I wasn’t surprised that Mom blamed me and assigned me the punishment of taking the laundry to the laundromat the next time. She instinctively knew that I was behind my father’s idea to move us away. I underestimated how much she needed to stay with the house. I knew it was tied to her, but she was tied to it just as fiercely.
To my surprise, Dad kept working on her. It took weeks, but he convinced her that it could be possible to have a better life in Texas. Her family got involved at that point. Nobody wanted her to move away, but several of them were willing to live with it if it meant that the house would be up for grabs. They wouldn’t own it, of course, but her sister and a couple of her first cousins wanted the opportunity to rent the place.
I should have known that something big was coming. None of it made much sense. Mom inherited the place, but it wasn’t very old and it wasn’t like it had been in the family very long. Before she died, her aunt had owned the house for seven years. Before that, some other family had lived it in for twenty-some years, having bought the place brand new. So, none of Mom’s relatives should have had a very strong attachment to the place, and yet they were all lining up to rent it.
It was all too strange.
Dad made his preparations. He arranged for a transfer and took a trip down to Dallas to scout various neighborhoods. Mom and I mostly stayed home. The one time we all went as family, we came back and our house was trashed. Furniture was knocked over, food was spread all over the kitchen, and sewage had backed up into the bath tub. There was no talk about a break in and my parents didn’t attempt to make an insurance claim or anything. We all knew what had happened. The house threw a tantrum. After that, Dad traveled alone.
Mom kept quiet about the move. I thought that she had changed her mind, but then I realized that she was just being sneaky. We were grocery shopping one time and I overheard her at a payphone talking to someone about the trip. She was trying to find someone to drive her car down there so she could have it in Texas. From the sound of it, she was interviewing someone by phone. They didn’t pan out.
“I’m not driving there myself. It would be hot as a sauna in that car all the way down there. You know my air conditioning doesn’t work well enough for that,” she said after she hung up and saw me listening in.
“Why take it at all then?” I asked. “Why not find something better when we’re down there.”
“You need to learn that we don’t just throw something away when it’s inconvenient, Miss,” she told me. “Being dependable is a rare attribute. Value it.”
I couldn’t figure out what she was talking about. She just got through saying that her car wasn’t dependable, but then lectured me on the value of being dependable. It didn’t make sense at all. That night, feeling the house breathe around me, I began to wonder about that car. What if the malevolent spirit that inhabited the house could somehow transfer itself into another object. It was possible that the house was only pretending to be upset because it had other plans. When we left, it might somehow come along for the ride.
I don’t think I slept at all that night. I couldn’t bear the thought that we might carry our problems with us. All that effort had to pay off.
As it turned out, I didn’t have to worry. We never made the move, so the demon that was in our house never had to squeeze itself down into a car. Everything fell apart that summer, weeks before we intended on moving.
# # #
“I guess we should head back,” Amber said. “It will be dawn by the time we’re back home. I can take a quick nap and get cleaned up before we meet the others for breakfast.”
“Wait, what about the end of the story?” Ricky asked.
“It’s a long trip. I’ll tell you on the way.”
“You want me to drive?”
She opened her door before she answered. “Yes, actually. I would.”
They crossed paths in front of the car’s hood. Amber lowered her head and slid around him. Ricky paused for a moment before he went to the driver’s door and got in.
“Don’t adjust my mirrors,” she said.
“Sorry,” he said. “Doesn’t work that way. I’ve taken the responsibility to pilot this vehicle, and safety is my top priority. Would you mind buckling your seatbelt?”
“It is.”
“Please double check.”
She reached down and found it unbuckled. Rolling her eyes, she snapped it back into place.
“Why…”
“Magic,” Ricky said.
“I’ve never liked you less than right now,” Amber said.
When Ricky laughed, she laughed too.
He started the engine.
# # #
We packed everything up. Mom held a little meeting with her relatives to decide who should be allowed to rent the house. Everyone interested gathered in the living room. Mom didn’t say much. I got the feeling that it wasn’t really her decision. She was letting the house assess all of them so it could decide who would move in.
I actually had a glimmer of hope at that realization.
If the house was so concerned about who would be living there, maybe I was wrong about it wanting to come with us.
Mom finished the interview and said that she wanted to think about her decision. The relatives didn’t like that idea. They told her that they would all abide by whatever she said, but they
