“I’m not scared of ghosts,” Linda said. “I’ve seen worse.”
Sometimes, uttering her lines gave her a sense of belonging, of completion. Other times, they were too close to the truth.
Tristan nodded. “I know you have.” He sounded so serious, referring to her divorce like it had battered her, but her divorce was not what had haunted her, not by a long shot.
Tatum exited the manor’s front doors, tall and ornate with delicate stained glass. “We’re ready for you inside,” he said. The stained glass depicted a gruesome scene: a naked woman, her skin transforming to bark, her limbs sprouting, and as they poked forth from her flesh, they speared the man who chased after her. On the other door, a group of men felled a forest.
“What the fuck?” Linda said as she passed through.
“It’s a take on a Greek myth,” Charity said. “Daphne and Apollo.”
“Oh, the woman who turns herself into a tree to get away from that asshat?” Linda shivered. “I’ve never much liked the woods, to be honest.”
“I love the forest,” Tristan said. “I thought you said you did a lot of camping?”
Linda swallowed as she ducked inside and away from the illustrations. “Used to.”
“And why don’t you go anymore, Linda?” Deja’s voice echoed as she faced the group filing in. Linda marveled at her ability to be everywhere at once—and to make Linda feel like the floor was falling away from her with a single question.
Linda pursed her lips. She wouldn’t play this game. “Just don’t.”
When Tristan stopped inside the grand foyer, the women stopped behind him. They stood on an uneven wood floor of deep purple grain. An elegant wood stair reached in twists and turns to the second story. Upon the ceiling, someone had painted a family history—people, marriages, funerals, and bloody births—all surrounded by a frame that resembled the bark of a tree. The whole room smelled like freshly cut lumber.
“It’s gorgeous,” Linda said, clutching her chest.
“Wait until you see the rest of the place!” Tristan said.
He led them through the manor. “The whole thing was built from wood from the old-growth forests around us.” He stomped against the floor with his boot. “You don’t see wood floors like this anymore. The same goes for the furniture. Most of this is original to the house, but some of it had to be replaced—and it’s not all pristine.” He put his foot up on an ornate, carved chair at the dining table and pushed until one of the legs collapsed. “Watch where you sit, is what I’m saying. Wouldn’t want any of you ladies to get a sore ass from a fall.”
“He’s already talking sore asses?” Charity whispered. “But we’ve hardly even kissed!” She feigned surprise, holding an open palm over her mouth in a scandalized gesture.
Linda smirked. Charity’s snark was out in full force, as though she’d decided to throw caution to the wind.
On the second story, the group walked a hallway of empty bedrooms, followed by the cameras that were their consistent companions. Tristan assigned each bedroom to one of the women, grouping them in the hall despite the ubiquity of rooms. Marion got the Sequoia Room; Charity the Pine; Sabrina the Cherry Blossom; and Linda the Redwood. Linda set her bag on the bed, which was decorated in a thick quilt of red patches. “What kind are the trees around the manor?” she asked Tristan.
Tristan shrugged. “Beats me.” He stepped out to check on the other women. Linda pushed her hand into the mattress; as it creaked, a musty smell rose from it. The room was sparsely decorated with an armoire of redwood and a redwood vanity with a small round mirror. Linda went two doors down to check on Sabrina, passing Charity’s room full of green. Sabrina’s bed was decorated in a quilt of pink squares.
“They stuck to the themes, didn’t they?” Linda ran her hand along the quilt. Unlike Linda’s room, Sabrina’s walls had been covered in oppressive baby-pink wallpaper. “I lucked out with redwood.”
“You did.” Sabrina lifted her folded clothes out of her overnight bag and placed them on the nightstand. “Want to make a bet on how long before Marion freaks tonight?”
As if on cue, Marion screamed. The three women rushed to her door, where she stood staring at a squashed daddy longlegs.
“They’re harmless, you know.” Charity bent and scooped the dead thing into her hand. It was as big as her palm. “They have enough poison inside to kill you, but their mouths are too small to bite.”
“Whatever,” Marion said. “I’m not letting anyone, or anything, stand in my way.”
Linda let the beat pass before she turned to glance at the cameraman who stood in the corner of the room. He was hiding a smirk.
“Okay, Marion, slayer of spiders,” Linda said. “Why don’t we make our way to dinner?”
“I’m not prepared for dinner,” she said.
“They did tell us to get gussied up, Lin,” Sabrina said.
“Oh, right,” Linda said. “I guess we do have an hour.” She returned to the hallway. She didn’t need a full hour to refresh her makeup and slip into a dress. She bit her lip. The hall was lined with portraits. The coloring of the people’s faces was uncanny. Family portraits, but she failed to understand why the artist had painted the skin with weird veins like vines. She reached out to the glass and traced the lines that formed the face of an angry-looking matriarch with piercing black eyes and wild black hair. The artist had covered the hair with pieces of leaf matter.
“I’m going to get a better look at that forest,” Charity said beside her.
Linda jumped. “Neat?” she said, startled by the closeness of the woman who wanted nothing to do with her. Charity smelled like rosemary.
“I’m inviting you.” Charity stepped back from the creepy portrait. “Take it or leave it, Meadows.”
Linda watched Charity walk halfway down the hall. She was weirded out by the woods, but she was intrigued by Charity. She chased after her.
“It’s still weird to hear my new name,” Linda said as they descended the long stairwell. “I went by my married name for so long, but I changed it when I got divorced. Fresh start all around, you know.”
Really, she had hoped that changing her name would help her hide from the reputation that preceded her, but it hadn’t worked: Deja, at least, had found her anyway.
“What was your married name?” Charity’s voice was calm, unfazed by the admission that Linda was a divorcee.
“Wallace,” Linda said. “I always liked it.”
Charity said nothing, and as they exited the manor’s front door, the cameraman from the manor’s interior traded off with one perched outside, leaning against the manor’s stone wall in waiting. He hefted his portable rig onto his shoulder. Linda was grateful that the show had gone with rigs that only required one person—camera and mic in one. Even if it meant that everyone was required to wear microphones pinned to their clothes, it was better this way. Being followed around by two or more production people, like some similar shows, would have felt like a circus.
At the edge of the woods, Charity paused. “I like Meadows more,” she said.
Linda smiled. But then her gaze returned to the trees. Linda had always thought that leafless trees looked like people, with their reaching branches as many arms and their upper crowns as wiry hair. These trees leaned forward like eavesdroppers attempting to hear the goings-on of the elite inside the manor.
