The House Opens Its Mouth

By four o’clock the road to Bellwether House had narrowed to two ruts between blackberry canes, and the lake appeared and disappeared through the trees like something undecided about being seen. Nell Whitcomb drove slowly, though there was no one ahead of her and no reason to be careful except the old habit of arriving composed.

The house stood at the end of the road on a rise above the water. Its white paint had gone gray, and one green shutter hung by a single hinge. A paper notice had been nailed to the front door: DEMOLITION AUTHORIZED, SEPTEMBER 14, 1987. Beneath it, in smaller print, someone had written with a felt-tip pen, Not yet.

Nell parked beside the stone wall and took her suitcase from the trunk. She had dressed for the heat in a linen jacket, which was already a mistake. Before she reached the porch, a Buick came up behind her, honking twice.

“Still the same,” Tom Harrington called through the open window. “You arrive first and claim the moral high ground.”

He stepped out in a pale suit that seemed designed to survive both a funeral and a fundraiser. His hair, once black, had silvered elegantly at the temples. He embraced Nell with the careful pressure of a man greeting someone whose value he had not yet calculated.

“You’re late,” she said.

“I wanted to make an entrance.” He glanced toward the house. “It’s a little difficult to know whether this counts as one.”

The other cars arrived in quick succession. Mara Bell came in a rust-colored station wagon packed with canvases and cardboard boxes. She had cut her hair short, though strands escaped around her face, and she wore paint on the back of one hand. Suzie Alden brought a wicker basket of food and apologized for it before anyone had spoken. Art Mercer arrived last, driving a dented Volvo with a typewriter visible through the rear window.

They stood together on the lawn, five adults arranged beneath the dead elms where, at sixteen, they had once posed for a photograph in bathing suits. For a moment none of them seemed to know what to do with their arms.

“Thirty years,” Art said. “And no one has improved.”

Suzie laughed because she always had, in the old days, when Art offered pain disguised as wit. Nell saw Mara watching the house rather than any of them.

The front door opened before they could knock.

Lydia Whitcomb had become smaller since Nell had last seen her, but not softer. She wore a navy dress buttoned to the throat and held herself upright with one hand on a silver-headed cane. The family resemblance between her and Nell had always seemed to Nell an accusation: the same narrow face, the same pale eyes, the same refusal to show surprise.

“You all came,” Lydia said.

“You invited us,” Tom replied.

“I invited you to stay until the house was empty. That is not quite the same thing.”

She moved aside. The hall smelled of dust, cedar, and the lake’s damp mineral breath. Furniture stood under sheets. The long mirror had been removed from the wall, leaving a clean rectangle amid the yellowed wallpaper.

“Why the summer?” Mara asked.

“Because the demolition company begins in September. Because the house should not be emptied by strangers.” Lydia looked at each of them. “And because there are things here that belong to you.”

“Things?” Art said. “I was hoping for money.”

“You were always hoping for money.”

They assigned rooms as if no time had passed. Nell took the blue room overlooking the tennis court. Tom chose the room with the desk. Mara carried her boxes upstairs without asking. Suzie began unpacking food in the kitchen, and Art wandered through the corridors, touching doorframes with the solemnity of a man searching for a sentence he had misplaced.

At dinner, Lydia told them the electricity would be shut off in three weeks. The well still worked. The telephone did not.

“Very rustic,” Tom said. “It will make the negotiations feel intimate.”

“What negotiations?” Nell asked.

Tom folded his napkin. “Lydia and I have discussed a preservation proposal. The town might be persuaded to designate the property historical. There are tax advantages.”

“There are no tax advantages,” Nell said.

“There are always tax advantages.”

Lydia looked toward the dark windows. “The house is going.”

No one mentioned the lake. They did not need to. It occupied the silence between them, black and perfectly still beyond the lawn.

Later, while the others argued over bedsheets upstairs, Nell found Lydia in the study. The old woman had opened a locked cabinet and removed a small reel-to-reel tape recorder. Beside it lay a cardboard box tied with kitchen string.

“I thought you said there were things that belonged to us,” Nell said.

“There are things that belong to the dead.”

Lydia set the recorder on the desk. Its metal reels were furred with dust. A label had been pasted to the box: AUGUST 17, 1957. Underneath, in a different hand, someone had written, AFTER THE BOATHOUSE.

Nell felt the room contract around her.

“Where did you get that?”

“It was in the attic.”

“There was no recorder that summer.”

Lydia’s eyes rested on her face. “You remember that?”

From the doorway came a floorboard’s soft complaint. Mara stood there, one hand against the frame. Her expression was not surprise. It was recognition.

Lydia threaded the tape. The machine clicked, then began to turn. At first there was only static and the far-off wash of water. Then a boy’s voice, young and breathless, spoke from thirty years earlier.

“Don’t tell Nell. She’ll make it mean something else.”

The tape hissed. A second voice answered, too faint to identify.

Then came three words that made Mara drop her hand from the doorframe.

“He wasn’t alone.”