Hilltop House

Maeve, Five

Her mother's wake had been closed-casket, only about six people in attendance (almost all from her church), not because the woman hadn't had friends but because the whole affair had been kept quiet. About a year after Maeve had taken Cora back, the woman's entire house had burnt up one night. Though the cause of the fire was technically unknown, Maeve knew how much of a hoarder her mother was and how the woman smoked and burnt candles incautiously; add that to the dementia, and surely she'd done it to herself, accidentally or otherwise. Maeve could only thank God that Cora hadn't been living there anymore.

Maeve had been reluctant to even tell her daughter about it--there was no way she could risk taking Cora to the funeral, hadn't even wanted to leave her alone the afternoon she herself had gone, under the guise of working overtime. It'd all just been too precarious, and no doubt Cora would've insisted on going if she'd known about what had happened. The girl had loved Grandma Luce.

It was one of the worst things Maeve had ever done--not tell her daughter about her grandmother.

The only other person she'd recognized at the funeral had been a longtime neighbor of Luce's that'd shown up to mourn the old woman. Maeve hadn't seen her in ages. Having grown up in that old house (though at a time when, during her father's life, her mother hadn't been a hoarder), Maeve had gotten to know a few of the other people on the street, particularly those with children. Helen, whom everyone had affectionately referred to as Nettie for some reason, had been across the street and two doors down from Maeve's childhood home, and she'd been a feisty yet charming woman. When Maeve had been little, she'd wanted to grow up to be just like Nettie, who'd always worn makeup and layered her jewelry impeccably, whether she were going anywhere for the day or not, and who'd walked around at pretty much any hour with a glass of wine.

As an adult, Maeve recognized the woman had been and probably still was an alcoholic, and perhaps the string of men that went in and out of Nettie's house had been more than electricians and plumbers, as Nettie's daughter Alyssa (Maeve's best friend during her adolescent years) had explained them away. But young Maeve, particularly middle school Maeve, had thought Nettie was glamorous.

At Luce's funeral, Nettie had come off not as glamorous but as rather pathetic. She hadn't been particularly old; Nettie was at least fifteen or twenty years younger than Maeve's own mother had been. But the makeup had looked more clownish than alluring, and the jewelry had seemed gaudy. Nettie had immediately accosted Maeve after the quiet ceremony, showing rather inappropriate excitement, considering the event. She'd embraced Maeve and told her how sorry she was for what'd happened, made sure to mention that she was so relieved the fire hadn't spread, gone on and on about her daughter and the sad state of Alyssa's affairs, and then said something that uprooted Maeve entirely:

"I haven't talked to my Lyssa in months. Last I heard, she's seeing that man, now, that one you knew!"

At first, Maeve hadn't known what Nettie was talking about. Her brain had been focused on the task at hand—namely, trying to keep up with and feign interest in their rather one-sided conversation. And standing there in the mood-lit funeral parlor--one of those places full of soft, comfortable things that somehow only made the whole prospect of death more depressing--the last thing she'd wanted to think about was any sort of man.

At Maeve's reticence, Nettie had elaborated. "That man you snuck around with back in the day? Oh, he was so attractive but always something a little off about him. My Lyssa was so jealous, then—I'm her mother; I know how insecure she really is—so I'm sure she thinks it's some sort of destiny, now, karma or something. You know, her time has come and all that."

Utterly astounded at the woman's gall, Maeve had excused herself from the conversation, claiming overwhelming grief, and left at once. Whatever sort of nostalgic admiration she'd had for Nettie had immediately disappeared.

Even now, standing and thinking about the funeral and Nettie and what she'd said about Alyssa (whom Maeve herself hadn't spoken with since they'd parted ways after she'd gotten pregnant with Cora), Maeve shuddered in spite of the warm layers she wore. To hear about that man at all had shocked her; to hear he was with an old friend was disturbing. Maeve had just prayed Nettie wouldn't say anything about their run-in to Alyssa, been grateful that it seemed the two were estranged, but even now, those few years since her mother's death, Maeve wondered if she'd had to move again, to this new house, due to that conversation eventually leaking out.

Because somehow, not so very long ago, she was sure he'd found her again.

But she couldn't think of him, of what had happened, of her own weakness. Did she really do all of this for Cora? Or did she do it because she was too small to do anything bigger and braver?

Maeve sighed. She stood outside the elder care home, way off to the side of the building and away from all entrances, smoking where she couldn't be seen. It was about midday on a Wednesday, and at least during the weekdays, she had the assurance that Cora was safe at school. It was the nights and weekends when the girl was alone that Maeve really needed the cigarettes. She'd have preferred a glass of wine, but those always had to wait until she got home. Anyway, she didn't often smoke on her breaks here; it was the memory of that conversation that had forced her outside into the steadily cooling weather, that and the admittance of a new person a few hours back at the center, a person that looked so much like her mother that she'd had to do a double-take.

She'd been wheeled in, the new woman, in a chair, and everything about her mannerisms, her dress, even her voice had sent chills down Maeve's spine. Maeve wasn't assigned the hall where the woman was taken, but she'd surreptitiously figured out the elder's name and had been told something clearly not the same as her mother's, at which point, Maeve had told herself to get it together and headed outside for that cigarette.

The end of September was upon them. The weather was certainly one thing to celebrate about the move. Where they'd lived before, in the Midwest, summers had seemed to last until about October, sometimes even early November. It'd been a month and a half since they'd moved in--Maeve couldn't quite believe how quickly the time was passing--and fall was properly superseding summer. So the weather was nice, and the community was safe enough, and the street itself was quiet (odd, but quiet). Cora even seemed to be all right with the school. If only the house could be as mediocre as everything else, but it was still revealing odd quirks, and Maeve was beginning to wonder if perhaps the hill on which it sat was somehow shifting, if most of the house's issues weren't due to some sort of settling.

There was that cabinet, still, and the basement, and those cracked windows (there had been three so far). The windows hadn't shattered; they'd just cracked in their corners. Maeve had been angry at Cora the first time, thinking her daughter had somehow thrown something and was trying to hide her guilt, but after two more had done the same when neither had been home, Maeve had had to apologize to the girl. And then there were those damned ants! They'd been a battle since day one. Those little things had been invading Maeve's room--and only Maeve's room--in waves. Just when she thought she'd taken care of them, the things returned. She'd used everything she could think of, but the trickiest part was not being sure where they were coming from. It was time she called an exterminator, Maeve admitted to herself. She didn't want to pay for it, but it was either that or continue to put up with ants sharing her room with her.

If something were going on inside the hill itself, repositioning earth, it might explain the house's strange disequilibrium as well as, perhaps, the ants. Still, Maeve had examined the house's foundation, gone round about in the basement and the outside, and seen no cracks, no displaced stone, no indication that the house itself was going anywhere.

It was a mystery, all of it, and what was most frustrating was the fact that it was all bits and pieces, all of it--her past, their present, their future . . . there were so many small bits painting an overall unsettling picture, something eerily familiar about it and yet none of its colors or shapes quite making sense.