Chapter One: The Birthday Chapter One THE BIRTHDAY
Six months earlier: June

EMMA AND BEN are celebrating her thirty-fifth birthday at Ray’s, their favorite restaurant, in a newly gentrified section of Crown Heights. Ben orders a half bottle of wine. Emma takes one sip from his glass and gets a contact high. She was never a big drinker, but she’d liked sharing a bottle of wine with Ben and doing shots with friends. She’d forgotten that first hint of a buzz, how everything gets more interesting, how softly the restaurant noise begins to hum beyond their circle of light.

Since she was a teenager, she’s spent so much effort on not getting pregnant, it came as a shock when she changed her mind and then it wasn’t automatic. Nothing, nothing. Two miscarriages and then, just when she and Ben were about to ask around about a fertility doctor, the little stick turned pink again.

Both of them think but don’t say that this baby might never have siblings. But who knows? Maybe they’ll like being parents. Maybe the second one will be easy.

Emma’s annoyed when Ben orders swordfish, which she can’t share because the mercury content is so bad for the baby. Her doctor was clear about that. Ben’s a good person, he loves her, he’s smart and decent and fun. One in a million. So what if he wants swordfish?

Ben catches a glimpse of her fleeting discontent. She’s glad she’s married to the rare guy who actually pays attention.

He says, “Wait no. I’ll have the chicken. If I get the chicken, will you have some, Emma?”

The idea of chicken is slightly sickening, but Ben’s thoughtfulness pleases Emma. “Go on. Get the swordfish. I’ll get the pasta. I’ll have plenty of food.”

“If you’re sure,” says Ben. “Okay, back to plan A.”

Emma orders pasta with fresh peas, mint, and bacon.

She wants all the bacon but eats half.

“I should have told them to hold the bacon.”

“Enjoy yourself, Emma. Live large. It’s your birthday. Relax. It’s not like you’ve been eating bacon every day. Or ever, lately.”

Nothing makes Emma more tense than being told to relax, but her vague discomfort vanishes when, over the delicious fresh corn and maple ice cream, Ben tells her about the house.

NEITHER BEN NOR Emma is doing exactly what they’d wanted or planned to do with their lives, but they like what they’re doing, so fine. They’d both changed direction before they met, so they can’t blame each other for making them give up their dreams.

Ben had wanted to be an actor, but he’s become a theatrical producer. This year, his hard work has paid off. No Regrets, a hip-hop musical based on the tragic life of Édith Piaf, is a Broadway hit.

The show sells out every night and gets standing ovations when the chorus sings “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” as the two stars cross the stage, rapping about how Piaf was abandoned by her mother, went temporarily blind, prostituted herself to pay for her little daughter’s funeral, became famous, lost her great love in a plane crash, destroyed her liver and died young. As the cast takes its bows, a film of Piaf’s funeral—one hundred thousand Parisians!—ripples on the closing curtain. The audiences is in tears.

Emma and Ben were introduced by a mutual friend named Laura, who—only after Ben and Emma fell in love—realized she was in love with Ben and stopped speaking to them both. Laura’s bad behavior was just one more thing they had in common. At the beginning, they were always discovering things they both loved. Bach and Gillian Welch. The songs of Édith Piaf. When Ben came to Emma with the No Regrets hip-hop idea, she got it right away. She remembers the night he told her. High fives. Champagne. All-night sex.

One thing they’d always liked was watching old movies in bed on Ben’s laptop. Thigh to thigh, the laptop balanced, straddling them, it was hot. Their favorites were forties black-and-white detective films and anything with Robert Mitchum. They held each other during the tense parts. They laughed. It was fun.

On their second date, at Emma’s Greenpoint apartment, in bed, they’d watched the original Cape Fear, and afterward Ben told her, apropos of nothing, “There’s a saying: ‘You can’t make a living in the theater, but you can make a killing.’?” He’d said it like a promise.

Now he’s made the killing. He’s gone into business with his college friend, Avery, and Avery’s wife, Rebecca. Last year, Ben’s father died suddenly and left him more money than anyone ever dreamed a guy who’d owned a company selling restaurant equipment could have stashed away.

Emma had wanted to be a painter. Her work—big washy landscapes based on photos she took in Central Park—was old-fashioned. No gallery was showing anything like that. She didn’t believe in herself enough to keep going. It was childish to blame her parents, but she did. Her parents always said she wasn’t resilient or tough enough to handle rejection. They probably imagined they were protecting her from some inevitable disappointment. Her mother had been a psychologist, her father a corporate lawyer. Mom had suggested that Emma might want to think about becoming a teacher.

“I hope you marry a rich guy, sweetheart” was the last thing Mom said to her, on the morning she and Dad were killed by a semi that jumped the divider on the Long Island Expressway. They were on their way to see a doctor. Mom’s personality was changing. She’d gotten forgetful and uncharacteristically short-tempered.

An uncle helped Emma sell her parents’ house in Oyster Bay, and the money paid for art school and Emma’s move to New York City.

She’d dropped out of art school before she met Ben. When he started making money, she was glad, of course. But she didn’t like the feeling of having followed Mom’s last words of advice.

Ben had asked if she wanted to start painting again. He’d support her. She knew he meant it. He would help her find a studio and pay the rent. He’d never make her feel guilty or pressured. He would really look at her work, take her seriously, notice the details she was most proud of.

But by then she’d found something she liked: a job teaching art at a charter school in Queens.

The pay was okay, no benefits, but Ben has good health insurance. She adored her students. Teaching was fun. But she didn’t love the subway commute, or the paperwork, or fighting the administration for every crayon. Her getting laid off and getting pregnant was a chicken-and-egg situation. Both things happened at once.

Someday she’ll go back to teaching, but for now she likes the idea of staying home, taking care of the baby when it comes, reading books she’s always wanted to read, maybe painting a little.

At her going-away party, the other teachers hugged her and said she could try to come back as soon as she got tired of being cooped up in the house with the baby. The moms said that. The others said “We’re so happy for you.”

The baby is due in early January. A New Year’s present, said Dr. Snyder.

BEN HAS BEEN bored at work lately. No interesting projects have come in. He’s admitted to wasting a lot of time online, checking out home rentals and real estate in places where they will never move. As internet addictions go, it seems harmless, even sweet. He’s fantasizing about their future, about places their little family might live.

They’ve talked about moving to the country after the baby is born. Their Upper West Side apartment is spacious and sunny, but it’s a sixth-floor walk-up, and Emma can’t see herself lugging a stroller up and down the stairs. Moving will make life easier, and they can afford it.

They could find a larger, nicer place in the city, with an elevator. But the country will be a clean break. Something new. Light and air and sun. Vegetables from the garden.

Ben can work half the time from home, on the computer, at least until a new project gets going. For now he can get away with spending a few days a week in the city. They’ll keep their city place, and Emma will go into town for medical appointments.

She’ll stay at their apartment during the last weeks of her pregnancy.

It will be an experiment. They can always move back to Manhattan. But what if the city turns its back on them? It’s happened to people they know. No one and nothing, not even a city, likes being left.

Until now, the move to the country had always been a vague what if. But that’s all changed.

Ben has found the house. Online.

EMMA HASN’T SEEN him this excited and happy since the night she told him she was pregnant. They’d called out for Chinese food, which they ate in bed. They watched The Maltese Falcon and hugged each other and laughed until two in the morning.

“I’ve only seen the house listing online, but Emma, it’s beautiful. It’s not just a house. It’s a mansion. Eleven thousand square feet.”

Ben’s so fired up, it’s warming the air between them. She can’t help remembering that night he told her about the Piaf play. His eyes glittered then, too. It’s as if he’s looking into a crystal ball, seeing the future. Their future.

“It’s twenty miles from Luxor, one of those ghost towns in Sullivan County. The house has been empty for more than a year, since the death of the last of three ancient sibling hermits who let the place fall down around them.”

“Okay, that’s creepy,” Emma says.

“I know,” says Ben. “But listen. It gets better. Before the hermits, it was a rest home and dry-out clinic for actors and actresses, directors and producers, Broadway stars who’d had nervous breakdowns or were drinking themselves to death. Rehab, we’d say now. One of the photos in the listing… Emma, there’s a theater, a half-ruined abandoned theater, inside the house. The residents put on plays to amuse themselves and speed their recovery.”

“Is that in the listing?”

Ben hesitates, just a beat. “No… I figured it out. Why else would they have a private theater?”

“Our own theater…” Emma tries to imagine it. A scene from a Russian movie… red velvet curtains…

“So, I called the Realtor.” Ben pauses, maybe to see if Emma’s annoyed that he’s taken things this far without consulting her. Actually, it’s fine with her. A phone call doesn’t mean much, and she’s been preoccupied lately.

According to Ben, the Realtor admitted that the house has a kinda dark backstory? That’s why it’s such a fabulous deal, plus the fact that, well, frankly, to be honest… the place needs serious work?

Ben makes a silly face when he imitates the Realtor’s Valley Girl upspeak.

“She actually said, ‘Bring your architect!’ She sounded like a twelve-year-old. Everything was a question. Not the sharpest crayon in the box. But Emma… our own theater. How amazing is that?”

Ben orders coffee, Emma asks for peppermint tea, and as they wait for their drinks to arrive, Ben keeps imitating the squeaky-voiced Realtor. “Okay, I’ll be honest? I mean… you’ll find out sooner or later? My company could get, like, sued if you, like, have a problem?”

Ben is still an actor at heart. For a moment he is the girl Realtor. Emma blinks. He’s Ben again.

“Find what out?” The waiter brings Ben’s coffee and Emma’s tea. She stirs a half teaspoon of sugar into it, then, guiltily, a half teaspoon more.

Ben says, “When the doctor who ran the show-biz rehab clinic died—his wife passed away some years before—the house went to his nephews and niece, two brothers and a sister, one whose face had been burned off in a fire. Each one crazier than the next. The siblings lived there, and, one by one, died there. Nobody knows what went on in that house, but it was definitely dark.”

The Realtor—Lindsay something, Ben has forgotten her last name—said she was not going to speculate. “Like maybe there are bodies buried in the cellar?”

“Let me get this straight,” Emma says. “She was trying to sell this house?”

Ben laughs. How handsome he looks in the golden light.

“Maybe she was joking,” he says. “Or covering her ass.”

The house has been on the market awhile. It’s cheap, it’s a deal. But it’s a project. More than likely, a gut renovation. Lindsay had shown it “maybe twice.”

“In other words, never. Not once. No one will go near the house. No one but us.”

Emma thinks, It’s crazy, all right. But as Ben talks, she can feel her resistance fading away. It’s so important to him, and she does want to see the house. At least take a look. Maybe this could be great. A challenge, that’s for sure. Mostly she just likes the sound of Ben saying No one but us.

“I kind of love the idea of it,” she says.

Who wouldn’t? Most people wouldn’t. She and Ben would.

“A house with a theater,” she says. “It’s so… romantic. So nuts. It’d be so like us.”

“Exactly,” Ben says.

He orders a grappa that Emma covets. Well, maybe just a drop on her lips, for old times’ sake.

He goes on about the house and its history. The light in his eyes is the same light that Emma feels shining in hers, or is hers a reflection of his? It really is a terrible idea. But it might be a dare they have to take. They’d be daring themselves and each other. And the whole logical, sensible world.

Ben takes out his phone, scrolls till he finds the listing, and hands it to Emma.

Emma swipes through the photos. “It looks like a set for a low-budget production of The Phantom of the Opera.”

“Crazy,” said Ben. “Am I right?”

Everything that might keep a sane person from considering the project is precisely what attracts them. The crazy idea makes them happy, grateful they’ve found each other. It’s partly why Ben loves her, and Emma wants him to love her. She needs him to love her and the baby. She’s read about men who feel excluded from the close bond between a mother and child. She doesn’t want that to happen to them. She feels certain—fairly certain—that it won’t.

The lights dim, sparklers blaze, the waiters sing. Emma’s forgotten this part. The surprise cake. But it was inevitable. Embarrassing, but fine.

Ben joins in. He can actually sing. Happy birthday, dear Emma. He grins at her, his eyes bright with love. Emma feels it all through her body. No one tells you that pregnancy will shoot you up with weird aphrodisiac hormones.

“I love you,” says Emma. “Let’s check out the house. How soon can we go see it?”