The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women (Mammoth Books)

“So,” her father asks her now, “you want to tell me how this happened?” He waits expectantly.

She says nothing.

“Mara, you can’t just waltz in here like this without some kind of explanation about—” For the first time, he hesitates. “About where you’ve been,” he finally finishes.

“Why not?” Brianna cuts in. Her voice is high. “It’s what she always did before. Why should this be any different?”

“Well, duh!” Andy snorts.

“Shut up!” Brianna shouts. “I wasn’t talking to you!”

“Like I need your permission,” he shoots back.

Mara sees Brianna’s face flush, as it has countless times before. There is a difference though – the last eight months have made a subtle difference in her younger sister’s appearance, filled out her face and given it a hard edge that Mara doesn’t recall seeing before. Still, Mara sees a lot of hard edges in the faces of her family that may or may not have been there. Some she remembers, others she doesn’t – they might be new. Not surprisingly, there is no softness when they look at her.

“You two keep your mouths closed,” her father says, and there is no mistaking the don’t fuck with me tone of his voice. “I want to know what the hell is going on.” He glares again at Mara. “How do I know you’re even my daughter? You might be some kind of imposter, or a con artist.”

Mara still doesn’t say anything. She still doesn’t feel anything, and that surprises her. She remembers all the pain and the hurt and the humiliation – especially that – from before, and when she’d realized where she was, when she’d sort of come to herself, and found that she was going back home, she’d expected it to all come slamming back, as if she’d gone through some kind of cosmic rewinding machine and somewhere a supreme being had leaned over and pushed the play button. But it wasn’t the same, and if there is any kindness at all to be attributed to the universe and whatever powers it, it is that this time around they’ve left the emotional track off her life tape.

“I don’t believe this,” Amber says suddenly. “What are we going to tell the neighbours? What are they going to think?” Her hands, so carefully manicured and creamed, flutter around her face like panicking humming birds. “What am I going to do about her now – Jesus, how do I get her back in school and back into a normal life? How do I explain her?” Her attractive face is pale and fragile, her expression crumpling beneath a problem too huge to cope with. “People will think we let her run off or something, that we lied about where she was and didn’t even care enough to hire a private investigator to find her. My God.” Her crystalline blue eyes fix on Mara. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? You want everyone to think we were bad parents, that I’m a bad mother.”

It’s an interesting question and rather than answer her, Mara ponders it. Is this something she wants? To let the neighbours, friends and all the other relatives know how truly dysfunctional this family is, what abysmal parents she has, all the dark and dirty little secrets? To point fingers and condemn? And, oh, but they had some real, honest-to-God putrid pond scum hidden in O’Shannon daily diaries, didn’t they?

But . . . no. She really doesn’t care. She doesn’t know why, but she doesn’t.

Before Amber can demand an answer, Mara’s father steps close to her chair. His shadow towers over her, and it seems to her that it has always been this way, as far back as she can recall. She doesn’t think there was ever a time when she looked forward to seeing him at the end of the day or over the course of a weekend; he is like the fantasy king who wields a brutal sword of justice. The peasants always know their great ruler is looming somewhere, but would rather not cross his path. Is this the way fathers are in other families? Maybe in some of them. She doesn’t know.

Bill’s face is grim as he stares down at her, doing his best, as he always has, to make her feel insignificant. His lips are drawn so tight that his words are almost difficult to understand. “We’ll have to start this all over again,” he says. He is looking at her, but talking to the others. “We’ll have to watch her constantly to make sure she doesn’t get back into the drugs and start running with her dope-addict friends. Make sure she isn’t sneaking out to go to parties in the middle of the night.” He shoots a glance at his wife and she cringes a little before he fixes his gaze on his daughter once more. “You know how she is. It better not interfere with my work like it did the last time. My work is very important, and this isn’t going to be a repeat. I damned well won’t stand for it.” He leans closer, and now he does speak directly to her. “Do you hear me, young lady?”

Mara expects to feel something, anything, but she doesn’t. Certainly not fear, although she knows that is what her father wants most. It is an interesting thing, this . . . state she is in, this condition. It’s vaguely like being wrapped in a protective cocoon, insulated from anything and everything that might affect her. She can’t even smell the cinnamon mints that her father is always chewing because he thinks it makes his breath smell good. For that she might feel gratitude, if she could feel anything at all beyond the mild surprise at her current predicament. She always hated that smell.

Something crashes against the floor and Mara’s head swivels until she locates the source of the sound – Brianna has slammed her books flat against the golden wood. Another lie, that wood – picked specifically by her mother to give the illusion of warmth, but Mara remembers how it felt against the skin of her cheek and knows there is nothing warm about a wooden kitchen floor at 3 a.m. on a winter morning.

“Well, this is great,” Brianna says. “I can’t believe you’re going to let her waltz in here like it’s just another day in the life of anything normal. Just slide right back into the groove and make the rest of us have to fit our lives around it. Around her. Oh, and let’s not forget that disgusting little dog of hers – we should have put that damned thing to sleep back in December.” Her younger sister’s voice is full of the hatred she has built up for Mara over so many months, perhaps years. “Thank you for coming back and making me miserable all over again, Mara. I suppose you’ll want your room back now. And your clothes and stuff, too. I guess God, or what ever, sent you back to punish me because I was glad when you—”

“Brianna!” Amber sits up straight for the first time since her husband came home. “You watch how you speak to your sister!”

“I’m sorry.” If anything, her tone is even more venomous. “Am I being a little too honest here? In fact, am I the only one being honest?” She pushes herself to her feet and takes a step towards Mara. “You were always the one who got all the attention, weren’t you? Well, it’s my turn now, so why don’t you just fuck off and go away!”

“Boy, I hear that,” Andy says before either of Mara’s parents can respond to Brianna’s fury. He is still on the floor and now he runs his fingers through his hair, something he has always done when he is feeling guilty. There was a time after her eleventh birthday when he did that a lot, but only Mara noticed. And only Mara knew why. “And don’t be thinking I’m gonna be driving you around like before, you know. I got stuff of my own to do now— I got a summer job and a girlfriend, a football scholarship to college. My coach says I’m good enough for the pros.”

Mara considers this as she looks at him. He can’t meet her eyes, and she realizes what he’s doing – trying, in his own, inept way, to reassure her, to give her an unspoken promise that things will be different now, he won’t repeat the sins of his past, it was all nothing but a big, terrible mistake, one of those nasty and dark O’Shannon secrets. Andy looks left and right, up and down, but eventually he meets her eyes, and when he does, he is pinned, the once-proud predator frozen and knowing doom on some instinctive level within the sight of the hunter’s rifle.

He begins to cry.

“I’m sorry, Mara. Jesus, God, I am so sorry.” Tears course from the corners of his eyes and flow over his cheekbones and strong jaw, that chiselled look the girls began to notice in his sophomore year in high school. “I should never have done that to you, I didn’t mean to, I don’t even know why I did it and then I couldn’t stop—”

He goes on and on, babbling and blubbering, and now, of all the times since she walked into this house, Mara thinks she should feel something, she should.

Across the kitchen, her brother is wailing, unable to stop himself from releasing the poisonous guilt bottled inside for the last four years. “You should’ve told on me, you should’ve exposed me for what I was, I should’ve been punished!” He sobs again, and he isn’t just running his hands through his hair any more, he’s actually pulling on it. “Everyone thinks I’m such a nice guy . . . I’m not a nice guy,