Page 112 of I'll Be Waiting

“Yep, I’m a little jumpy,” I say.

Cirillo doesn’t answer. I frown over to see him staring through the wood-loading door. I follow his gaze in and see what looks like a shoe inside the furnace.

I reach to pull it out… only to go still. It’s not a discarded shoe. It’s hanging… down. Hanging off what looks like a leg.

I stagger back, hands flying to my mouth.

Cirillo whirls on me. “You just happened to know how to open that, Nicola?”

“W-what?”

I drag my gaze away from that hanging foot and stare at Cirillo, his ice-cold gaze fixed on me. I take a slow step backward, and my hand moves toward the steak knife in my rear pocket.

There is a foot in the furnace. Aleghanging down from somewhere in the dark depths, and Cirillo is glaring. Atme.

“W-what’s going on?” I say, resisting the urge to back up again.

“That would be my question.” His gaze locks on mine. “Do you want to know the real reason I came down here, Nicola? Yes, I heard something last night. But I suspected it was you. I’ve begun to suspect you’ve been doing many things. Last night, you were the only one who didn’t run into the living room when we heard Anton’s voice… and you should have been the first. You lured us out so you could knock over your chair and pretend it was a ghost.”

I can’t form a response. His words don’t make sense. There is a foot—afoot—dangling inside the furnace, and he’s accusing me of pretending a ghost knocked over my chair.

“You’re the only one experiencing the physical manifestations,” he says. “We’ve heard Anton’s voice, but those could be recordings. The rest is all you.”

I wave toward the foot because it’s all I can think of to do.

“Do you really expect me to fall for that?” he says. “No, silly question. Youdoexpect it. You swing open that furnace door and down falls a mannequin leg, and I’m supposed to run screaming from the basement, giving you time to hide it and then claim it was a ghostly manifestation.”

Footsteps pound on the stairs, and Shania comes running in.

“What’s going on?” she says. “I heard—”

She sees the open furnace door and frowns, and I dart forward to shut it, but it’s too late. She backs up, hands clapping to her mouth.

“It’s fake,” Cirillo snaps. “Are you happy now, Nicola? Doubled your audience? Too bad your brother-in-law isn’t here to see it. No, wait. That’s intentional. You waited until Jin was gone. He’s an intelligent man who knows you well enough to see through your tricks.” Cirillo advances on me. “Those mediums you visited, they didn’t set you up, did they? You set yourself up.”

I open my mouth, but I can’t form even a strangled protest as my brain struggles to make sense of what he’s saying.

He continues, “When you contacted me, you expressed your discomfort with all the attention your situation brought. But that was a lie. Youenjoyedit. And if one of those mediums managed to contact Anton, it would be over. So you had to keep making them look like charlatans. The poor grieving and sick widow, taken advantage of, over and over again.”

I start to hear what he’s saying. What he’s accusing me of. Anger sparks… and then I remember I have those speakers in my pockets, and I have to resist the urge to slap my hands over them, like a child trying to hide the evidence.

“I’m not sick,” I say with as much calm as I can muster. “I have achronic illness. Iama grieving widow, and maybe I’ve made mistakes, but no one who knows me would ever suspect I set this up to draw attention to myself.”

My gaze goes to Shania, looking for confirmation, but she’s frozen with such uncertainty on her face that my stomach twists.

“Shania?” I say.

She can’t meet my gaze. “You used to fake these, Nic.”

“What?”

“When I went to that first medium with you, I was shocked by how quickly you saw through the tricks. You told me you used to set them up.”

“When I was achild.At sleepover séances in middle school, I faked things because that’s what the other girls wanted. It was a game.”

I look from Shania to Cirillo. “I did not fake this. Any of this.” My gaze locks on Cirillo. “You said I lured everyone out upstairs to pretend a ghost toppled my chair over. But I never said that.”

“You didn’t need to,” he says. “That’s part of the act. You’re the first to insist it could all be your imagination, so no one can think you’re jumping to conclusions… let alone staging it yourself. Are those even your husband’s ashes in that box, Nicola?”

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