Arrowood by Laura McHugh Read Free Book Online Page A

many references to fire, that only a handful of saints were drawn with flames in their hands or hearts or atop their heads. Nana explained that the flame represented a deep religious fervor, and I decided that the burning saints were the best and most powerful, the closest to God. While I no longer believed that the saints were watching over me, I still invoked them absentmindedly from time to time, much as I could still recite the Nicene Creed or work a rosary in my sleep, though I had long since stopped going to church.
    After I finished with the books, I pulled the sheets off the armchairs and the desk and slid the heavy drapes aside to let in some light. The room looked so much better that I decided to do the same throughout the first floor. When I was done, I dragged all the sheets down the hall to the laundry room and kicked them into a pile in the corner.
    As I turned to go, I heard the muted trickle of water running. Back in Colorado, in my basement apartment, I had heard that sound every time someone upstairs took a shower or flushed the toilet, but here I was alone in the house. I imagined corroded plumbing leaking inside the walls, rotting the joists and softening the bones of the house, one of the many potential problems I’d hoped to avoid, right up there with fires from the remaining bits of knob-and-tube wiring. If Nana were here, she’d be praying to the patron saint of plumbing, whose name I couldn’t recall. I couldn’t quite tell where the sound was coming from, so I pressed my ear to the blue wallpaper to listen.
    The doorbell rang then, a series of deep melodic gongs, startling me. Mom had chipped through a plaster wall with a hammer to disconnect the bell years ago, after cursing out the two young Mormons who had unintentionally woken the twins from a nap. It must have been reconnected after we’d moved away. I hurried back to the entry and peeked through the sidelight. I was slightly disappointed to see Heaney. I considered not answering the door, but my car was parked outside, so he knew I was home.
    “Hi, Miss Arrowood.” His lips lost their color as they stretched into a smile, as though the blood had been pressed out of them. “Sorry to bother you,” Heaney said. “I wanted to let you know I was here before I gave you a scare creeping around the yard.”
    “Oh, thanks.”
    “You getting settled in?”
    “Yeah.”
    Heaney’s gaze drifted over my shoulder, into the house. “Anything you need me to take care of inside today?” I shook my head. “All right, then. Thought I’d check.” He took a couple of steps back.
    “Oh, wait, there is one thing—were you watering the grass out there a minute ago? Or using the hose for something?”
    “No. Did you want me to? Water the lawn? Or…?”
    I shook my head, and after waiting fruitlessly for me to explain why I’d asked about the hose, Heaney edged closer. He was only a few inches taller than me, our eyes almost level, his breath bracingly antiseptic, like he had just rinsed his mouth with Listerine. I tried to imagine him hanging out with my mom and dad in their high school days. How well had he known them? Aside from Mrs. Ferris, I didn’t know any of my parents’ childhood friends.
    “Whatever you need, I’m here for you,” Heaney said. “Don’t be afraid to ask. I want you to think of me as family.”
    It was a nice sentiment, though it didn’t strike me the way he’d likely intended.
Think of me as family.
Even at my lowest point in Colorado, I had refused to call my mother for help. I was still angry that someone else had called her for me. I watched Heaney go down the steps and into the yard, wondering if it had been hard for him to ring the bell after years of letting himself in; if he had felt, in a way, that the house belonged to him, the same as I had, all those years it wasn’t mine. I listened again for the sound of running water, but wherever it was coming from, it had stopped. The house was too quiet, holding