The House in the Hills Read online

  Marc was at work that day, but had promised to leave as early as he could to help move in. She didn’t mind that he wasn’t there and was actually a little glad. Sometimes, he just got in her way and she could do everything a lot more quickly if he wasn’t constantly asking her where this or that went. So, she took her time to get everything unpacked and just enjoyed being in the house alone after the moving men left.

  Most everything they had packed found a home. She actually had plenty of room for all her cooking supplies, the pots and pans and utensils she’d collected since she’d decided to give up banking and become a chef. Much to her surprise, she had space left over in the cabinets after she’d put everything up, which was a convenience she’d never known in her old apartment. And she had plenty of room on the open shelves in the kitchen for her collection of cookbooks. In her old apartment, some of them had stayed at the bottom of the bedroom closet for years, rarely ever seeing the light of day.

  Additionally, all their clothes fit into the gigantic walk-in closet and into the built-in drawers and shelves with no problem. This made her so happy, she danced a little around the closet. Her beauty supplies, just some face wash and a few cosmetics, didn’t overfill the drawers in the bathroom vanity and their linens fit into the small linen closet at the end of the hall.

  “Nice,” Harmony said and placed the last of the bed sheets onto a shelf, then shut the door. She went back into the bedroom and looked around, a smile of satisfaction crossing her lips. Wow. This was what it was like to have room for all your stuff. And it looked perfect, nothing was out of place. Everything was neat and clean and perfectly organized. She couldn’t have been happier.

  Just then, Marc entered and grabbed her around the waist and tackled her, throwing her to the bed. She squealed, then turned over and beat his back playfully.

  “Oh, come on,” he said. “Don’t you want to wrestle?”

  “I do not,” she said as he tackled her again. “Stop it, Marc!” He stopped and kissed her. She allowed it for a moment, then pulled back. “Well, leave it up to you to come home after all the work is done.”

  He shook his head a little. “But I have been working and, yes, I sold a house today.”

  He held his hand up for a high-five. Harmony gave him one and said, “Well, in that case, I won’t bust your balls. I do love it when you bring home the bacon. And by that, I mean, we need some bacon.”

  He laughed. “I did bring figurative bacon home, babe,” he told her.

  “Literal bacon would have been good, too,” she said.

  “Then I’ll get you some actual bacon,” he said and nuzzled her neck, then he pulled back. “How do you like your new house, Mrs. Franklin?”

  “Quite well, Mr. Franklin,” she said and smoothed the hair out of his eyes. “Your hair is getting too long again.”

  “I think I might grow it out,” he said. “Maybe do one of those undercut things.”

  She pulled back to study his face, putting an image of the haircut on his head. “Uh, yeah… I think you’d look good like that.”

  He nodded and started to nuzzle her neck again. “You smell good.”

  “I smell like sweat and labor,” she said and pushed him off. “Let me take a bath.”

  He grabbed her hand. “Come on. We have time.”

  “We do?” she asked and shook her head at him. “Need I remind you that I unpacked everything and put it all up myself?”

  “Firstly,” he said. “I was at work. Secondly, I sold a house today and that takes time and that also means we have more money. Sorry I wasn’t here for most of it. I wanted to be but—”

  “I know, we need the money,” Harmony said. “I’m not getting on your ass, Marc. I’m just really tired.”

  “No, you just want a bath,” he said.

  She grinned. “You’re right about that. I’ve been dying to get into that bathtub since I saw it,” she said and kissed the tip of his nose. “Maybe later.”

  “I will hold you to that,” he told her.

  “You always do,” she replied and went into the bathroom and turned on the faucet on the tub. As she waited for the bath to fill, she stepped to the door, then leaned in the frame, staring at Marc, who was fiddling with the remote control, apparently trying to figure out how to turn on the TV. She glanced at it on the wall, then back at him. “Don’t forget that I put a lot of the moving boxes in the garage. I need you to help me break them down later.”

  “Why?”

  “For recycling,” she replied.

  “Okay,” he said then grinned as the TV finally lit up with some programming. “Jackpot!”

  She nodded at him then went into the bathroom. The tub was about a quarter filled. At this rate, she’d be taking a bath about midnight. “The water is so slow!” she hollered.

  “No, it isn’t!” he called. “That tub is too big!”

  She glanced at it. No, it wasn’t. It was perfect. She could wait.

  “What are we eating for supper?” he called.

  “Just order a pizza or something,” she called back, then paused and smiled. They’d never had to raise their voices like this to be heard from room to room in their old apartment. That was new. And she liked that. But the water was a little slow. Well, you can’t have it all.

  * * * * *

  It didn’t take long for Harmony and Marc to settle into the house. In fact, the weeks that followed were some of the most blissful they’d spent as a married couple. They enjoyed the house and all its amenities. They particularly loved to go swimming late at night when the pool was as warm as bath water. Harmony loved to cook on her new stove and for their first official dinner, she prepared filet mignon with twice-baked potatoes, which was Marc’s favorite. They ate it over candlelight in their new dining area and afterwards, watched some reality TV before heading to bed.

  For the first time ever, they felt like grownups whose hard work and dedication had finally paid off. And it had paid off in the form of a fantastic, fully renovated mid-century modern house.

  They couldn’t have been happier. But even so, Harmony just couldn’t get past the unease of something happening and them not being able to pay their mortgage. That kept her from completely and totally enjoying her new life. This made her work harder than ever on her blog. She wanted to pay extra on the principal and see if they could get the mortgage down and, maybe, just maybe, pay it off a little early. It was pipe dream, she knew, but that didn’t deter her. So, she dedicated herself to this and whenever she could, she was working.

  That’s what she was doing bright and early one morning as Marc, still in his pajama bottoms and an old t-shirt, was at the stove cooking breakfast—bacon and scrambled eggs and toast. This was his meal, about the only one he could actually cook well. He bragged about it, too, always reminding Harmony that he knew how to add milk to the eggs to make them fluffy and how he knew how to fry the bacon so that it was crispy but never chewy. He also melted the butter in the microwave for the toast. “Yes, yes,” she would tell him. “You are the best.”

  She felt him glace over at her but she ignored him. She was at the peninsula working on her blog on her laptop. She was dressed, as per usual, in an oversized sweatshirt, white tank top and black Capri leggings. She was also wearing her black-framed “nerd” glasses.

  Marc chuckled to himself and said, “You know, I haven’t heard one ‘What up!’ or ‘Whoop!’ lately.” He stopped talking and glanced at Harmony again. “It’s weird. It’s so quiet here, almost like we are in the middle of nowhere and not just a few miles from a world-famous boulevard. It’s a definite change from our old apartment.”

  Yes, it is really quiet, Harmony thought and she knew that, for some reason, it was a little unsettling to Marc. But it didn’t bother her. She was so engrossed in her work she barely knew he was in the room. All she heard was the sizzling sound from the bacon frying and the consistent tapping the keyboard made as she typed furiously. She knew Marc wanted to ta
lk but she hated to be interrupted while she was working. She was one of those “let me get this done so I don’t have to think about it” kind of workers. She wouldn’t stop until she was finished. And she’d yell at him if he interrupted her. So, he left her alone.

  As she worked, she had several things swarming in her mind, things she had to get done that day, including finding a grocery store nearby. That was a biggie for her. She had to find one she could count on to carry all the ingredients she might need for an upcoming meal and, of course, a post. And, while on the surface that seemed like an easy task, it wasn’t. She liked to go to one store and get everything at once, not to several. She just didn’t want to spend the time driving around from store to store. She’d been in several nearby grocery stores since they’d moved in, buying basic food supplies for the house and her blog, but none of them really fit the bill. She knew her store was out there and close by; she just had to ferret it out. This was going to take a while and a lot of driving. She’d be fine with a store as long as it was within twenty minutes of the house. That way, no frozen food would really have the time to become unfrozen on the way home. These were the kinds of things that were always on her mind. But that’s what having a food blog meant—finding a great grocery store as close as possible to one’s house. Because, without food, there was no blog.

  Even though she was totally engrossed in her work, something was off. For some reason, she couldn’t quite get into her writing. Something was making her feel like she… Well, like someone was watching her. Like someone was paying close attention to what she was doing. Like they were really interested in it. And it wasn’t Marc, either, though she knew he was dying to start talking. Even though she was typing at a rapid-fire pace, she felt herself getting distracted by this very unusual feeling and she could not, for the life of her, shrug it off just as an odd feeling. And she never got distracted once she started work. And if something interrupted her, like her husband or a phone call, she knew how to ignore either until she was finished. Marc once got very upset with her over this but she had told him, “Unless you are bleeding out your eyes, leave me alone. We can talk when I finish.” He hadn’t liked it and had pouted for a few hours, but she put her foot down about this. Work came first. Then conversation. When she was working, her concentration was on the work. Like it or lump it.

  Maybe it was just being in a new setting, but something was keeping her from concentrating right then. She kept making typos and would have to pause her stream of consciousness and go back and correct them. This was beginning to really irritate her. But she was getting really distracted by something and she couldn’t quite put her finger on why this was. She felt, for a second or two, like there was someone else in the room besides her and Marc. And it was like she suddenly became very aware of something and she couldn’t make herself become unaware of it.

  Okay, fine. She would deal with this, whatever it was. So, she stopped working and straightened up. She slowly turned her head to the left. Nothing seemed off, so she turned to the right. She sat very still and waited, thinking that if she didn’t move, she might hear something that would clue her in on what was actually going on. Her breathing began to escalate just slightly and she could feel a slight cold chill climbing up her back. She froze at this sensation and asked herself: What the hell is going on?

  “We should have a house warming party,” Marc said suddenly.

  His words jarred Harmony back to reality. It was like she’d almost forgotten he was in the room. She took a deep breath and shook her head, then focused back on the laptop screen and started working again.

  “Did you hear me?” Marc asked. “I think we should have a housewarming party.”

  Without looking up, Harmony said, “I don’t want any of your hot shot real estate friends over here messing up my house.”

  Marc chuckled at her words. “Your house? Listen to you. It took me almost all of a half hour to talk you into this place and now you’re all possessive and stuff.”

  She smiled to herself. “I’m a hard sell.”

  “That you are,” he said, then added, “Besides, they’re your friends, too.”

  “Sure, they are,” she muttered and kept working. “But, whatever. If you want to have some people over, just let me know.”

  “Will do,” he replied and winked at her, then put some eggs, bacon and toast on a plate, then crossed over and put it in the peninsula, then slid it over to her. “Your breakfast, Mrs. Franklin.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Franklin.” She smiled at him, then picked up her fork and dug into the eggs. She moaned with satisfaction and smiled at him. “As usual, you beat my ass on cooking eggs. How do you do it?”

  He shrugged. “It’s an old secret handed down from my grandmother. And it entails only one thing: Plenty of salt and pepper. Well, two things.”

  “Too bad she didn’t teach you how to make gravy and biscuits,” she told him.

  “She did,” he said. “I just never could quite get it. I still suck at it. Gravy is a gift, as they say.”

  “Gravy is a gift,” she replied and smiled at him. “I suck at making gravy, too. It’s like I can’t get it to rise and the pan gets too hot and the gravy gets scorched, every single time. I might work on that, though. That would be a good post—Southern biscuits and gravy. Everyone loves that.”

  He nodded then stared at her with a slight look of anticipation.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Did you ever…?” he began, then stopped himself.

  “What?” she asked. “Did I ever what?”

  He sighed heavily. “Did you ever look up to see what happened here? You know, the death?”

  Harmony groaned and dropped her fork onto the plate. It landed with a loud clang. “Every time I am in a good mood, you spoil it.”

  “That’s what husbands are for,” he said. “But did you?”

  “I didn’t. I know it sounds bad, but we’ve been here a few weeks and I just thought… You know. Why stir the pot?”

  He nodded. “Well, I did. I looked it up.”

  “Oh, God, and now you want to tell me.”

  “Aren’t you the least bit curious?” he asked.

  “I wasn’t because I put it out of my mind. But now I am. You’re dying to tell me, so tell me.”

  Marc said, “Anyway, it was a domestic disturbance. The couple who bought this place got into a fight in the pool and, from what I read, they struggled in the water. And then he pushed her off him and she hit her head against the wall. Hard.”

  Harmony’s mouth dropped. “Oh, my God, that’s awful.”

  “It really was. He pulled her out and called 911. She was still alive, I think, when the ambulance took her to the hospital but she never woke up. Died a few days later.”

  Harmony shuddered. “That’s horrible. That poor woman.” She stared at Marc. “What happened to the man?”

  “Well, the death was ruled accidental, so he wasn’t charged, but he did get put into an institution.”

  Her eyes grew wide and she felt goosebumps pop up all over the backs of her arms. “A mental institution?”

  “Yes, a mental institution. I didn’t ask for any more details than that. I don’t like to pry. Besides, I think that’s all the seller would have told me anyway.”

  Harmony digested all this and nodded. “Did he ever get out? The man? Out of the institution?”

  “Uh, no,” Marc said and eyed her. “He committed suicide there.”

  This visibly upset Harmony. “Oh, my God, it’s just all so awful!”

  “Yeah,” he said. “It is. Anyway, after that, his brother called and asked me to sell the house.”

  “His brother sold you the house?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “He inherited it and he’s the one who sold it to me.” He paused and studied her. “And here we are.”

  “So, technically, she didn’t actually die in here? The woman, I mean. She didn’t die in the h
ouse?”

  “Technically, no.”

  “Wow. That’s still heavy, isn’t it?” She shook her head and rubbed her arms where the goosebumps had risen. “Please tell me we’ll never fight like that.”

  “I don’t fight. You fight.”

  Even though she was upset at the news of what had happened in the house, Marc’s words nearly set her off. He always had to play the good guy, though he failed to mention that he was the one who would start picking at her for something and then that would escalate into a knock-down-drag-out-fight. One time he upset her so much she threatened to throw a pan at him—a pan that was hot with frying chicken. Luckily, he’d backed off. She now eyed him with slight derision and said, “Don’t start! You fight, too! You pick a fight then, after you drop the bomb, you leave the room and act like you’re all innocent.”

  “It always works, though, doesn’t it?”

  Then the bastard had the nerve to lean over and kiss the tip of her nose. She almost growled at him.

  “Somebody’s got to be the good guy,” he said and picked up a piece of bacon off her plate and ate it.

  “I’ll remember this next time you want to try something bad. With me. In bed.”

  Marc shook his head like he hadn’t thought of that angle and her words didn’t set well with him. “Hey, come on. I’m an adventurous guy and I like… Well, adventurous things, especially in the bedroom.” He eyed her. “So, don’t pull that! We still haven’t tried that—”

  “Uh huh,” Harmony said and shook her head adamantly. “You’re the good guy and we all know good guys never get laid. At least not well.”

  “This one does,” he replied, nodding. “He got some last night, didn’t he? And it was good.”

  He gave her a knowing look. Harmony cracked up. She paused and shook herself, remembering what they were discussing. “God, I am so freaked out over this,” she said.

  “It is pretty freaky.”

  “Let’s just… Let’s just stop talking about it right now, okay?” And they should. If they didn’t, she’d start to really doubt her decision to move into this house.