Prospect Street (3 page)

T
he house on Prospect Street was cherry-colored brick of modified Federal style, a description that hardly did it justice. A survivor of wars and warring political parties, the century-old row house nestled snugly against its neighbors, like an elderly socialite drawing comfort from surviving members of her women's club.

The house held a forbidden allure for Faith. She had rarely come here, but each visit had made a strong impression. To a child, the ceilings had seemed as high as the clouds. As a teenager, she had been embarrassed by this monument to the tragedy that set her family apart and made her forever “different.” As a young mother, she had tried not to bring her children within miles of Georgetown, unwilling to be reminded that in the end she had little control over what happened to their precious lives.

“I haven't been to Prospect Street in a long time,” Faith told her mother as Lydia parked on the street a block and a half from the house. She was lucky to find any parking place at all.

“You have no reason to come.”

“Alex and Remy haven't even been inside, have you?” She faced her son and daughter, trying to keep her voice buoyant.
Remy rolled her eyes. The strain Faith had read on Alex's face began to ease at the thought of abandoning the car.

“Can I get out now?” he demanded.

Faith was surprised her son had asked, chalking it up as one of the day's few good signs. “Just stay with us. Don't take off on your own.” She winced as his door scraped the curb.

“I'm not going inside,” Remy said. “I have to call Megan. Can I have the cell phone?”

“May I,” Lydia corrected her. “And you will come inside, Remy. I don't want you sitting out here by yourself. We're in a city, and nice girls don't sit in cars waiting for goodness knows who to come along.”

Privately Faith thought her daughter would be fine. Georgetown was hardly D.C.'s crime-plagued inner city, and Prospect Street was well-traveled enough to make serious crime in broad daylight unlikely.

She tried for a compromise. “I'll let you have the cell phone once we're inside. Or you can sit on the front steps, if that's all right with your grandmother.”

“She can come inside with the rest of us.” Lydia opened her door and started toward the house.

“Why does she get to make all the rules?” Remy asked her mother.

“Remy, be polite, please.”

“Oh, what's the point of talking to you!”

Sometimes Faith wondered that, too. “This is your grandmother's house and your grandmother's car. And you will be polite.”

By the time she joined her son and mother on the sidewalk, Alex was swinging on a tree limb that didn't look strong enough to hold him. When Lydia made him stop, he launched himself across the uneven brick sidewalk, jolting to a stop at a low iron fence. “Look at the flowers growing between these bricks.” He dropped to his knees to yank out dandelions.

“Leave him alone, Mother,” Faith said, before Lydia could stop him. “He's doing the owner a favor.”

“He can't stand still for ten seconds.”

“He's a boy. He's supposed to run and jump. Girls, too, only we get it squeezed out of us pretty fast.”

“I suppose that's a complaint about the way you were raised.”

“Social commentary.” Faith watched the daughter
she
was raising emerge slowly from the car. Remy was everything her brother was not. Sedate, eager to please, polite. Or at least she had been until her world fell apart.

“Megan's probably gone already, anyway,” Remy said. “She
probably
asked Jennifer Logan to go with her to the movies, since I'm not there.”

Megan lived on their block, and she and Remy had been best friends since they were pre-schoolers. In many ways the move was going to be hardest on Remy, because her entire life revolved around her social group.

Faith tried to help. “Maybe she can spend the night tonight. If you reach her, ask her. We can order pizza.”

“Nobody wants to come to our house anymore.”

“Ask her anyway.” Faith was surprised at how stern she sounded. “We won't be living there much longer. You won't have many more chances.”

“What's the point? She's not going to come all the way to Great Falls to see me after school. We won't be friends anymore once I move.”

Faith didn't have the strength for an extended battle. “Come on, Alex.”

He got to his feet, his hands dirty and filled with dandelions. As they walked toward the house he popped off the fluffy heads with a flick of his index finger, aiming them in the lagging Remy's direction.

“Stop it, Alex!” Remy said. “Mom, do you see what he's doing?”

Faith shook her head at Alex, who grinned back at her, dropping what was left of the dandelions and dusting off his hands in victory. Remy moved in close enough to shove him, but not hard enough to make him fall.

Lydia's lips were a straight, thin line, but, remarkably, she kept silent.

They passed more row houses like the one Lydia owned. Prospect began at bustling Wisconsin Avenue, with its chic shops and expensive restaurants, and extended toward Georgetown University, growing more residential with every block. Some of the properties were historic, elaborate edifices sheltered by enormous trees and blocked from view by brick walls. Others were modest by Georgetown standards, rentals for students or young professionals. Many of the houses sat almost directly on the sidewalk, looming like the bygone tales of former inhabitants, just out of reach.

A Georgetown address was prestige in itself, but absentee landlords held some of the property, much as Lydia did, depending on the area's reputation instead of meticulous upkeep and updates. One house they passed had trim that badly needed painting. Another's postage-stamp front yard was in need of a chain saw to clear deadwood and shrubs that no longer thrived.

“I ought to sue the rental agency.” Lydia put her hands on her hips and gazed at the house they'd come to evaluate.

Faith stopped, too, the children well behind her. She had never lived here. But she felt ashamed.

A woman's voice floated toward them from the house next door. “It's about time you came to see the place, Lyddy. Before the city condemns it.”

Beside Faith, Lydia went rigid. Faith followed the voice with her eyes, but it took a moment to see the woman in question. She stood at one of the tall windows on the second floor, just inside an iron railing extending over the narrow yard. She appeared to be as old as a Supreme Court Justice and as brazen as a certain White House intern. Even though it was well into afternoon, she wore a brilliant blue wrapper over a nightgown—at least Faith hoped she was wearing a gown—and her head was wrapped in a matching turban.

“Ignore her,” Lydia said, for Faith's ears only. “She's the wrong kind of woman to introduce to your children.”

In a louder voice Lydia went on, as if the woman hadn't spoken. “I am going to sue the rental agency. This is disgraceful. They were responsible, and no one told me.”

When the woman disappeared inside, Faith reluctantly pulled her attention back to the house. “When was the last time you stopped by?”

“I don't stop by. Why should I? I hire people to take care of the property. Do you think I want to hobnob with the tenants?”

Faith was accustomed to Lydia's sarcasm. She wanted to believe that hiding somewhere inside her mother's frozen heart was a compassionate nature, that under her rigid self-discipline and even more demanding expectations a warmer, more tolerant woman hid. She thought she saw signs of one occasionally.

But the Hustons hadn't named their daughter Faith for nothing.

“Will you look at the door? At the yard?” Lydia shook her head.

Faith had no other place to look. The house was three stories high and one room narrow. Like many of its neighbors, architectural details were minimal. A wooden door surround with a semicircular fanlight over it. A cornice with toothlike dentils underscoring the slate roof. Shuttered windows with double-hung sashes. An iron stair rail enclosing four wide steps to the door.

The only adornment was an antique iron plaque, or “fire mark,” placed well above the fanlight to show that the family's credit with the local fire department was good. The house wasn't old enough to have needed one, but one of Lydia's ancestors had probably rescued it from another street and added it for effect.

Silently Faith catalogued the problems. The brick needed cleaning. The peeling gray trim needed paint or, in a few cases, replacement. A pane of glass was missing in the attic, and another on the second floor had been patched with duct tape. The stair rail needed sanding and rust inhibitor—if enough of it was left to paint. The shrubs hugging the house were dying.

“From the outside, anyway, there's nothing wrong with it that some hard work won't fix. For starters, we ought to ask those people on the next block to go in a chain saw rental,” Faith said.

“I fail to see the humor.”

“I'm learning to find it in the least likely places.”

“Woo-woo…” Alex said, and not like a train. “It's haunted!”

Faith whirled to silence him, but Lydia reached him first, grasping his shoulder. “You will never say that in my presence again. Do you understand? Your mother may think your behavior is cute, but she's the only one who does.”

Alex stood perfectly still, but his expression said everything. Faith couldn't let it pass. “Mother, he didn't mean—”

“I don't care what he meant!” Lydia dropped her hand with obvious reluctance.

Faith drew herself up to her full five-four. “Mother, you and Remy go ahead.” She fished in her purse and found the cell phone, holding it out to her daughter. “Alex and I will join you in a few minutes. Somebody needs to explain to him why you're so angry.”

For a moment Lydia froze in place; then, without a word or glance, she hurried up the steps.

“Oh, come on, can't I sit out here?” Remy said.

“Not a chance. Go on.” Faith nodded toward the house. “And stay out of your grandmother's way until I get in there.”

“I don't care why she's mad,” Alex said, when the others were gone. “She's always mad. She hates me.”

“She has very little patience today.” Faith settled herself on the third step and patted the space beside her, wondering how much more honest she should be.

He joined her, leaning against her for comfort, his auburn hair brushing her shoulder. She put her arm around him. “I'm sorry, sweetheart. Your grandmother doesn't have much experience with children, and none with boys.”

“How come making ghost noises upset her?”

Faith tried for the basics. “You must remember the story about my sister? I'm sure you've heard it a million times.”

“She was kidnapped.” He shrugged, rubbing his shoulder companionably against hers. “That's all I know.”

“Your grandmother and grandfather lived in this house a long time ago.”

“Well, it looks like nobody's lived here since. Except maybe ghosts. That's all I meant.”

Faith patted his denim-clad knee. “Nobody who cares about the place. But my mother's family had always owned this house, and after they married, she and my father moved in. Not too long afterward, they brought their first daughter home from the hospital.”

“Hope.” Alex brushed his foot back and forth on the bottom step. “I know that part.”

“That's right. My mother put baby Hope in a crib in the nursery and left her to sleep. Later, when she went in to check on her, she was gone.”

“And nobody ever found her.” Alex's foot moved faster.

“They never did. Even though it was national news for months and months, and hundreds of police officers worked on the case. Nobody ever discovered what happened to her.”

Alex was trying to make sense of it. “That was a long time ago. And
I
didn't kidnap anybody. Why's she angry at me?”

“She's not. She just… She always feels sad when she comes here, because the house reminds her of Hope. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if we knew what happened to her, but we don't. Nobody does. So your grandmother never really put it behind her. Can you understand that?”

“I understand a lot more than you think.”

Faith heard the voice of the man Alex was going to become. She heard those echoes more often now. “I'm glad.”

“So when I said the house was haunted, she thought I was talking about Hope?”

“Exactly.” Faith paused. “There's been a rumor for years that sometimes, late at night, you can hear a baby crying up on the third floor.”

“Spoo—ky!”

“Yes. Well. It's just one of those gruesome stories people like to tell. The tour groups who come by have kept it going.”

Alex got to his feet, anxious to move on. “I'd like to live here. I think it would be neat to see if the story's true.”

“Don't mention that to your grandmother, okay? She would most definitely not think it was neat.”

“I didn't mean to make her sad.”

“Maybe when she's feeling better you could tell her that.”

“She doesn't hear anything I say.”

Faith was afraid he was right. “Maybe she just doesn't hear
as much
as you'd like.”

“You're sad, too. All the time now.”

She made a point of not lying to her children. “I'm sorry. I
am
sad.”

“Me, too.”

She reached for his hand. “I know. You wish things were the way they used to be.”

“How could Dad do this to us? It's killing Remy. I can take it. I'm a guy. But she hates him, and maybe I do, too.”

She couldn't explain what she really didn't understand. “Being…gay, well, it's tough. And when your daddy was growing up, it was even tougher.”