“Audrey, listen to me. I’m not worried about the new house, and you shouldn’t be, either. I understand it’s unusual, what happened to the guy … whatever happened to the guy … but there’s no reason to think the house had anything to do with it.”

Sam took another step closer, listening. What exactly was this?

In the bedroom, he heard his mother’s voice over the phone again. She spoke for only a moment before his dad cut her off:

“You don’t have to repeat the details to me. I’ve been over them. Yes, it’s creepy. I’m not ignoring that. I’m sure it’s the reason other buyers have passed on the house. But being creeped out is a gut reaction, and we’re rational people. Whatever this was that happened to the last owner, it was more than a year ago. It’s history, okay?”

For the next twenty seconds only his mom talked. When his dad spoke again, all he said was, “If Sam hears about it anyway, we shrug it off. Tell him we’re not worried. Which we shouldn’t be. I know. Love you, too.”

The phone settled back into its cradle in the darkened room. Sam stood outside the door for a long moment, listening to his father breathe.

He could hear him breathing now, too—sound asleep in his new bedroom across the hall from Sam’s own. He and Sam had made the drive here over the past two days, arriving this afternoon about an hour before the moving van. Sam’s mom would be flying out next week, after squaring away a few last things with her own job in L.A.

Sam opened his eyes again and stared out over Ashland. The haze had begun to gather into wisps of fog. He watched them drift like ghosts through the cones of light under the streetlamps. Out of the darkness and back into it.

At last he stood, crossed to his bed and lay down. Reliving the overheard conversation wouldn’t get him any closer to sleep. Neither would wondering what the hell had happened in this house a year ago—what had happened to its last owner.

He shut his eyes. He listened to the night sounds out in the dark, and felt sleep finally starting to edge in.

He woke at noon. His dad was gone—it was his first day on the job.