Open House: A Novel Read online

  Just breathe, Priya.

  In, out, in, out . . .

  Her cognitive behavioral therapy sessions with Dr. Baker were never far from her mind, all his tips and tricks for changing her anxious trains of thought, to rewire neural pathways, as Dr. Baker explained it all those years ago. Priya thought about the gift certificate for the sessions that her husband, Brad, had presented to her early one Christmas morning, and the way the smooth, embossed envelope had felt in her hand. Brad loved giving gifts, especially jewelry, but Priya thought the gift certificate was even better because it was what she really needed. She hadn’t been right since Elliot was born. She loved him beyond measure, but she was so anxious, and the week before that Christmas, she’d had a very public panic attack in the parking lot outside Elliot’s music class. She’d had to sit down and clutch her baby while she hung her head between her knees and tried to breathe, right there on the frozen pavement for all the other parents to see. When a well-meaning mother tried to pull Elliot from her arms, Priya lunged at her like a wild animal. After that morning it was even harder to make friends. And even now, nearly a decade later, Priya could never seem to stop the recurrent nightmare that someone would deem her an unfit mother and take away Elliot.

  Leave me alone, Josie, please, Priya wrote in the text box, and then pressed send. Her fingers trembled against the phone as she tried even harder to recall the breathing techniques taught to her by Dr. Baker all those years ago. Priya was always trying harder. She knew how lucky she was to have someone as wonderful as Elliot, and though Brad wasn’t perfect, at least he tried to help her. Those sessions were just one of the many examples of his devotion to making her better. In the early days of their marriage he’d seemed so hopeful that he could actually do it. Priya had always wondered if that was the hardest part of his career as a doctor: the frustration that he’d never be able to fix his own wife.

  Please, the next text from Josie read, the phone buzzing in Priya’s hand. Something’s changed, and I need to explain.

  Priya’s mind drifted back to Brad. Was that even a real thing for him, his inability to make her okay? Or was she just worrying again, her anxiety always ready to rev like an engine and sweep her away?

  Can you meet with me? asked Josie, and Priya reached into her bag for her medication, her heart pounding. Could it ever not be this way, with Priya terrified every time she heard her phone chime? Josie’s texts only came through every six months or so. Once, a full two years went by without one, and Priya had felt safe for the first time in forever. She knew she could change her number, but what if that enraged Josie and made her do something unsavory with everything she knew?

  Priya opened the yellow bottle and removed a pill with shaking fingers. She popped it onto her tongue and swigged it down with a gulp of tepid tap water. She couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to never, ever again hear from Josie Carmichael.

  THREE

  Haley

  An hour after anatomy class ended, Haley sat inside her parked car with an indie rock station blaring. She stared at the new coffee shop on Main Street. All she wanted to do was head to the police station, but the appointment wasn’t for another hour. Through the coffee shop’s windows, she saw the profiles of her blond, beautiful real estate agents, Josie and Noah Carmichael. They were seated inside at a circular table.

  You want this, Haley, don’t you? You want a future with Dean in Waverly, so just go in, please, and try to act normal.

  Josie was frowning at something Noah was saying, but then a man stopped at their table, and her expression changed. She tilted her chin and laughed as she stood to greet the person, maybe someone she once sold a home to. Noah stood, too, straightening to his full six feet, three or four inches, and extending a hand. He had a jawbone like an action figure.

  It was 1:03, and Haley really needed to turn off her car and go inside, but she just couldn’t yet. Facing them today felt insurmountable. Josie and Noah had been Emma’s best friends back at Yarrow, and in the days after she disappeared, they seemed to have been her only friends, or at least the only ones who came forward with any information to try to help find her, turning over their phones immediately and leading the police to the journals Emma kept. Josie’s brother, Chris, was on record saying something like Anything could have happened to that girl, as if disappearing were somehow Emma’s fault, and the other students at Yarrow seemed to simultaneously obsess over Emma’s disappearance while also distancing themselves from her. There were dozens of students at the party with Emma when she disappeared, but their statements to the police were unhelpful, mostly peppered with observations about how Emma was aloof, and how she and Josie were so insular that it was hard to get to know either of them. It niggled at the edges of Haley’s mind, mostly because no one ever would have described Emma as aloof before college. She’d been incredibly well liked growing up in Waverly, voted homecoming queen her senior year of high school, which she mostly made fun of with self-effacing jokes, but still: it didn’t make sense for her personality to have undergone such a transformation, and Haley had never been able to put her finger on what had caused it.

  Anything could have happened to that girl.

  It made Haley shudder. And now Noah and Josie were ten years older, married, and running a real estate business in town. Emma had loved them so much, which is why Haley tried to love them, too, but it was weird seeing them and being forced to interact. All Haley could do was picture Noah, Josie, and Emma ten years ago lounging on the quad at Yarrow, Emma and Josie wearing cut-off shorts and Noah in his lacrosse jersey. Dean had done his undergrad at Yarrow, too, and though he hadn’t been friendly with Emma, Noah, or Josie during his years there, he was acquainted with them, and all these things put together meant it would be a snub not to use them as real estate agents. It’s a small town, Haley, Dean had said when he dialed Noah and Josie’s number, let’s not start off on the wrong foot. Dean cared about things like that, about making a good impression.

  Haley turned up the music even louder, letting her eyes settle on the coffee shop’s blue neon sign: MOSAIC. She was pretty sure the owners were going for something swanky that looked different from all the other shops that lined the classic-looking Main Street, but it looked too futuristic, and it put a hard pit in her stomach, which made no sense when her future was supposed to look so bright, so safe. Just last night Haley and Dean had scrolled through wedding save-the-date cards and laughed about the pictures they could use to populate the blank spaces left for personalized photos. Anyway, what’s the point of these save-the-dates? Haley had blurted when Dean opened up an option with cherry blossoms scattered along the borders. If someone isn’t close enough to know when we’re planning the wedding, do we really care if they come?

  Dean had bristled, jiggling the computer mouse back and forth. But really, Haley had been thinking about Emma and feeling righteously pissed that her sister wouldn’t be there when Dean’s random, double-cheek-kissing aunts would. Still, maybe what she’d said had been too harsh. Dean had accused her of that before.

  Haley loved Dean, she really did. He was the only man who’d ever truly understood her, definitely the only man who’d ever loved her in the way she wanted to be loved. She was still adjusting to being engaged at twenty-six when none of her friends from Stanford were, and when the guys she’d dated there were still binge drinking and pulling all-nighters at work. She’d never been the type of person who fantasized about a someday wedding; when she was little she never even sent her Barbies on dates, only to surgery, and when her mother found them all cut up, she got freaked out and threw them away.

  Haley turned off the radio, exhaled. It was now or never. She opened the car door, got out, and slammed it shut. Everything sounded louder in this kind of cold.

  Haley started toward the coffee shop and zipped her black bomber jacket higher. She was careful on the icy pavement, her mind flashing to her cadaver again. She could see Susie’s still body lying on that table. Susie, like Emma, ente
red her mind uninvited all the time; Haley couldn’t seem to stop either of them. Thinking about them—and about whatever peril they’d somehow gotten themselves into—kept her sharp.

  There was a thin line of scar tissue that ran along Susie’s forehead into her hairline, and Haley was always coming up with ways she could have gotten it. (A fall on black ice? A sibling who played too roughly?) In Haley’s dreams—the ones she was pretty sure most people would call nightmares—Emma came often and always with new maladies that she needed Haley to fix. Sometimes when Haley was between sleep and wakefulness, Emma sat on the edge of her bed. Sister, she always said, followed by things like help me . . . look closer . . . figure me out, but Haley wasn’t sure if Emma meant she was supposed to figure everything out now, or if she was talking about ten years ago. Of all the ways her sister haunted her, it was the images of how Emma could have died that Haley hated the most. She felt certain that her sister had fallen through the night sky: she could practically see it, hear it, and even smell the crisp winter air scented with evergreens. Sometimes—though she’d never admitted this to anyone—she felt Emma reverberating through her own body like the aftermath of a slap, like the ghost of her sister lived inside her and wanted the truth known.

  Haley pressed her hands against the door to the café. The ice-cold glass felt like relief, and she shoved it forward and stepped inside. Smart-looking people chattered and unwrapped muffins from eco-friendly paper shells. An espresso machine hissed and made Haley startle. “Over here!” Josie called to her, pulling out a chair. Josie was glossy and beautiful, just like Emma used to be. Her blond hair rolled in waves over her shoulders, and her sparkling blue eyes were the color of pool water. Her skin was smooth and olive, a shade darker than most other blonds, and it made her look so healthy and alive, and like it was the middle of summer instead of freezing January. Haley sat quickly—it was a good way to avoid having to shake hands and get germs—and yanked off her knit cap. “Is this one mine?” she asked, gesturing to an untouched coffee on the table.

  “All yours,” Noah said. His light, thick hair was mussed from the wind. He, too, was rather good looking, and seeing them together was a little comical: they looked like they belonged in Hollywood, not inside an East Coast coffee shop discussing real estate. It had been like this when they were in college, too; the two of them were gorgeous and vibrant when most of the students looked tired and puffy. Even Emma had lavender half-moons beneath her eyes in those weeks before she disappeared. Josie had twice pointed that out to Haley back then, growing agitated when she tried to tell Haley how worried she was about Emma, but Haley was still so young that she had no idea what to do with something like that. Why hadn’t Josie told a real adult?

  Noah smiled at Haley now, and she thought back to when she was only sixteen and meeting him for the first time in the student center and feeling immediately flushed and nervous the way you do when you’re that age. Haley and her family lived only five miles from campus, so she often saw Emma, Josie, and Noah. Every time Emma and Josie would pull into the driveway to pick her up for coffee she’d go itchy with excitement, desperate to be out of her mother’s sight and in the worn leather back seat of Josie’s car. Josie would regale them with some story, usually about a guy and a hookup, which felt as scandalous a thing as Haley could imagine. She’d never seen a female friendship like theirs, and the thrill she felt to be included was unlike anything she’d ever felt before. It was like the three of them hovered on the precipice of something dangerous, like anything could happen at any moment, and whatever it was would be more exciting than the life Haley had known. And then Emma disappeared, and everything felt wrong, as though all the things they’d ever done together had led to tragedy.

  A barista called out a drink order, and Haley tried to pull herself from her thoughts. She thanked Josie and Noah for the coffee and took a sip, forcing a smile as they watched her. She wanted to ask whether they’d had a recent phone call from Detective Rappaport, but she didn’t usually bring up anything having to do with Emma. Josie and Noah had lost so much, too, when Emma disappeared, even if they dealt with it in different ways: Josie ditching her art degree and getting therapy and then her real estate license, and Noah taking a few drug-fueled years off in Australia, trying to party hard enough to forget everything that had happened, until his parents demanded he come back. Noah’s dad had a major company in New York City that he’d always expected Noah to take over, and apparently Noah was a complete failure in his eyes for becoming a real estate agent. Josie said Noah’s parents barely spoke to him now. Haley couldn’t imagine ever letting go of a family member over something as unimportant as a career choice. But maybe people who did things like that didn’t understand real loss.

  Noah cleared his throat. “Ready to find your dream home?” he asked, and then he winked as though he were being ironic, like he didn’t take this too seriously and neither should Haley. “You’re gonna see so many beautiful properties this weekend,” he went on, warm and casual, like a surfer talking about ocean waves.

  “Noah’s right,” Josie said, and the sunny lilt in her voice made Haley realize Josie wasn’t going to mention anything having to do with Emma or police stations. If Josie employed a tactic to cope with Emma’s death, it seemed to be perfectionism, from her manners to the appropriateness of what she talked about. Haley watched as Josie reached into a butter-colored leather bag and retrieved a handful of brochures. All the fancier homes seemed to have them. “The first is a smart contemporary, set on two acres, but it might be too close to a main road for Dean’s liking.” Her voice was high and soft around the edges, and Haley considered the possibility that maybe Josie had just grown up, and this vanilla version of the person she’d been in college had nothing to do with Emma’s death.

  “Right, probably too close to the main road,” Haley said, averting her eyes from the picture of the hulking gray-blue contemporary, and from Noah and Josie, too. She glanced around the coffee shop, at the stark white walls covered with an exhibit of oil paintings, mostly landscapes filled with black water and mossy lily pads. Astronomical prices were pinned on tags beneath each one.

  “This one’s right near town,” Noah started, about to hand over a brochure for a house she recognized.

  Haley shook her head to stop him. “That’s the Lamberts’ house,” she said. Her eyes flickered to Josie, and she tried to discern if the name meant anything to her, but Josie’s face was blank. “Emma dated their son, Frank, in high school.”

  There, she’d done it. She’d mentioned her sister by name. Color drained from Josie’s face, and Noah’s professional smile faded. They all stared at each other until Noah said, “I’m sorry, Haley,” and carefully put the brochure back into Josie’s bag. His smile came back, but it was gentle now, kind even. Haley swallowed over the hard lump in her throat. “It’s okay,” she said. “How could you have known?”

  Noah was quiet. Josie sniffed, looking down at her hands. She shook her head, then raised her eyes to meet Haley’s. “I’m sorry, too,” she said. Noah’s chair creaked as he shifted his weight, and the moment passed.

  “Do you want to take a peek at this one?” Josie asked carefully, pushing a brochure across the tiny round table. Her real estate speak was softer than Noah’s . . . take a peek . . . so completely nonthreatening, so devoid of what was really happening here, which was Haley choosing a life for herself and Dean: a house that might hold a family. It was paralyzing to think of the enormity of it. Did other people feel that way? Like one choice could set off a chain reaction that spiraled completely out of their control?

  Noah nodded encouragingly at the brochure. “You’ll see the kind of property Dean’s looking for,” he said.

  “Four acres of land,” Josie said. She unbelted her khaki trench, graceful as she slipped out of it and hung it on the back of her chair. “Hot in here,” she said.

  Haley felt their stares like a hand on her skin. She tucked her head and studied the cover photo showing a classic
-looking colonial with green shutters. Her fingernails were covered in chipped silver polish, and she felt self-conscious about them as she unfolded the brochure to check out the photographs inside: a pristine white kitchen with a navy La Cornue stove and gleaming silver pots hanging above a marble island, a stone path leading beneath a trellis twined with greenery into a rose garden, and a glistening saltwater pool. Dean made enough money that they could afford the house, but could someone who wore Vans and chipped nail polish really live in a palace like this? Who was she kidding?

  Haley shut the brochure. It wasn’t the nail polish; it was Josie. Something about her gave Haley a temporary case of impostor syndrome.

  “So what do you think?” Josie asked, her pale blue eyes roving the brochure. “It’s very classic New England, right?”

  “Classic New England,” Haley repeated, the kind of thing someone would say who grew up in fancier circles than Josie did. You don’t need to pretend around me.

  Haley and Josie lost touch in the years after Emma’s disappearance, but when she ran into Josie at a bar in Waverly a year ago, Josie had said that her career gave her a new lease on life, which made Haley wonder if she was trying to make a real estate joke. She’d told Haley how she and Noah had kept in touch while he was in Australia, and how Noah was the only man she’d ever truly loved, the only man who could really understand what she’d gone through because he’d gone through it, too. When Noah and Josie were together, you could sense it: the bond that connected them, a shared tragedy, a gaping hole where Emma should have been. Sometimes it made Haley uneasy, and she wondered if some part of her was jealous that she wasn’t bonded like that with Dean yet.

  Do you think I could have stopped Emma from doing it? Josie had asked that night at the bar, her words soaked with wine, and Haley felt the familiar anger surge within her. She didn’t kill herself, she managed to say, and Josie’s eyes had widened like she couldn’t believe Haley could ever be so naive. Haley had changed the topic—there was only so much sadness people could handle in a conversation—and told Josie that she and Dean were considering a move back to Waverly. Josie instantly sobered and launched into real estate mode, seeming to forget that Haley had grown up in Waverly and didn’t need to be sold on it.