Just Like Home(92)

Vera listened to the Crowder House with new understanding. This was what it had wanted to say to her, all these years. This was a speech, practiced and polished. This was what had grown in her long absence.

The least she could do was listen.

“He built me to keep you safe and warm. I did my best. I tried not to let you hear the fights they had about you, the times your mother told your father he was full of filth, the times he cried in her arms because he just wanted to be good and he only knew one way to get there. It worked until you made him choose between the two of you.”

“I didn’t make him choose,” Vera whispered. “I didn’t.”

“You did,” the Crowder House responded gently. “The words they shared are still in the walls of the garage. She tried so hard to convince him to just kill Brandon, to get rid of him. If our father had listened to Daphne, he could have stayed here. Maybe they would have sent you away somewhere, and then she and Francis could have been together again. Just the two of them.”

“But that’s not how it happened,” Vera said, her voice breaking. Because maybe if it had happened another way, her father would still be alive. “He took Brandon to the hospital.”

“I miss him too, Vee. I do. He hurt me sometimes, making me hold all of what he did, but I know he didn’t mean it. He was just trying to make things right. Just like you. I miss him the same as you do. I miss him every day. But I’m glad he went away instead of you. And I’m so, so glad you came home to me.” Its voice dropped to a desperate whisper. “Because, the thing is … I need your help. With Daphne nearly gone, I couldn’t guarantee that he wouldn’t hurt me even worse.”

“Who?” Vera shook her head. “Dad? He’s dead, he’s never coming back here, I don’t think you have anything to worry—”

“Not Francis,” the Crowder House interrupted. “Never Francis, he would never hurt me. Not on purpose. No, I mean him.”

The Crowder House looked to the corner of the room, its gaze shifting as steadily and reluctantly as though a fisherman’s hook had pierced the very center of each eye, as if someone with steady, strong hands were reeling in its attention. It looked to the spot where the wall and the floor met, and it opened its mouth and let out a long, steady rasp. To Vera’s ears, the sound was doubled. It took her a moment to figure out why.

She figured it out when she looked to the corner.

The rasp was coming from the basement.

It didn’t make any sense. Vera had never been able to hear noise from the dining room before, not noise from the basement anyway. But then she remembered the Crowder House telling her about how it tried to soak up everything bad, how it tried to insulate her from all the hurt that happened inside the house.

It was letting her hear now. It was letting her know. Like a child calling out in the night because there’s a monster in the room—it was asking for help.

Vera and the thing that was wearing Daphne were frozen in parallel, both of them staring at the same place. And then the Crowder House shut its mouth, and the rasping noise died away.

The Crowder House spoke with absolute resignation. “He’s almost finished.”

“Finished with what?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Vera saw the Crowder House give a shudder. Sweet lemon hung in the air like summer humidity, dimming the light and thickening up the shadows. “I’d rather not say,” it replied. It sounded nauseated.

“You can tell me,” Vera said, tearing her gaze away from the floor so she could look at the thing in the bed. It looked so small, too small for Daphne’s stretched-out skin to fit. It shifted and, with grave reluctance, it finally met Vera’s eyes.

When it opened its mouth, a new voice came out. A familiar voice.

It was the voice of James Duvall.

“I’m a sculptural painter,” the House said in James’s deep, slow drawl. “It’s an intimate act of co-creation between myself and my surroundings.”

A muscle in Vera’s foot spasmed hard, and her toes curled against the wood of the floor. She remembered the sounds of Duvall moving through the house while she’d been hiding in the closet. They’d been clearer than usual. A warning. “He’s doing it right now? He’s … working?”

“He digs out pieces to mix into his paintings,” the House said in its usual, rasping voice.

Vera thought of the gouges in the walls and the floors and the ceilings. She thought of the fruit-rot smell of the cigarillos Duvall liked to smoke. She thought of the little burn marks scattered throughout the house like freckles across bare shoulders.

She thought of that gray plaster he used to add texture to the boards, and she knew where it came from, and her mouth flooded with saliva.

Instead of screaming, she whispered. “He hurts you.” The House looked away again. “Is that why you needed me to come home? Is that what you needed my help with?”

The House didn’t seem to hear her. “I don’t know if he’s going to stop when Daphne’s gone. I don’t know how to make him stop.”

“I’ll send him away,” Vera said.

“I don’t think he’ll go,” the House replied, its eyes darting back behind Vera.

Vera gave the thing the most reassuring smile she could muster. “I’ll make him. I’ll make him go. And he’ll never come back here again.”