really, it wouldn’t change much. The house is just sitting there rotting now anyway.”
“But . . .” I trailed off, unsure what I was about to say.
“You have too much on your plate already.” Michael’s eyes met mine again as he suggested this, and I could see hope there. He wanted this.
I lifted a shoulder, considering his words. Did I have a lot on my plate? Not really. I did have—before . . . but now? I had almost nothing. I had Mom hovering and questioning and opining about things, I had work at the Muffin Tin, and I had the scattered rubble of my old life waiting for me to come sweep it up. “I think I want to do this,” I said, surprising myself.
“You do?” Michael sounded excited, and part of me felt happy to have made him happy.
“I think I do.”
Mice in the Mattress
Michael
“You’re doing what? Hell no.” Shelly crossed her arms over her chest, lifted her pointy chin and gave me her entitled cheerleader stare. The one that used to intimidate the hell out of me. I’d gone to talk to her on her lunch break at The Shack on Wednesday, to tell her about our plans to move into the house.
That had gone over as expected. Like a wagon full of manure.
“It’s not actually your decision,” I pointed out, keeping my voice low as other people wandered past the corner of the bar where we were chatting.
“My son is not going to live in that haunted house. Did you know some teenager was murdered in there?” Her blue eyes widened with conviction.
That story had been going around since Shelly and I had been kids. It was just one of many stories told about the old house, which was the center of hundreds of ghost tales in Singletree. “That’s not true, it’s just a story we used to tell each other to scare ourselves.”
“Daniel told me his friends knew the girl who died.”
This was pure Shelly. Zero rational thought, one hundred percent reaction. I needed to have a chat with Daniel about telling his mother stories. “It’s not true, Shell. Don’t you think there would have been a police investigation we would have noticed? And it’s a small enough town—we would have known the family. Plus, that story has been going around since we were in school, remember?”
“It’s haunted,” she said defiantly.
“It might be, I guess.” I didn’t know that it wasn’t. I suspected ghosts were not real and that the house suffered mostly from neglect rather than an infestation of otherworldly spooks.
“It’s dangerous.”
She might have a point on that one. “I won’t let Daniel wander, and it’ll be a good chance for him to learn how to fix a few things around the house.” I had already thought about how Dan could help patch drywall and replace fixtures. I’d thought that part through. This was a great chance to teach Dan things, to work on a real project side by side and to grow our relationship. I was excited about it.
She sighed. “I don’t like it. What’s wrong with the house you have now?”
The house I had now was a two-bedroom bungalow I’d bought after things fell apart with Shelly. It was a bachelor pad for the most part. But I think Shelly liked me being there, knowing I was staying put in the remnants of the failed life I’d once had. If she couldn’t move forward, she didn’t want me to. Or maybe that was just me, assigning my life’s failures to someone else. Either way, I was ready for a change, and this opportunity felt like an offering from a universe that had previously offered me only lost dreams.
“It’s going to be fine, Shelly. I’ll look out for Dan.”
Her shoulders rounded, the fight leaving her. “Fine.”
I sighed, turning to leave, and wished fervently that somehow things had worked out differently. For us, for Dan. For me. But these pseudo-fights with Shelly were just reminders of the mistakes of my past, the life I’d failed. And I would bear them because the only real obligation I had now was to my son. To make sure his life went a different way, that he had every opportunity I could give him.
I headed for the truck, where I’d already piled my duffle bags and the few scant pieces of furniture I thought I’d move. There had been beds in all the rooms, but I brought along an air mattress and sleeping bag for me and Dan