I turn to find my mother.

“Have you finished your work?” she asks, sipping a glass of wine that I’d swear has been glued to her hand.

“Not quite.” I glance behind me, toward the hall, trying to gauge where the voices are coming from. “Where is everyone?”

Refilling her glass, she tosses casually over her shoulder, “Don is fixing the window in the laundry room. Isn’t that nice of him?”

I cross my arms, curling my hands into fists and gently fingering the sore spot on my palm. “I thought you didn’t like Don.”

“He’s making himself useful.” She turns from the counter and looks at me, glass in hand. “Fixing what you broke. And he’s doing it out of his own pocket.”

“Well, if that isn’t some fucking chivalry.”

“Samantha,” she snaps at my language. I pull a face. “Anyway, it’s nice to see the two of them talking again. This seems like the right thing for them. I think they can make this work.”

“Seriously?” I can’t keep the incredulity from spilling out in my voice. “So you’re playing matchmaker? Is that why you called him up, so that he could come in and take care of things—so that Elizabeth wouldn’t be your problem anymore?”

Her lips form a tight line. “I just want what’s best for her—and Julian. The boy needs a father in his life.”

Don is a terrible man, I want to tell her, but her eyes are two dark flints, sharp as arrowheads, and suddenly I am nine, frightened in my own house, and my mother is barking at me to leave her alone, the reek of alcohol on her breath.

“You really think having a father around will make a difference?” I ask tightly.

The lines in her face deepen, shadowed by the overhead light, which throws darkness under her eyes. “Would it have made a difference for you?”

My gut clenches, as it does each time I remember that my mother is capable of cruelty, too. I slink against the wall to let her pass, then wander down the hall myself toward the laundry room.

Inside, Don is toiling away, measuring and fixing the glass into place with the biting cold whipping in at him, while Elizabeth sits folding a pile of towels. A scene of such ordinary domesticity, you would hardly know it’s happening in a haunted house.

“Come on,” Don grumbles as he tries to fit the glass pane into its new home, a task that doesn’t look all that difficult. I’m sure I could have accomplished this in half the time he’s taken, but there is something painstaking, meticulous about the way he works, like a surgeon at his craft. Because the window is not yet sealed tight, frozen air slithers into the room, shivering my bones as I hover in the doorway. I peer around the edge of it, keeping myself out of sight.

“Are you sure it doesn’t fit?” asks Elizabeth.

He sets down the glass and picks up a tape measure, pulling out the yellow tongue and holding it along the window frame. He makes a noise in the back of his throat as if it’s irritated with phlegm, then casts the tape measure aside, where it slurps up the yellow tongue into its round body with a sound like a zipper.