"She didn't tell me her name, mom," Cora insisted. "She just said she knew you, and . . . she was my friend Ben's stepmom."

Maeve sat at the kitchen table, attempting to process her daughter's words. Cora had called her in a panic, begging her to come home, so Maeve had listened, old people be damned. "And you didn't call 9-1-1 because?"

Cora was more upset than Maeve had ever seen her. Something had definitely happened, but whatever it might've been, she wasn't sure it was what her daughter said it was. "Because I couldn't find my phone! It took me, like, twenty minutes before I found it under my bed, and by that time, when I went to check on her, she was gone!"

"Honey," Maeve reached across the table in an attempt to take Cora's hand, but the girl pulled away.

"I am not lying! Just because you're seeing things doesn't mean I am!"

Maeve sighed. "I don't think you're lying. I just . . . I looked out back. There's no sign of anything. You said she was bleeding onto the grass, but there's no blood, Cora. And there's no stone on the ground, and no . . . nothing. So even if it did happen the way you said, she must've been all right and just gotten up and left."

Her daughter was shaking her head, crossing her arms, looked ready to cry. "No, mom. There is literally no way."

Unsure what to do, Maeve sucked on her bottom lip, scrutinized her daughter, and pushed back her chair. "All right. Well, I can't think of anything to do except maybe talk to the neighbors. Dottie's home, I think, and Eunice next door just sits inside all day at her window. Maybe they saw something, right? If there was a woman here, one of them might know."

"Oh don't go over to Niecey's--I was supposed to visit her, and I never did."

"She's an old lady; she doesn't remember. None of them ever do."

Before Maeve could walk out the door, though, her daughter asked her to wait, went to her room, returned with a photograph--an old black and white one--said something about asking Niecey who it was, that she'd found it and was curious. Maeve hardly looked at the image as she slipped it into her coat pocket, just nodded and reassured Cora that she'd be back in a few minutes.

Once outside, the air refreshed Maeve. Her house had seemed unbearably stuffy, but that might've been the subject matter she'd been discussing with Cora. Maeve believed her daughter, all right; she believed that something had most definitely happened, but what exactly it was or meant was beyond her. Someone that had known her? Maeve had never made many friends, really--not the kind she could talk about real things with--but she'd made acquaintances wherever she went. She'd had a few co-workers back in their last town, people she'd been at the other eldercare center with. And some of the parents at Cora's school. And some of the people she drank with regularly at the local bar. None of them were anyone close enough she'd call friends, but if they were her daughter's friend's parent, they must've been someone from her last location. She just couldn't think of who it might be. In any case, it was weird. Maeve didn't trust anyone at all; she hardly trusted herself. So she absolutely added it to her running mental list of potential red flags.

As cold as it was, Maeve appreciated being home from work on such an afternoon. She so rarely had a day off that her spirits were high even in spite of her daughter's weird incident and the fact that she'd decided to try to talk to their unfriendly old neighbors. Maeve had seen almost nothing of Niecey since the weather had turned, nothing of Dottie since they'd sent her off to rehab. For all Maeve knew, either one of the old women could be as dead as Mr. George. She wasn't sure which scenario would be worse: dying in her home all alone, or waiting to die in an eldercare center surrounded by people in identical circumstances.

Well, both sounded terrible. And whether or not Dottie was dead, Maeve didn't find out; the old woman didn't answer. She'd apparently come home around Thanksgiving and was likely just keeping to herself, but Maeve made a note to ask Alan if he could actually go in and check on her sometime soon.

Niecey, on the other hand, answered the door almost immediately, as if she'd been waiting by it. And she shocked Maeve by inviting her right in. Maeve awkwardly accepted the invite, knowing it'd be rude to make an old woman stand in the cold for any sort of extended conversation.

The interior of Niecey's house was unexpectedly lovely. Based on what little she'd seen and knew of the woman, Maeve had expected something more along the lines of Dottie's semi-hoarding-cat-lady decor, but standing in the front room, looking at the various well-kept antique furniture pieces and tastefully displayed china and collectibles, Maeve was impressed with the distinct lack of old-people vibes. The place didn't so much read sad, lonely old woman as it did high-end traditional, like it was out of one of those decor magazines Maeve's mother used to read and collect back in the 90s, and for how clean and organized it was, even in a space not much larger than her own house's, Maeve wondered whether Niecey had a cleaning person taking care of the place. She'd only ever seen the old woman with a walker, after all; Niecey could hardly be mobile enough to be a meticulous cleaner. Then again, as Maeve stepped a little farther into the home, she realized it had something of a museum about it, some untouched quality, as if Niecey didn't actually quite live in that front room. Maeve found herself wondering what the other rooms looked like, whether they, too, had that immaculate ambience or were a total mess.

"Have a seat, neighbor," Niecey said in a rather jocular tone, stunning her guest. "What would you say to coffee? Tea?"

"Oh, no, thanks," Maeve declined, unsure how her hostess would even make her any sort of hot beverage. Niecey gestured toward the living room, indicating she wished her guest to take a seat, and Maeve obliged, sitting carefully on the nearest chair as if afraid to upset its pristine condition And the cushion did indeed crunch a bit, as if no one had sat on it for years. "Listen, Eunice, I just have a quick question for you."

Niecey shuffled around Maeve, her walker catching here and there on table legs and a footstool, and Maeve watched as patiently as possible until the old woman settled onto a tropical-print, wingback sofa, which also creaked with annoyance. "Now then, what was it you wanted to chat about, Maeve? I told your daughter to come by not long ago, but she's yet to take me up on the offer. I had some things I wanted to give her, as she seems keen on going through other people's garbage."

Maeve was put off. She wasn't sure what Niecey meant about Cora, and she was also plain surprised that the woman knew her name. Their few run-ins had been uncomfortable, strange even, certainly not suggestive of their being on any sort of first-name basis. But Maeve didn't have the time. She wanted to get back to Cora. "A woman came to my house this morning, Niecey. She upset my daughter. Did you happen to see her?"

Rather than offer a quick yes or no, the old woman sat as still as a gargoyle, stared at Maeve with her small black eyes, her wisps of hair brushed over a visibly balding scalp, her pastel caftan draped relatively elegantly over her frail shoulders. Something discomfiting hung between them, around them in that room, a heaviness, as if it were all pretend and they both knew it. Niecey's claw-fingers layered one another, and Maeve noticed for the first time how easily she could see bones through the woman's paper skin. How old was Eunice? And . . . hadn't she had less hair the first time she'd seen her? Or maybe she'd been shorter . . . She'd certainly been less friendly. It was almost as if there were two different women living in this house.

A growing sense of urgency began to ferment within her. Maeve wanted nothing more than to get her answer and get out.

"So . . . I'll take that as a no?"

Niecey's frozen visage suddenly melted. She smiled benignly. "What?"

"You didn't see someone at my house . . . ?"

"No, dear. I didn't. Not a woman. Not today."

What did she mean? Did that mean something? Had she seen anyone? A man? At any time? But Maeve just didn't have the strength to continue with a conversation. "All right, well, thank you. I'll just--"

"Stay a while!" Niecey put out a hand and grabbed Maeve's, pulled, causing her to sit back down. "I know you have more to ask me."

"No, that was it . . . oh--" Maeve suddenly recalled the photograph in her pocket. "Oh, yes, Cora wanted me to ask you about this picture." She retrieved the (now somewhat bent) photo from her jacket and handed it to Niecey, actually looking at it herself for the first time, seeing a young woman standing in front of a house. No, not a house . . . her house? Her current house, just plus a fence and some decent shrubbery. The photographed woman was smiling at whoever had taken the picture.

Niecey gingerly accepted the photo from Maeve, held it so both of them could still see. "Sometimes we can't seem to get rid of things, can we?" she asked, and Maeve's thoughts were suddenly on Martha Heyward, of that comment that other old woman had made, about her past coming back, of being unable to get rid of things . . .

"Is that my house?" Maeve asked, a tremor in her voice.

"Yes, I'm afraid it is."

Afraid? What a strange thing for her to say. "It looks like a while ago. Did you know her? Was she your neighbor?"

The old woman nodded very slowly, an absent look entering her eyes. "Something like that." She fell into a momentary reverie, then snapped her head up to smile a bit severely at Maeve. "No. I did not live here at the same time as she did. But I know of her. Came to a sad end, I've heard."

"How do you mean?" Maeve lowered her brow.

"Lost her mind. Went entirely insane, tried to kill herself."

"Oh my God--"

"It's that house, there. It's unholy, is what I've said over the years. Something about it . . . needs some kind of exorcism."

Maeve was entirely unsure what to say. She couldn't quite discount Niecey's words--she herself had felt that the house was weird--but this old woman wasn't particularly normal, either, and an exorcism? That seemed a bit severe. There weren't any demonic activities going on. Cora actually loved the house. And besides, this was too much information for Maeve, anyway. She already had her daughter to worry about, and Paul, and honestly, even without the possibility of the house being possessed or haunted, she'd begun to think that moving again wasn't such a bad idea. Maybe she and Cora should pick up and just--

"It's all about the baby."

The statement caught Maeve; she hyper-focused all of her wandering attention on Niecey. "What did you say?"

"The baby--"

Maeve's stomach had bottomed out. The floor no longer felt firm beneath her feet; the very room appeared to waver as if she were seeing it through steam. "I--how do you know--"

Niecey didn't seem to notice Maeve's reaction. "Oh, it was why she went crazy--she lost her baby."

Swallowing a lump that had formed in her throat, Maeve found herself regaining the breath that'd been taken from her. She tried to play off her fear, shook her head, laughed weirdly at her momentary panic. "Oh, right. I--I misheard you. I would--I'd probably go crazy, too, if . . . Well, I've taken enough of your time. I should go." Maeve rose, waited for Niecey to get up, offered to help but the old woman refused, grabbed Maeve's outstretched hand and squeezed it, hard.

"You find it, you hear? It's in there, still. You find it!"

Maeve gasped in pain, then snatched her hand back, rubbed her fingers. She needed to get out of this old woman's house, which was beginning to seem as sinister as Niecey seemed to think Maeve's house was. "Thank you, Eunice," she forced herself to say, and then she saw herself to the door.