She Held Fire In Her Hands

The house was perfect.

The moment we got there Gordy walked down the hallway laughing his head off, balanced on the wall and peering in rooms excitedly.

I went into all the rooms and checked for leaks, insect problems, cracking wallpaper, anything that could be wrong. There was nothing. Everything was spotless, new. Absolutely perfect. There was only one thing wrong…

Dom was missing.

He would be bringing Reese back with him from Atlanta in a week, and I hadn’t regretted many things as much as I regretted having to stay. But we were both nervous about taking Gordy on a plane, and we’d also decided not to sign our lease again, which only gave us two weeks to move out. We needed a house, and we needed it pronto.

However despite having to be apart for a week Dom had his work laptop, and we were talking almost constantly. Also when we met with the realtor…

“Hello, Missus…Oh…This must be your husband.”

The woman stared at the laptop I was holding up, on the screen of which Dom sat in a waiting room at the hospital with his earphones in. I looked down and he waved at her, causing me to smirk. Surely she thought we were insane.

“There was a family emergency so my husband can’t be here, but I still want him to see the house. I hope you don’t mind.”

She shook her head, but I didn’t truly buy it. Oh, well. “Sure, sure. Okay, shall we start with the kitchen, Mr. and Mrs. Welch?”

I kept one hand firmly around Gordy’s, helping him to walk beside me as I showed Dom the house with my other arm. We entered the kitchen and I smiled, setting the laptop on the counter so he could get a better view. I picked up Gordy and stood in the middle of the polished wooden-floored room.

“Wave to Daddy!” I told Gordy, lifting his chubby arm and miming what he should do.

Gordy was an expert waver, his dimples appearing with a happy grin when he saw his dad on the little screen. “Da!”

“Yeah.” I bounced him a little, nuzzling his cheek. Urgh, it was droolly. “So, what do you think of the kitchen, babe? Pretty nice in my opinion.”

On the screen Dom nodded, leaning his chin on his fist. I noticed he hadn’t shaved for at least a day. “Nice. Can you show me the sink?”

I balanced Gordy on my hip so I could turn the laptop and tilt it, showing my husband the deep silver basin. “The attachments look new. Ma’am, would you mind turning on the faucet for me?”

The realtor (who probably believed her presence was forgotten until then) came forward and twisted the hot water knob on. Water came out in a smooth stream, and it was clear. When the woman shut it off I set the computer back down and raised my eyebrows eagerly.

“Very nice.” Dom gave his approval. “Inside of the fridge?”

I smiled at my screen-husband, who thought of things like the inside of refrigerators, which I never thought of at all. “Hold on.”

At that point it was clear I couldn’t continue holding Gordy, so I set him down and told him to stay in the kitchen. The realtor was standing helpfully in the doorway, so I didn’t worry about him escaping. Not like he could hurt himself with no furniture in the house anyway.

With the laptop in hand I opened the fridge, which didn’t smell even slightly of freezer burn and was much cleaner than any fridge I’d ever seen. I stuck my head into the view to give Dom an approving look, causing him to wink at me.

“Are these new appliances?” Dom asked, and after a second I realized the question was meant for the realtor. I turned him so he could face her and ask again.

She cleared her throat, occasionally glancing down at Gordy, who had plopped down on the floor and was trying to get his sneaker off. “The refrigerator, stove, shower, toilet, and all the sinks are new. Also most rooms have been remodeled, especially the bedrooms.”

“New. Remodeled.” I said the words while nodding at my husband, trying to seem professional like him and the realtor.

“That’s great. What about the pipes and the wiring? This house looks kind of old, from the outside.”

The realtor again cleared her throat. “Everything that isn’t new has been thoroughly inspected, I can promise you that, Mr. Welsh. While it has been a few years since anyone lived here, it has a full seal of safety from the city.”

“Hm.” Dom said with his ‘I don’t quite trust this’ tone. “Could we see the living room?”

The living room was large and very open, with one huge window facing the yard. As soon as I walked in I gasped and ran over to it, Gordy squealing and imitating me (one of his favorite pass-times).

“Oh my God, there’s a lake!” I almost shouted.

Another throat-clearing from the realtor woman in her maroon dress. “Yes, your property line ends at the water so you’ll have full access to it. It’s clean water, so it’s alright to swim in.”

“It didn’t say lakefront in the ad.” I spoke halfheartedly, focused on the calm grayish blue water. There was a white house on the other side, but it was barely visible and the only other house on the lake. Besides that it was just thick trees. “This is gorgeous, isn’t it, Dom?”

Dom’s voice made a pensive noise. He was a pensive one, my husband. “Yeah, very nice…How about the upstairs?”

The bedrooms were gorgeous just like the rest of the house and the lake. Thoughts of cooling off during hot summers and teaching Gordy to swim were making me kind of giggly, but I tried to focus. The master bedroom was a neat beige color with white carpet, the same carpet the two other rooms had. However one of the slightly smaller bedrooms was pale pink, and the other was pale yellow. In the pink room I turned Dom to beam at him.

“This is perfect for Reese, right?”

He could probably see how excited I was, but I could tell that he was thinking hard, his dark brow pulled together and his smile a bit forced. “It is, Jenna. I bet she’d love it.”

“Now, the only drawback is there’s only one bathroom.” the realtor said, a bit loudly in the room. She seemed like she was trying to hurry us on. “But it is large, with a joined bath and shower and a separate door leading to the toilet. Very good for privacy.”

“And preventing stink!” I exclaimed, bending over to make a face at Gordy, who almost fell over he laughed so hard.

The realtor didn’t seem amused, giving me a tight grin before heading into the hallway, forcing me to follow her. “How about we take a look at the basement?”

“Yep.” replied Dom, and I had to look at him to see why he sounded so stilted.

The basement was not as nice as the upper levels, but that was expected. It was concrete floored, brick walls like the outside of the house, smelled like water and mildew. I didn’t want to put Gordy on the floor, in case he ran off and fell in a hole or something, so I asked the realtor to hold Dom. How many times in your life do you get to ask someone to hold your husband anyway?

“Good storage space. I can easily remember where the fuse box is.” I chuckled at our old joke. When I was six months pregnant our power went out and I walked around the apartment looking for the fuse box for two hours, almost injuring myself, just to have Dom come home and remind me it was in the hall closet.

Dom didn’t laugh. He was absorbed, eyes scanning the basement. I glanced up at the realtor, finding her watching Dom’s reactions nervously. What was going on?

Gordy made an impatient noise in my arms, wanting to be set down. I cleared my throat (taking a page from the realtor’s book) to get their attention. “I think Gordon needs a change. Can we go upstairs and discuss the house?”

“Of course.” the realtor went ahead of me up the stairs.

Once we were in the living room where I left the diaper bag I set the laptop on the floor, joining him on the hard wood to check Gordy’s diaper. It turned out he had peed, so I went about changing him.

“So, what’s the verdict?”

Dom hummed at my question. “Overall, I really like it. It has the space we need, it’s clean and everything is updated. I just…” he sighed, shrugged. “I’m just gonna say it: the price is too good to be true. Not with everything so new, and not with the lake right there. This property is worth much more than it‘s selling for, maybe three times as much.”

I held a clean diaper over Gordy’s bare bottom half and watched their exchange. The realtor looked like this was what she’d been fearing, and Dom was waiting skeptically for her to reply.

“Yes, it is a good bargain, but I assure you there’s nothing wrong with the house presently.”

Dom raised an eyebrow. I had to look away then to finish changing Gordy so he wouldn’t throw a fit. “Presently?”

She had obviously hoped he would miss that last word. “Something happened here that decreased the property value. But really, it’s just fine now.”

“What happened here?” asked Dom, straight to the point.

The battle lost, the realtor sighed. “A family was found dead here about five years ago. A private investor recently bought it and renovated everything trying to make a profit.”

I almost squirted diaper cream all over Gordy. “Dead? As in murdered?”

“It was never classified as murder.” she hurried to add, wringing her hands.

Dom was quiet for a few more seconds before he asked another question. “Where were they found?”

“The parents were upstairs and the two children were in the basement.” the woman begrudgingly told us, obviously really needing to sell us the house.

I wanted to puke. I’d just been standing where dead people had been. Okay, probably deaths had happened in most houses in the world, but not kids. There was a brief moment where I imagined finding Gordy dead and almost screamed bloody murder.

“How were they found?” went on Dom, not noticing my horror yet.

The realtor sighed, looking downtrodden. “The parents had been stabbed fatally, and it’s unknown what the two girls died of.”

A long silence settled in the room. Gordy fussed at me since I’d frozen in the process of putting his little khaki pants back on him, so I slowly resumed what I was doing before, waiting for Dom to say something. He looked over at me and Gordy, scratching his jaw.

“What do you think, Jen? Worth it?”

I let out a long breath through my nose. “On paper, I would say yes. It’s perfect, but…I don’t know. It’s kind of scary.”

“You’re right…Could we have a minute?”

The realtor nodded, smiling. We were at least considering it. “I’ll step outside. Come talk to me when you’re ready.”

Once the sound of the front door shutting reached us I grimaced at Dom. “This place truly is exactly what we need. Gordy and Reese can have their own rooms, there’s plenty of space for all our furniture…I dunno, Dom. I trust your judgment on this.”

“But could you be comfortable there?”

I pursed my lips for a moment, then nodded. “I think I could eventually. As long as the kids don’t know it wouldn’t really bother me.”

“You sure, Jen? I don’t wanna buy this place if you’re gonna hate it.” Dom waited for my response, resting his square chin on his fist. “So, what do you say?”

I looked down at Gordy, who was dressed again and sitting in my lap. He was watching Dom’s every movement, smiling and drooling on his fist. Soon his big sister would be living with us, the sister neither of us had ever met. An extremely important person in Dom’s life who had just gone through something traumatic. We needed a good home for her to come to.

“Let’s do it, Dom. We have to.”

His face softened with relief. “Okay. This is a big step, Jen.”

“I know it.” I gave Gordy a squeeze, making him grunt and slap me on the arm. “I love you.”

“Love you, too. Go tell that annoying woman she gets our money.”