A Forever Home

(TW: death, allusion to death of a child)

“So, what’s the catch?”

               Margaret Foster wasn’t about to be had. She knew that a house in the Grove Hills neighborhood shouldn’t be on the market for any less than half a million dollars. Not in this economy. Each street was lined with giant hemlocks and oaks, slow-growth trees that spoke of real history, not nouveau riche water maples or Bradford pears. This neighborhood had a real Frank Lloyd Wright designed house in the middle. The rest of the arts and crafts bungalows were also a source of pride in the community, their squat frames and original stained-glass windows eternally classy.

               But this little gem, all earth tones and beautiful brick, the perfect Prairie School example, was only two hundred thousand. Margaret had toured each room, sniffing for mold, pushing on the windowsills for the soft give of rot. She had prowled the boiler room and marveled at the updated plumbing and furnace. She had taken in the beautiful, glowing woodwork. The house even came with two pieces of original furniture: a dining room table that had been designed for the home and an antique umbrella stand worthy of a museum display.

Margaret felt deception deep in her gut.

               “No catch. Just very motivated sellers,” the young agent said through unnaturally white teeth.

  Margaret didn’t trust this little whisp of a woman who couldn’t be more than 25. Margaret had blue jeans older than this girl. “Right. Motivated. So they’re bankrupt?”

The agent’s tight smile slipped a little. “Oh, no. Nothing like that. They just need to buy a new place very soon. They’ve already moved to Nashville and they’re renting. They want to get out from under this mortgage so they can start looking for a forever home.”

That must be agent speak, Margaret thought. No home was forever. She’d lived long enough and had to move enough times to know the impermanence of home. “Sure,” she said. “So no one was murdered here, you mean.”

The agent squinted down at her clipboard, flipped through some pages, and frowned. “I don’t see a note of that here.”

Margaret smelled a lie, even if she didn’t smell mold. “All right, I’ll tell you this. I’ll make an offer, tomorrow morning, if you’ll let me stay here tonight.”

The agent gave Margaret a careful, wide-eyed stare and false smile. It was the kind of face you would make at a mental patient. “That’s not really…that’s unorthodox. I don’t think the sellers would—”

“There’s nothing here for me to steal. I’m too old to vandalize. I’ll stay here for one night, and if it still feels right to me, I’ll make my offer. In cash. Over asking price.”

“Let me…I’ll make some phone calls.” The agent backed slowly into the kitchen, leaving Margaret alone in the empty living room.

This was an open house, and Margaret had been there for more than two hours, poking around. Not a single other person had come in while she was there. If the buyers were as desperate as the price indicated, and this girl was as green as she seemed, Margaret felt fairly certain the agent would cave to her strange request. Margaret walked over to the limestone hearth and sat in front of the cold fireplace. All the warmth in her body seeped out onto the stones and Margaret shivered. “Mmm-hmm,” she hummed softly. “Thought so.”

The agent’s staccato steps echoed into the living room. “All right. My broker says that this isn’t really something we’ve ever done before, but he says he’ll make an exception in this case, if you’ll give us some information and allow him to do some checking with the current owners. I need your ID and social security number.”

Margaret dug inside her enormous leather handbag. “A background check then, is it?”

The young lady blushed. “And credit check. I mean, you understand, right?”

Margaret handed everything over. The agent disappeared back into the kitchen while Margaret sat motionless on the freezing hearth. The agent emerged thirty minutes later with a broad smile. “All right. Everything’s in order. I…” she gestured to the empty living room. “I don’t know where you’ll sleep.”

“I don’t sleep much,” Margaret assured her.

“OK. Well, I will lock you in as I leave. You can go outside, but the doors will lock behind you. The water and electric are still hooked up. And my card is on the dining table. Call me in the morning, or whenever you’ve made your decision.”

The agent hurried out and fiddled with the electric keypad lock. The agent backed her little green Prius out of the brick driveway and sped down the street.

Margaret stood and looked up at the ceiling. “OK, house. Tell me your secret.”

There was silence, of course, but then Margaret turned up her hearing aid to the highest setting. She heard the creaks and pops of an old house settling in the falling evening temperatures. The wind whistled in the eaves. Margaret stood very still, slowing her heartbeat. She closed her eyes, held her breath, and listened.

She heard a tiny, persistent dripping. Margaret’s eyes flew open. The setting sun threw brilliant gold and pink onto the wall over the fireplace. Margaret cocked her head to the side like a spaniel, listening for prey. She walked slowly towards the dripping sound, correcting her direction every so often.

Frank Lloyd Wright had designed this house, like many of his others, to be suffocatingly narrow in the passageways and light and airy in the gathering spaces. As Margaret stepped from the tall-ceilinged living room to the low, tight hallway, she felt her breathing quicken. She didn’t mean to reach out her hands and push against the walls, but she did, and her hands left a greasy smudge on the white plaster. She pulled back and tucked her arms to her sides, resisting the urge to touch anything again. The ping of dripping water was louder now, and Margaret soon found the source. A faucet in one of the tiled bathrooms was drip, drip, dripping slowly into the sink, which appeared to be a pedestal model original to the home.

Leak, Margaret thought with relief. Just water. Not…something worse.

She tightened the old taps. The new silence was almost perfect again. Margaret put the lid down on the toilet (not original, thank goodness) and sat. She closed her eyes and tried to feel the house around her again.

Suddenly, the sharp cry of a child in pain filled the bathroom. Margaret’s eyes flew open. It was fully nighttime. The only light came from a streetlamp through the little window above her. Margaret decided she must have dozed off, though she didn’t really feel like she’d fallen asleep. She held her breath again and listened.

The cry came again, followed by a long wail. It sounded like the child was right there in the bathroom with Margaret. The old lady hugged herself and started rocking. “My name is Margaret Foster and I am sixty-seven years old and I am here to…” she said aloud. She was not able to finish her thought.

The wailing stopped as suddenly as it had started.

Margaret relaxed a little, thinking she’d just been between sleep and waking and had imagined the eerie sound. That happened to her sometimes, mostly on long nights when she would wake too soon, long before dawn, and see her mother was sitting on the end of her bed. Margaret had told her doctor and he had assured her such visions were common among grieving people, especially upon first waking. The hallucinations weren’t frightening in and of themselves, as her mother just sat, looking kindly at her. It was the fact that she was seeing things she shouldn’t, no matter how mild, that unnerved Margaret.

She stood and felt the wall for the light switch. The bathroom was flooded with blinding light, the white tiles luminous. She listened again, now that she was certain she was fully awake. But she was not reassured. She heard soft sounds, like crying, coming from somewhere else in the house.

She walked back down the squeezing hallway into the dark living room. The crying was louder here. The hairs on her arms were all standing up, and the prickly feeling of adrenaline made her chest hurt. The lecture on women’s heart health she’d received at her last cardiologist appointment played in the back of her mind like elevator music—heard but not quite attended to: Pain the left arm, jaw, neck, or back. Different in women than men…

Margaret eased gently into the center of the living room. She peered into all the dark corners, looking for a hiding place. “Is someone there?” she whispered.

The crying stopped. Margaret slowly walked the perimeter of the room. She called out, “If you need my help, please show yourself. It’s ok. I won’t hurt you.”

There was shuffling noise, like something being dragged across the wood floor into the dining room. Margaret followed.

Her eyes had adjusted to the dark by then. She could easily make out the little step up into the dining area, the chairs and table, the built-in china cabinet with its ginkgo leaf inlay pattern. And she could also see a little girl seated in one of the chairs, her little feet dangling under the table.

“Hello,” Margaret breathed.

The little girl looked up. She couldn’t have been more than 8 years old. She had short-cropped hair with bangs straight across her forehead. A bow like a giant moth perched at the back of her head.

Margaret smiled. “I had a sailor dress like that, when I was little.”

The little girl just stared.

Margaret took one tentative step towards the table. “May I sit with you?”

The child pointed at the chair opposite her.

Margaret approached slowly. “Are you alone?”

The little girl nodded.

Margaret eased herself into the chair, wincing as the antique frame popped and complained under her weight. She clasped her hands on the tabletop, hoping she looked friendly. “Me, too. I’m alone, too,” she said.

The little girl nodded again. “Alone,” she said in a whispery voice.

Margaret wanted to get this right. She wanted to reassure the child, but she needed information, as well. “How did you get inside here? Isn’t the door locked?”

The child gave Margaret another sad nod. Then she pushed back her chair and swung her little feet to the floor. She walked towards the kitchen, then turned and beckoned for Margaret to follow with a wave of her small hand.

Margaret followed. The kitchen was very dark. This house was built during a time when people would have had a staff. Only servants would have been in the kitchen, so the lovely skylights and big windows of the living spaces weren’t continued there. Margaret squinted as she came into the dark space, but she could no longer see the child. “Where did you go?” she called softly.

Margaret waited a full minute. There was no answer, no sound at all. So she felt along the tiled wall for the light switch and flipped it on. The kitchen was lovely, with marble counters and a copper sink. Margaret walked all around the center island, peering into the low cabinets. There was no sign of the little girl.

Margaret opened the refrigerator. There were bottles of water and a tray of meat and cheese leftover from the open house. She got them out and brought them back to the dining table. She turned on the light and sat. She had her little meal, chewing very slowly so she could still listen for the child. “I’ve got some supper here, if you’re hungry,” she announced.

The chair across from her moved.

Margaret sat very still. When nothing else happened after a full two minutes, she popped another bite of pepperoni into her mouth and said, “It’s good. Got plent—”

The complete blockage of Margaret’s throat was sudden. She tried to cough. She tried to inhale. The glob of pepperoni was lodged firmly, and Margaret could tell it wasn’t going to go anywhere on its own.

She reached down her throat, sweeping with a hooked index finger. She stood and looked around wildly, trying to remember where she’d left her purse with her cell phone inside of it.

She was starting to see little black floaters and brilliant bursts of light, her vision narrowing like the hallways in the house.

Suddenly, she felt a tremendous shove and she was thrown towards one of the hard dining room chairs. The high back of the chair made contact with her stomach and a poof of trapped air was forced up her esophagus. The lump of pepperoni flew out of her mouth and landed with a wet plop onto the mahogany table.

Margaret slumped to the floor, gasping like a beached fish. Her vision was blurry and her heart was racing, each beat uncomfortably strong.

When the crying began again, Margaret was at first unsure if it was her own sobs or someone else. She did have tears streaming down her face, but that was mostly from all the effort and panic. She calmed her breath and listened.

This time, the muffled sniffing and wails were coming from the lower level.

               Margaret had lived alone for five years by then, ever since her mother had died. She had all the normal anxieties about being on her own, choking to death being chief among them. But she had conquered that now, hadn’t she? Had she thrown herself on that chair back? Yes, she decided. That’s what she’d done.

               The other big fear was falling down the stairs and being too injured to call for help. She hadn’t really thought of herself as elderly yet. Her 89-year-old mother had been elderly. She had refused to get one of those call buttons you wear around your neck. Those were for old people.

               Margaret picked herself up, waited for a moment to be sure her vision really was clear, and gingerly stepped towards the door that led to the basement. The crying got louder as she approached, and Margaret pulled back her shoulders, determined to be unafraid.

               The stairs were narrow, made for feet of the last century, feet that never grew as large as Margaret’s size tens. She flipped on the stairway lights and walked carefully down to the basement, conscious of each step. “Are you hurt?” she called.

               The little girl was standing in the middle of the den. She looked up at Margaret on the stairs and nodded. “Hurt,” she whispered.

               “Me, too. I’m hurt, too,” Margaret said.

               The little girl reached her arms towards Margaret, like she wanted to be held. Margaret walked slowly forward.

               The lights flickered and went out. Margaret froze. “Are you still there, sweetie?”

               Margaret felt little hands on her arm, cold and soft. She stood perfectly still. Little arms wrapped around her waist and squeezed, a head resting on Margaret’s tummy. She slowly reached down and patted the top of the little head, her hands finding the big bow in the dark.

               When the lights flickered back on a minute later, Margaret was alone again.

               The next morning, the young agent pulled back into the brick driveway and bustled into the house, two paper cups of coffee in her hands. “Good morning, Ms. Foster!” she called.

               Margaret was seated at the dining table. The chair across from her was pulled out. She looked up at the young woman, noticing her pretty, round face, her sparkling blue eyes, and friendly smile for the first time. Margaret patted her steel gray bob self-consciously and wondered how bad her morning breath must be.

               “Have a good night?” the agent asked as she handed Margaret one of the cups.

               Margaret nodded. “Got any sugar?”

               The agent pulled sugar packets and creamer from her briefcase. “Sure. And listen, I did do some research on this place. A house this old almost always has an interesting history, and you did ask about deaths. I just wanted to let you know—”

               Margaret held up a hand. “I don’t want to know. I don’t need to know. It’s all right.”

               The agent nodded, relief apparent in her face. “OK. We aren’t in a state that requires disclosure of deaths in a home. But I have to tell you if you ask. So we’ll just leave it at that, shall we?”

               Margaret reached out and patted the agent’s lovely, slim hand. “We shall. Now, about my offer.”

               The agent smiled widely. She’ll have to learn to hide that hunger, Margaret thought. Out loud she said, “I’m ready to pay cash, as promised. Over asking.”

               A flurry of paperwork later, Margaret and the young agent walked out the front door together. As the agent fiddled with the keypad, she asked, “What convinced you to buy, if you don’t mind me asking?”

               Margaret studied the eaves, the strong copper gutters and downspouts. She took in the pristine nature of the roof tiles and the neatly manicured lawn. “This place needs me,” she said. “And I need it.”

               “A forever home for you,” the agent said through her brilliant smile.

               Margaret chuckled. “Yes. Forever.”