least it was to me. I appreciated every carnal inch of this boy.” Her eyes gloss over and she blinks back tears. “But then he was off to Wake. A college man. He didn’t have a need for a hometown girl. She dabs the sponge in pink powder before bouncing it over my cheeks. “Dumb ol’ girl like me. He wanted something fresh, something blonde, something only California could deliver in some spray tan—peroxide little package.”

“I was a blonde for a time.” Ally presses her lips together before giving a mock kiss to the mirror.

“Never wrote, never called.” Monica dips the sponge back into the ruddy powder, then dab, dab, dab right over my flesh. I can feel my flesh lighting up like a rash. “I came out once, but he was already with you.”

I shoot a look to her. I have zero recollection of this trip. But then again, my mind has settled down in a very dark place and sleep is essentially a stranger to me. Monica could have camped out in my dorm for all I remember.

“I saw the two of you having fun.” She shakes her head, staring intently at my features. “Him sticking his hands up your shirt as if you were a common street whore.”

“Monica, enough!” the petite brunette working on Allison finally pipes up. Her face is flustered, and she says exactly what I’m dying to say. “We’d better get them on set.”

Monica spins me toward the mirror and I’m greeted with a clown’s face, pale, doughy, with cheeks that look as if someone spent a solid year slapping. Nice touch. It’s nice to know, despite the morbid facts surrounding my life, revenge still isn’t off the table. I head to the restroom and tone it down, smearing that strawberry stained crap all over the place. I look like hell. Infected. Disease-ridden. I probably should. My heart has been diseased for some time now.

I can’t help but note the studio is smaller than anticipated as they hook Allison and me up with mics. The morning hosts, two women who look interchangeable with their painted-on smiles, short blonde hair, have a chuckle over a parade of kids in Halloween costumes before losing their smiles as they segue into our segment.

They ask the routine questions who, what, where, when, and why. We offer our sparse answers, Reagan, missing, two weeks and counting, and we do not know why. That is the million-dollar question.

“As you’re aware, we have Dolla Chetney here, world-famous psychic who claims she does have news regarding your daughter.” Blonde number one looks into the camera. “We’ll be right back to hear just what that is.”

Allison lets out a sigh as if she’s been holding her breath and gives my hand a quick squeeze. “How did we do?”

“We did good,” I assure her. “We’re likable, normal people. This ends well for us.” I hope to God it’s true.

The makeup brigade stomps onto the set. Allison gets a quick swath of lip gloss applied while Monica slaps my forehead with a brush, the powder pluming from it like fog.

An older woman with gray hair yellowing at the tips, deep lines cut into her upper lip, a testament to the tobacco industry, takes a seat next to us. She offers a somber hello, and for once it feels as if we’re being paid the due respect we deserve after having our child vacuumed out of our lives by the devil himself.

Allison gives a tired huff her way. Neither of us believes in psychics, fortune-tellers, or any other charlatan who claims to have a third eye into the unknown. We certainly don’t look to the stars to determine whether or not we should leave the house or take a crap. This is simply a formality. A means to an end. We have to pander to the American public in an effort to get off the naughty list, and to do so we listen to this monster spin a yarn about our baby girl. She should be arrested right along with whoever the hell did this. On second thought, whoever gave this nutcase the green light to be here should be convicted. That’s the real nutcase. I’m betting it was Monica.

Lights, camera, action. Blonde One introduces Ms. Chetney. “The world is waiting to hear what you have to say, but before that”—the blonde squints a tight smile my way—“do you have any words you’d like to share with Mr. and Mrs. Price?”

Blonde Two leans in. “A reading! Something that might shed light on the case, of course.”

I cringe at how convenient it was for her to use my daughter to backpedal.

“Yes, I would love to.” Ms. Chetney sheds a matronly smile, dull, no joy in her eyes to support it. “First, let me preface this by saying I am so sorry for the hell the two of you are in. Nobody on this planet should have to face what the two of you are going through.” Those milk-coated eyes settle over mine. “Mr. Price, you are a very affable fellow—usually. But, unfortunately, this season of your life has been very trying for you—and I’m talking about before the abduction.”

My stomach clenches for two reasons: one, she’s right, and two, the word abduction sounds like a grenade going off in my ear each time I hear it. But there’s something about those pale soulless pits staring me down that unnerves me. Whatever the hell she thinks she knows about me, she’s wrong. I glare at her a moment before softening.

“You”—she squints into me as if she were a voyeur into parts unknown—“have some unsettled issues in your past.” I swallow hard. She doesn’t know anything real. She’s a charlatan, a fake, nothing but a wrinkled up fraud. She squints hard. “Something that you’ve done has yet to come to light.” She holds a hand out to the two blondes seated at the edge of their seats. I offer a quick glance to Allison who looks less than fazed. “Again, this is prior to the event. But I really do see this coming to a head very soon in your life. There is something you’re either hiding from yourself or you’re working very hard to hide from somebody else. But it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s something very good. A blessing.”

A blessing. My body heat spikes unnaturally. They say a baby is a blessing—only in my case it will amount to a death sentence. The women in Ally’s family are known to be historically brutal. My wife may smell like roses, but she’s a briar patch under that smile.

I take a deep breath.

“And you.” Dolla Chetney sags contently toward Ally as if she were her favorite niece. “There is something from your past as well.” Her brows hike as she doles out a knowing look.

My antennae go up, but I know for a fact Ally isn’t running around knocking anybody up. I’m the only douchebag doing that.

Our very own psychic network friend raises a finger at my wife. “You be careful. You are treading into unchartered territory, and you know it. The better part of you wants to steer clear, but your curiosity will lead you down a thorny road. You can avoid this. Just stay strong. You’re above it all. Sometimes taking the high road is exactly what keeps us safe and sane.”

Ambiguous enough. Both Ally and I nod into her bullshit as if to say let’s move it along.

Blonde One gives a solemn sigh. “And now for the moment everyone has been waiting for.” For a second I expect to hear a drum roll. My entire life has been upturned, and here they’ve turned us into something equivalent of a game show. “Tell us what you know about Reagan.”

A spear of heat slices through my gut at the mention of my daughter’s name. As much as I hate to admit it, it’s painful for me to hear it. It hurts like hell. So, in a move that I could have never seen coming, I stopped using it. Allison doesn’t use it anymore either.

“I’m sorry to have to say this.” The charlatan bows her head a moment. “But I’m not feeling very good about this.” She takes up Allison’s hand and Ally is quick to retract. I almost want to laugh. Take away our hope and you don’t get to touch us, lady. My wife will knife your balls off in your sleep. It’s what, deep down, I expect to happen to me one day.

“I do feel very strongly the child has left us.” She nods to Blonde One and Blonde Two who both groan as if they felt an ounce of genuine sorrow. “She has. She’s crossed over. She’s safe now.” She looks to me with those tired eyes. “She was taken away far too soon. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.” A long pause ensues. You could hear a mouse fart in the studio, and right about now I’d welcome it. “She wants me to tell you that she’s okay. You can move on with your lives.” She pretends to listen to some nebulous voice. “She likes that you’ve kept her room the same, but she wants you to donate her toys. There’s something big in there. Something that was special to her. Did she have a dollhouse?”

My stomach bottoms out. Do not buy this bullshit. Every little girl in the world has some sort of housing for their cache of Barbies. This isn’t true. This is insanity. My chest bucks as I try to hold it together.

“She did.” Allison blinks through tears. “She has a big one.”

“She wants you to donate it. There’s a children’s hospital nearby and she wants you to give it to them. She doesn’t want any child to suffer.” Another lengthy pause. Allison is bawling. My chest bucks like a seizure. “She wants you to dedicate your life to helping children who are suffering. You’ll know what it is when the time is right.”

Blonde One leans in. “And the whereabouts of the child, or the mystery girl that was with her?”

“You know”—the Queen of Lies cocks her head to the side—“I can’t quite get a read on the other girl. It’s strange. That doesn’t happen very often. But I do feel like the authorities will find little Reagan soon. Actually, it will be an ordinary citizen who will bring you to her.” She offers a sorrowful nod. “She’s in a river. Her coat or shirt caught on a branch and she’s waiting there for you to find her.”

“Oh God.” Allison buries her head in my chest and I lose it.

Dammit. Damn Dolla Chetney and her ridiculous claims to the darkest, deepest pit of hell.

Allison and I sob convulsively as the cameras stop rolling, long after they pluck the mics from our bodies.

I hope Rich and McCafferty are happy.

They got their money shot.

---

Back at the house Allison takes a heavy nap that spans the afternoon straight through evening. She probably won’t be able to sleep tonight, but I don’t have the heart to wake her. That meet and greet with the Witch of the West really shook her up. Dolla Chetney is a lying bitch that will burn in hell one day for making miserable people like Allison and me that much more agonizingly miserable. I spent the entire drive home trying to convince my wife that our daughter was not facedown in some fucking river having her flesh nibbled off by errant fish. We should sue. In fact, once Reagan comes home, we will. And Reagan is coming home. Every ounce of me insists on believing it.

When the sun takes its final bow, I head into the dark living room with Dad where the television flickers in spastic seizures.

“Want some?” I offer him a slice of pizza. I ordered two large—our sole sustenance as of late. Neither Allison nor I have fired up the stove since Reagan disappeared, so our eating habits have reverted to the ones we had in college. Not that either of us is scarfing anything down. Ally’s face has thinned out, her cheeks drawn in, her eyes, bulging and red, and I’ve had to cinch up my belt a few extra notches. We’ve become a skeleton crew without Reagan, literally. The nightshift that doesn’t sleep.

“No, thanks.” He lifts a hand, his gaze never wandering from the screen, some shoot ’em up flick that sends grenades exploding all over the living room.

A light knock comes from the door and I head over, spotting Rich from the window before I open it.

“What’s up?” I extend a hand to him, but he refuses the offer, taking his hat off instead. For a second I fear the worst. Reagan has been spotted by some ordinary citizen facedown in the river.

“Just driving by the neighborhood and wanted to see how the two of you were holding up. That was pretty rough to hear this morning.”

I cast a quick glance at my father before jumping onto the porch with Rich. A herd of trick-or-treaters bounces by in a mob, and I can’t help but look away. “We’re fine. We’re well aware of the fact it was pure bullshit. It’s a miracle someone hasn’t stoned the hag yet. We’re going to find Reagan.”

Rich solidifies those steadfast citrine eyes over mine. Rich has always been awash in the color orange to me, the hair, the freckled skin, even his eyes had adopted that curious hue—a tangerine aura that consumes him. But in the night without the right amount of light to expose that Halloween coloring all I see is my mother, the look of horror and concern etched on her face.

“I’m glad you’re hanging in there.” He slaps his hand over my arm and pulls me out of my trance. “We’re going to bring her home for you. Don’t you think otherwise.” He nods toward the house. “Good thing they didn’t pull open the old man’s closet.” He gives a wistful shake of the head. “The judge has more skeletons than the cemetery.”

My chest bucks with a silent laugh as I look into the living room. My father is a tomb, all right.

“He sure was happy the three of you were moving out this way.” Rich moves in close. “He confided in me that you and the Mrs. were having some trouble.”

“Oh?” My chest cinches into a knot that’s become all too familiar. The one in which my own heart turns into an arrow of regret and tries to stab its way out.

“He was pretty broken up at the prospect of a divorce. If it’s one thing your father is famous for it’s—”

“Living by the rules.” I can’t take my eyes off the old man as he sits mesmerized by the blinking screen, hypnotized like a child.

“You know it.” He sinks that cowboy hat back over his head. “He sure loves that little girl of yours.” Rich winces in my father’s direction. “He went on and on about the effects a divorce might have on a child. He was downright terrified for her. My mother always did say he has the ability to love to a fault—and that the fault was usually his.” Rich gives a quick wink. “Let’s get together when it’s good for you and Ally, and we’ll look at putting together a new game plan.”

“Sounds good.” I watch as his patrol car rolls out into the night, silently swallowed by the darkness just like Reagan.

I head back in and take a seat on the couch, unsettled, prickled by his words, or more to the point, those of my aunt’s.

My father loves people to a fault. He loved Wilson up until he became the embodiment of a stoner, and then unfortunately much harder things that eventually sucked him down to the grave. My mind rewinds time right up until a week before Wilson was gone. He and my father argued over everything. You couldn’t hear your own damn thoughts over their nightly howls. My father loved him to a fault, but not through it.

Rachel bounces through my mind—the last week of her life was quite different, wrapped up in murmurs, in heated closed door arguments between my parents. My father was highly disappointed in something she had done. Those were the only words I was able to decipher, the only ones that time has never erased. My father didn’t shed a tear at either of their funerals. He was stoic, strong, looking straight ahead, nose to the wind. When one of my uncles suggested he was a pillar of strength for the family, my mother scoffed. I never forgot that. But he shed rivers at Aston’s funeral. Gone too soon, my son, my son, he cried out in agony late into the night. I was the stoic one then, the one in shock, the one numb from the world and everything going on in it because I had inadvertently removed my only remaining sibling from the planet.

A conversation we had weeks before the move comes crashing back to me. “I won’t tolerate any misgivings from anyone in this family, including you. Straighten up or I’ll straighten you out. Excise the sin from your body, son. The wages of sin is death.” It’s true. My father holds me to a higher standard because all of his other perfect children are dead. Perfect. That word circles around in my mind like a boomerang. Wilson was captain of the debate team, had his acceptance letter from Harvard. He was perfect until he wasn’t. Rachel. She seemed perfect to me. Liked the boys a little too much, but she was beautiful and they gave her all the attention she craved—the attention my father was never able to give her.

And then there was Mom. She wasn’t his biggest fan, but she was tolerant. I miss her. I miss that cheap honeysuckle perfume she used to douse herself with. I miss that silk scarf she pinched around the neck a little too tight. I miss that orange lipstick, her Irish heritage that she wore like a badge for the world to see. I miss every damn thing about her.

“You know what?” I pull myself off the sofa. “I think I’m going to head out and take a little drive.”

“You want company?”

“No. Allison is sleeping. Stay here in the event we need you. I won’t be gone long.” I head into the kitchen and pluck both my keys and my father’s off the counter.

I’m going to see my mother, touch her things, bury my face in that silk scarf of hers, and weep like a pussy.

I speed out into the dark and the fog retracts with each step I take, revealing the hardness of nature lying underneath.

When is this cruel world going to open up and reveal where in the hell my daughter is?

---

Kemp Drive is situated on the border between the proverbial right and wrong side of the tracks. If you had any sort of wealth at all, you would consider this an unfortunate neighborhood to have grown up in. If you were enmeshed in generations of poverty, you would think this was a step up in the world.

My father’s house, the house I spent my childhood scheming to get out of, sits back from the road, distant enough from the neighbors to let you feel as if you’re in your own little hemisphere. I park far enough away so that I can admire it in its haunting entirety once I get out of the car. A two-story bungalow with clapboard siding painted army green, brown trim that my mother hated and wanted badly to paint white. It looks gapingly large, enormous even in this strangled light. It crops up like a shadowed demon expanding its wings against the velvet background, the fog licking at its crevices.

I head up the porch as the wood groans and creaks beneath my feet like a greeting from a decrepit old friend.

“Long time no see,” I mutter, fumbling for the key. The door glides open without too much assistance as if the house itself were welcoming me inside. I flick on the lights, and just like that, I’m transported back fifteen years into my childhood. Same no-nonsense Shaker furniture, matching plaid sofas, an oval mirror hanging over the fireplace—the watchful eye of the Price home.

My father handed me my rifle with a grunt. “Don’t look down the barrel.” He winked at me as if it were a dare, but I took it with glee and bolted for Aston. Of course, I glanced down into the dark hole of the barrel when neither one of them was looking. It was practically command once you asked me not to do it.

“Let’s get out the damn door!” I circled my older brother like a gnat he couldn’t get rid of. Our father was the true barrier that day, insisting we take a pipe cleaner to those old shotguns we were hauling around.

“Watch that mouth of yours or the old man will take it right off your face.” Aston shoved a bristled brush into the barrel of his gun, which sat in various stages of deconstruction across the dining room table. He shot a frown up at our father before reverting to me. “Clean your damn gun, would you?” He gave a little wink my way. Aston was three years older than me, already well past puberty, headed into that man body my mother promised us we’d own one day.

It was deer season and my mother loved it when we brought home a kill. We ate venison through every winter I can remember, or at least up until that one.

“Will do!” I cocked the rifle to check the barrel and Aston stepped right in front of me. I can still see that final moment in my mind like some well-choreographed ballet, a comedy of horrific errors.

One powerful blast, the unexpected blowback knocking me to the floor. I glanced up and thought what the hell is that mess on the wall. Dad is going to kill us.

“Dad is going to kill us,” I whisper as I make my way slowly to the dining room. The wall is pristine, covered in wallpaper, a repeating pattern of birds, blues and greens. What was once a den of horror has since been transformed into a Zen-like station.

My mother hated this room after it was done. We never ate dinner in there again.

I head upstairs, startled to note the wall of family pictures my mother proudly displayed throughout the years has been dismantled. In its place are the sparse pictures of Allison, Reagan, and me. A few of my father posing with his gold clubs, one of him on a deep-sea fishing trip he once took.

Odd. But it must be depressing to look at all of the faces that have passed each and every day. I wish I knew he was having such a tough time. I flick the light on in the master bedroom, a simple room, white bedding, rocker in the corner, a nightstand, and a lamp. My mother used to heap a basket of her knitting needles in the corner, and she had the occasional magazine lying around. Her latest fiction read would be in hardback form right next to her side of the bed. I make my way to the closet, a walk-in that my brothers, sister, and I would use as our clubhouse growing up, and flick on the light.

My heart drops. The entire left side of the closet has up and vanished.

My mother died a year ago. Of course, she didn’t need any of those things anymore, but didn’t he? I stagger over to the dresser and pull open drawer after drawer, but all I come up with are men’s socks, my father’s underwear, an entire drawer dedicated to baseball hats.

“Crap.” I snap them all shut. “Where did you put her?” I head to the hall and pull out the hide-a-ladder embedded in the ceiling. The attic is where my father kept all of those pesky things we once took pride in possessing out of sight, Christmas decorations—something my father dubbed seasonal crap, old bankers boxes filled with memories, trophies, ancient artwork ready to crumble at a glance, and volumes and volumes of the scrapbooks my mother worked on like some Lifetime marathon. She loved to document our existence while most of us still existed.

The light flickers on, blinking in and out as if it were still considering its options, exposing the gossamer ensconced rotted out wood beams, the floor covered in a patchwork of plywood. I take in a nice hearty breath of that old familiar scent, sweet aged pine coated in dust—house breath Rachel used to call it. I have learned over the years that every home has a scent, and ours smelled like kindling sweet and ripe for the burn.

My eyes track over to the left and I stop mid-breath. Where once stood a towering mountain of all our memories, every over brimming box filled with Price family pride and joy, now lies a wasteland. Nothing but cobwebs and an empty space that feels large enough to park a semi in.

“What the hell.” I sink down and take a seat on the squeaky floorboards, a plume of dust rising around me. He did it. He hauled every last speck of who we were, of who my mother was, and tossed it to the curb like some old relic that belonged in the junkyard. I leap down, shut the ladder with a thundering crash, and open closets and drawers, looking in every nook and cranny, scouring the garage like a thief looking to steal, but there isn’t one sign of anything. Every last drop of my mother, my brothers and sister has been effectively erased.

I stagger back inside, back to the hall of horrors, as my brother and I used to call it, and scan the pictures one by one. I find myself, almost relieved that I wasn’t entirely erased, but Wilson, Aston, Rachel—my God, what did they even look like? My mind is refusing to give them up at the moment. But the most startling omission of all is that of my mother. Why in the hell would my father want to wipe out the memory of her? I realize that grief is a bitch. I intimately know that, but this kind of a purposeful cleansing feels outright evil. Soulless. And just like that, my heart sinks. My mother doesn’t live here anymore, not in any sense of the word. What I wouldn’t give to hear her voice one more time, have one last conversation.

A brisk knock to the front door causes my spine to buck. We’ve never had trick-or-treaters here, not when I was young at least. The house is too far off from the street. I head on over, fully expecting to find a concerned neighbor. I bet they miss my father plodding around his cozy little compound, complaining about the weather, bitching about the lawlessness disease that’s gripped our nation. Barking the wages of sin is death at the top of his lungs at every God-awful hour. Instead, I swing the door open to find a well coifed, painted lipped, tits out and proud Monica Phillips.

“Crap,” I mutter, not even trying to hide it. She’s made no secret of the fact she’s still after me. But I wouldn’t entertain it—not even months ago, if she were in L.A. and wearing a string bikini on a day that my dick decided it couldn’t get any harder without begging for relief. Not even on that day would Monica Phillips had been a prospect. And on that note, I wish to God she had been my neighbor back in L.A. because I never would have cheated. Allison and I never would have moved—she would have hated having Monica as our neighbor, but that nightmare could nowhere near compare to the one my infidelity embroiled me in. Embroiled Reagan in.

“Is that any way to greet an old friend?” She gives a hard wink. “You going to invite me in or what?”

I open the door just enough for her to slither inside with her high-heeled boots, her too tight dress, shiny around the waist from the fabric stretching thin.

“My, my, let’s do the time warp, my friend.” She does an awkward hitchhiking motion with her hand. “Some things never change.”

“We’ve changed.” I follow her over to the sofa and motion for her to take a seat as I fall into my old man’s favorite chair. “Dad’s chair.” I slap the armrest. “We used to monkey around on it as kids, but as soon as we heard that old Caddy pull up, we bolted for the four corners of the house.”

Her smile pulls tight, bright red and dangerous. Monica always did have a demonic flare about her. “You kids were afraid of your daddy.” Her inked in brows hike high into her forehead. “I don’t see why not. Everyone else feared him, too.”

My mind does its best to push back the curtain of the past and try to decipher if this were true. “Rachel once said she hated him.” I’m not sure why I confessed it, but it felt cathartic to say it out loud, and right here in the room she said it in. “It was after Wilson died. She accused him of wanting us to be perfect.”

Monica expels a low guttural laugh. “Everyone knew the Price kids were perfection. When your father runs the county courthouse and your mother runs the social circles, you kids had no choice but to mind your p’s and q’s. It was practically mandated for you to live out a flawless existence. If your parents were about anything, it was keeping pretenses. They made sure everyone knew it, too.”

A chuckle bounces through me. “That was old school Mom and Pops. Back in the day when there were still four Price children, my parents made sure everyone knew how good-natured we were, how congenial, how brilliant.” Wilson, Rachel, and Aston bounce through my mind, each one neatly tucked under a bed of dirt. Aston had a closed casket funeral, but I still see Wilson and Rachel sleeping peacefully in their formalwear, a rose tucked between their folded hands. “And now they’re perfectly dead.”

“Whoa, that got dark fast. Not you—you’re not dead.” She leans in, ready to pounce. Monica has been my self-appointed cheerleader for as long as I can remember. “What are you doing here, anyway? Stalking these empty halls, looking for a ghost? Are you picking up a few things for your father?”

“No. You had it right the first time. I’m looking for a ghost. My mother’s to be exact. He’s deleted her. No pictures, no clothes, not a bottle of her perfume. The attic’s been cleared out. It’s as if she never existed.”

Her face contorts in surprise, and in this low-lighting it offers a macabre effect. “What about the basement?”

She doesn’t finish the word before I bolt past the kitchen, down the dark mouth of the steep stairwell that leads to the dungeon as it was better known in our house, and my heart gives an erratic thump because no matter how old I get, this dank, musty pit still has the power to strike fear in me. Without fear of being called a pussy, I can honestly say I’m glad Monica is here, clacking her heels at breakneck speed in an attempt to keep up with me.

I flick the lights on, heart pounding into my ears, and squint at the dusty, arid space with mold spores floating to the ceiling.

“Empty.”

Monica swats me as she makes her way deeper into the pit. “It’s not empty. What do you call this?” She gives a barren bookshelf a quick thump.

“My father’s crap.” My father managed to salvage a few pieces of furniture from his own father’s estate. My grandfather was a wealthy but frugal man and these few pieces of sturdy oak furniture lasted him a lifetime. He looked forward to passing it down to his own son with pride, only to have it rot in our basement for the next twenty-five years. My mother hated it. By the time she inherited it, we were at capacity in crappy dressers and bookshelves, so the basement it was.

Monica traverses an obstacle course of cleaning supplies as she makes her way deeper into the bowels of my old home. I wander to the dresser and give it my own pat-down as if greeting an old friend. I grip the ends and give it a shake as if offering up a hug and something jostles from up above—the thin edge of a piece of paper and I snap it down to find a thick envelope with my aunt’s name, Jolene, written in my mother’s neat handwriting across the front. Something in me loosens and I resist the urge to bawl. There she is. I’ve found her. Seeing my mother’s handwriting is almost as good as seeing her face.

A dull thud hits the floor from across the room and I quickly tuck the envelope into the waistband of my jeans and pull my shirt over it. Whatever my mother has to say to my aunt, I want to drink down in private. Probably pages of family recipes. I’d relish to make them all. Or maybe directions to the venue of a gala she was hosting. If my mother was anything, she was old school, right down to the longitude and latitude minutia of life.

“Everything okay?” I head over and help Monica out of the tangle of scattered work tools. When the weather got crappy, my father would tinker down here for hours. We called him the mad scientist. Rachel once corrected me when I said it and suggested he was just mad.

“Oh hell.” Monica does a little tap dance as she falls into my arms. “Well, that’s better.” Her lashes bat up at me manically, and I openly frown at her as I lead us out of the dimly lit maze.

“Ladies first.” I follow her up the stairwell and lead her straight through the house, turning off lights as we pass them by. The bitter cold air outside feels like a welcomed reprieve as it attempts to descale the past off my flesh with its sting. “What did you come by for, anyway?”

She looks up, her hand finds a home over my cheek, heavy and weighted. Her skin glows against the dark expanse of nothingness behind her, and those lips look like a vortex of blood red darkness I never plan on getting sucked into again. In truth, I don’t find Monica attractive. I did once, and once was more than enough.

“You are a beautiful man, James Brennen Price.”

Brennen. I don’t think I’ve heard my middle name spoken out loud since the last time Monica said it. My father’s brother died just before I was born and my parents wanted to honor him in some small way. I’ve been hauling around my uncle’s ghost long before I ever did my siblings’.

“I can’t imagine the pain you’re going through.” Tears slick her cheeks as if on cue. “You lost a lot of family in your young life.”

I carefully remove her hand and land it at her side. “I often wonder what my family would have looked like if my brothers and sister were still here today. I imagine they’d all have families of their own by now. Lots of kids running around. But they took all those with them when they died. It’s just me. One kid—and I couldn’t keep track of her.” My voice cracks. Monica wraps her arms around me, leaping at the chance to offer me a modicum of physical comfort. Her perfume holds the scent of high school. Of all those years locked in a smothering relationship with her.

“You have a family. You have your father. You have me.”

I reach down in an effort to try to pry her off me and she tightens her grip. Her eyes widen as she buries them in mine. “And I think it’s time I told you about another family member you have.” She gives an audible swallow as her mouth contorts as if unable to finish the thought. “Our child.”