Only when I’m done do I wonder if the words were ever there at all.
I pile up the tiny scraps and toss them in the trash, keeping my gaze off the little spots of black ink I can see.
A delicate sigh fills the room. Paige would say it’s a ghost. My mom would say it’s the old house settling.
I’m not sure what I would say.
I look up and for a second I think I see a face reflected in the window.
I whip my head around, and the room is empty. But it doesn’t feel that way. It’s like a word on the tip of my tongue, out of reach. A presence too intangible to land on.
“Harper?” I whisper, as if I’ll actually get a response, cursing myself even as I say her name.
Of course, nothing. I’m both disappointed and relieved. Even more grateful the whole house is asleep, so no one heard my little lapse in judgment.
I don’t want to find Harper. I’ve lived with this weight on my chest for months. The only thing worse than losing her would be knowing she’s still here, trapped in some limbo.
The same limbo I’m stuck in. Day in, day out. Maybe there is some ghost haunting this house, but it isn’t some century-old resident, not even Harper.
It’s me.
Seven
It’s rare to find thehouse empty. I was meant to get picked up by my mom and Paige after my shift, but the store had been dead for over an hour, so when Nora gave me the out, I took it. A pink sticky note puts my aunt and Mom at the grocery store; a yellow one tells me Jasper and Margot walked up to the diner for milkshakes, and no, they won’t be bringing one back, because I never finish them anyway. Which is a bald-faced lie, but I’m so grateful for the peace, I don’t bother texting my opposition. Even the stereo is uncharacteristically silent.
A tiny voice reminds me I should let my mom and Paige know I won’t be needing a ride home after all, but the emptiness of the house loops around my limbs like a warm blanket. No pretending everything is okay; no faking pleasantries or telling white lies to appease my ever-worried mother.
It’s been weeks since I touched the grand piano, formerly my dad’s and his mom’s before him and on and on in a long line of Stuarts. Mom kept her maiden name when she married Dad, andthough they apparently discussed hyphenation in me and my siblings’ case, we ended up Griffins, too. Oddly fitting with the way everything turned out.
The open expanse of the house beyond it and the tall windows make privacy impossible, and I barely want to hear myself play these days, let alone pull an audience.
The itch crawling over my skin and making my fingers twitch, the one that started last night and refuses to peel away, gives me a one-track mind. Even the thought of playing one of my own songs—Harper’s and my songs—makes me taste metal, but I spent years on the piano before penning my own note.
I sit on the bench and push up the fallboard, fluttering my fingers over the keys. It’s all second nature, like shrugging into a worn and familiar coat. The cold ivory pushes memories up like water boiling over a pot, but the first notes of Billy Joel’s “Vienna” shove them back down.
I stumble over a note and catch myself, letting muscle memory slide into place. The music pulses with a heartbeat in the room around me, and when I sing the first lyrics, that old comforting fog settles over my head.
I close my eyes, light as air, letting the music mold a bubble around me. There are no dead or gone or missing. Just me and the dark behind my eyes. When I reach the end, I drop my hands to the bench beside me, fingers tingling and brain delightfully fuzzy.
Then a creaking floorboard snaps me back to reality. My head whips around, a warmth telling me someone is standing at my back, but the room is empty.
Whatever peace I’d stumbled into fizzles out. I push to my feet, knowing how ludicrous this is even as I do it. I do a slow traipse around the room, scanning every surface, every crevice.
Paige says older houses have personalities of their own. All thepeople who lived here have left impressions. Worn now invisible paths in the wood floors and left infinitesimal dents on the doorknobs and light switches. Even I can admit to never truly feeling alone in this house.
That’s all it is. Impressions. Fading melodies of past lives.
And yet, I can’t shake the feeling I’m not the only person in the room.
“Joanna? Joanna, are you here?” My mother’s frantic tone follows the whining of the front door as it bangs open. Two sets of footsteps barrel into the front room. I jump, nearly smashing into the edge of the piano.
Before I can speak, the pair floods into the turret off the entryway, eyes landing on me.
My mom is all rapid blinks and rigid shoulders, and Paige is wound tight enough it’s amazing she hasn’t snapped.
“Oh, thank god,” Paige says.
“What the hell, Joanna?”
