He released her, took a step back. She felt as if she might topple from the stool, and she placed a hand on the island to steady herself.

“We don’t belong here,” she said. “It’s not our house.”

“Yes, it is. My father paid a fair price for it. He bought it for us, and it’s ours.”

“Things happened here.”

Damien’s shoulders slumped. “Who’ve you been talking to? The spark?”

Sara wondered who he meant for a moment, then she remembered it was slang for an electrician. He meant Tony.

“Not him,” she said, searching for a lie. “I saw something online.”

“It was sixty-odd years ago. You don’t have to worry about it.”

“But I do. I can’t help it.”

He took a step back. “All right, this place has a history, all old houses do. But, Jesus, he got it so cheap, and we get to live without a mortgage hanging over us. How many couples our age get to do that? Give me your phone.”

She could feel his anger, restrained, pulsing in him.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I don’t want you getting your head turned by some nonsense you found on the internet.”

“It’s not nonsense,” she said, knowing it was a mistake. “It really happened. People died here.”

“Give me the phone,” he said, holding his hand out.

Sara pulled it from her pocket and handed it over. He unlocked the phone, thumbed through a few menus and lists, then tucked it away in his own pocket. Taking her in his arms, he pressed his lips against her temple.

“I love you,” he said. “I want us to be happy here. I want us to have kids and make a family. Don’t you want that?”

Sara didn’t answer.

“You do, don’t you?”

His arms snaked around her, tighter, constricting.

“Yes,” she said, her voice so quiet and small it couldn’t possibly have been a lie.

Damien released her from his embrace and said, “Get yourself cleaned up.”

He left her alone in the kitchen where she remained until full dark had fallen.

Sara did not sleep, lying with her gaze fixed on the ceiling as she listened to the house breathe around her. Its creaks and groans seemed like a voice, cracked and brittle from disuse, trying to warn her of something. Telling her to leave while she could. She tried not to think of the girl in the water, the scarlet ribbons she clutched to her belly. A figment, a distortion of light on the water’s surface, twisted through the prism of her cracked mind. But still the girl’s sorrowful eyes stared back at her in the darkness.

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