Page 61 of The Someday Daughter
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The house looks condemned when we get to it: plywood boarded over every window, driveway already thick with plants ripped from their roots and palm fronds blown from the sky. The property manager is waiting for us inside: a tall, thin man in a baseball cap holding a flashlight. He apologizes to my mother four times in a row, like he called down this hurricane himself.
“Y’all stay in the office,” he says. “Fewest windows in the house. Lots of flashlights in the TV console.”
I glance at Silas; his arms are folded over his chest.There’s something I need to tell you, he’d murmured through the door in Nashville. I think of all the things I’d tell him, if I were brave.
“You got a dog in here?” The property manager looks between us, and Silas lifts a hand.
“Yeah, she’s mine.”
“Don’t let her get outside, all right? One bad clap of thunder, she spooks and you never hear from her again. Seen it a hundred times.”
Silas swallows, looking over the guy’s shoulder like he wants to get eyes on Puddles ASAP.
“And that goes for all of you.” The property manager hands his big yellow flashlight to Mags and makes for the front door. “Stayinside till it’s over. Storm always ends, you just got to ride it out and be smart.”
“Thank you,” Mags says. When the front door closes behind him, the house feels cavernous and forbidding.
Silas says, “I’m going to grab Puddles.”
Cleo says, “I have an idea.”
“I found it this morning.”
Cleo smooths a hand over the Ouija board, set in the center of the circle we’ve made of our bodies. The house’s office is cool and sprawling, and we sit in its middle on the plush carpet. As far from the two windows as we can get. They’re boarded and dark. “In the linen closet off the kitchen.”
“How do we play?” my mother asks. She’s directly across from me, next to Silas. He has Puddles in his lap and it’s taking every ounce of my resolve not to look at him.
Cleo’s mouth drops open. “You’ve never Ouija’d?”
Mom shrugs. She’s still in her show clothes: white slacks, blue blouse with raindrops drying at the shoulders. “Can’t say that I have.”
“It’s a spirit board.” Cleo’s words run into each other, like she’s so excited she can’t get them out quickly enough. In the stark yellow of the flashlight on her face, her eyelashes look spiders’-leg long. “We put our fingertips on the planchette and ask a question, and the dead tell us what they know from beyond.”
I think my mother’s going to scoff—it’s what I’m trying not to do. But she smiles in the shadowy light and shimmies her shoulders like a kid at a birthday party, the excitement wiggling right out of her.
“We should light candles,” she says, and a clap of thunder booms above us so loudly it nearly drowns her out. She’s already standing. “I saw some in the master bathroom.”
“I’ll help,” Mags says, and then they’re gone.
“Wow.” Cleo places the planchette in the center of the board. “She’s amped.”
“I haven’t played this since I was in high school,” Sadie says. We’re supposed to see a dermatologist tomorrow, but I imagine that’s not happening now. “My sister asked for the name of my future husband and instead of spelling something out it just said ‘no.’”
Cleo snorts. “Incredible.”
“I guess I should’ve known,” Sadie laughs. “But of course I just thought it was telling me I’d die alone.”
Mick glances at his phone, bright in the dark. “Can you believe we’re about to play Ouija with Camilla St. Vrain during a hurricane? A video of this whole situation would donumbers. This is the shame of all shames.”
Cleo lets out a sympathetic noise, and when I look at Mick I realize that for someone so wired to social media, he’s been uncharacteristically private this summer. “You haven’t posted about her,” I say, and everyone turns to look at me. “Not once since the tour started.”
“Of course not.” Mick swipes open his phone camera just as we hear Mags and my mom open the door. “We signed NDAs. Doesn’t mean I can’t record it for myself, though.”
I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before; of course they signed NDAs. What’s happening here isn’t normal—it’s a business arrangement, and one they aren’t even allowed to talk about.
“That’s more like it,” my mother says, settling back into herplace in the circle. She sets a candle on either side of the board, and I don’t point out to her that now we’re all at risk of burning our wrists when we touch the planchette.
