Playing at Ghosts

It was the first time it hadn’t felt like Christmas. Aside from the powder of snow that covered the coast in sugary excellence, the season was empty of its usual warm feelings, reminding Margot of a gift box with nothing inside. That afternoon, she found herself alone, enjoying the rare quiet of her office building. Most people had already gone home for the day, their Christmas party christening the fact that no work would be done until after a week of vacation. Still, Margot stayed behind — “our steady ship captain,” her boss had called her. She gave a small, wry smile at the memory. Not totally sure what ship I’m supposed to be steering, she thought, but sure. Someone needs to turn off the lights.

With a satisfying click, she shut her laptop and made her way to the lunchroom to collect her half-eaten dish of cookies. The fluorescent lights faintly buzzed, casting a pale glow over the linoleum floors and the sagging garland someone had taped over the fridge. Margot crossed the room and lifted the foil from the tray of cookies — molasses ginger. Only a few remained, slightly crumbled and nestled in pockets of sugar and spice. There had been compliments, more like polite acknowledgements, from people passing her office door after she dropped off the treats that morning. She hadn’t expected more than that. Kinship among colleagues was not the norm of her workplace, but that had never bothered her. The cookies had been eaten, and that was simply enough. Each day, she came to work expecting emails, brief conversations with prospective students, and the usual rhythm of a loud but organized place. She found calm in the machine of higher education. Unlike some workaholics, her job wasn’t an obsession or crutch, and she didn’t need it to feel whole. She treated it more like a well-loved book she could pick up and put down, always able to fall back into the story.

Margot glanced at the cookies now before taking one and breaking it in half. Sometimes the honest comfort of something warm and familiar was just too much to pass up. With one bite, it brought to life the ghosts of Christmases past; her own grubby little hand joined by three others, all reaching for a hot pan that smelled like heaven. Her grandmother Evelyn, silver and willowy, triumphantly beaming as she pulled the tray from the oven. She was always baking something, sometimes strange experiments that collapsed into sticky disasters, but in this memory it was the molasses cookies. The ones Margot had come to perfect. She remembered when this had felt like a secret they shared, a silent way to celebrate this small and happy thing in their collective memory. Margot finished wiping the dish with a paper towel before tucking it away in her bag. With the flights flicked off, the office heaved one final sigh before settling in for hibernation.

Outside, a mix of wind and snowflakes bit at her cheeks. She pulled her coat tighter around herself and hitched the heavy tote bag higher against her hip. Though the academic break was well underway, campus still buzzed with life. Lights twinkled in dorm windows, and a few students, bundled in hats and scarves, shuffled across the quad, their laughter too loud for the brittle air. By the time Margot reached the parking lot, it was nearly empty. Her boots crunched along the salted sidewalks until she found her car, or what was left of it. The battered Volkswagen Jetta now sat half-buried in a bank of grey snow, the victim of a merciless plow earlier in the day. A familiar, hollow kind of frustration threatened to bubble up in Margot, but like the tide, it went just as quick. She took a deep breath and felt the air coat her lungs like cool water had been poured into her chest. Her fingers twitched. For a moment, she could picture herself hurling her bag into the snow and kicking the car tires over and over again. She instead let the moment pass, not with ease but with great effort, and yanked the car door open.

The hinges groaned in protest. She dropped her bag in the passenger seat and slid behind the wheel to try and coax the engine to life, as if patience alone might make the car into something sturdier, something built for this kind of weather. When it finally rumbled awake, she shifted into drive. The wheels spun uselessly, then caught with a jolt so sharp she winced. 

“Sorry,” she muttered aloud to the car, “You were never meant for winters like this.” 

As she steered toward the lot’s exit with surgical precision, Margot allowed herself the brief, irrational hope that the drive home would go smoothly for once. It did not. All New Englanders know that snow does not soften their pockmarked roads. It instead transforms them into a hellish landscape of ice, sand, and jarring bumps that will make you think you have a flat tire every five minutes. At last, she turned onto the quiet street of her grandmother’s house and quietly thanked god as she turned into the driveway. The porch light was still on, as it always was, thanks to the timer Evelyn installed decades ago. Margot couldn’t figure out how to change it, and in moments like these she was glad she had barely changed anything in the place. Even after a year of coming home to it and unlocking the same door day after day, it was still Evelyn’s house. Not something to be owned but to live in.

The old Victorian sat in a comfortable silence. As Margot went around, flicking on lights and putting her work things away, her movements fell into the automation of daily routine. Keys were dropped in the bowl by the door. The cookie dish was rinsed and left to dry by the sink. Her laptop charger was coiled neatly on the desk in what used to be the former parlor. She ended this circuit by yanking her boots off with a great tug and then padding over to the piano. Seating herself on the worn bench, she propped up a music sheet for her next lesson. Teaching piano had started as a practical decision, a way to help cover the upkeep of a house far too large for one person, but over time it morphed into something else entirely. The modest income remained, but now she stayed for the subtle conversation between her and the music. The ivory keys gleamed in the low light, as if waiting for her to speak. So she did. Her fingers found the opening notes of Clair de Lune, and slowly, the house seemed to lean in and listen. The melody drifted like a drawled dialogue, one that rose and dipped, briefly paused, wandered off in tangents, and circled back to its theme with quiet persistence. As the music filled the room, the edges of Margot’s day began to blur. The errands, the snow, the boxed-in Jetta - it all softened beneath the weightless discipline of the notes beneath her fingers.

“Still playing the piano like you’re in a French perfume commercial?”

Margot startled slightly, her hands slipping to off-key chords. “Jesus, Cleo. Can’t you knock like a normal person for once?” 

Her sister stood in the doorway, snow clinging to her coat and bits of curly hair that peaked out beneath her thick red scarf. Cleo was the oldest of the four Elliot sisters, though you might never have guessed from her height. She was petite, but nothing about her read as delicate. More like sharp-edged and self-propelling, someone who didn’t just move through the world but cut a path through it, dragging the rest of them along. Now 32 and freshly promoted to Marketing Director at a high-end New York agency, Cleo looked every bit the confident city woman. Well, maybe excluding her clunky Doc Martens, which were currently leaving puddles of melted snow on the hardwood floor.

“I could knock,” she said as her defiant grin spread across her face, “but then I would miss the pleasure of catching you mid-performance.”

“It’s not a performance,” muttered Margot, “And, by the way, this is a shoes-off household.” 

Cleo rolled her eyes but ultimately relented as she unlaced her heavy-duty shoes. Margot was already moving, peeling away her sister’s jacket and scarf with practiced ease and hanging them neatly over the bannister, just as their grandmother used to do. She watched Cleo disappear down the hall to drop her bags in the guestroom and then went to pull two mugs and two wine glasses from the kitchen cabinet. What started as an inside joke between the sisters had become somewhat of a ritual. On nights like this, Cleo and Margot would make peppermint tea to help them wind down before bed. Mugs were always poured and then left to go cold on the counter, replaced in their wake by a bottle of red wine. They didn’t even bother to make tea anymore. The glasses clinked slightly as Margot set them out now, already knowing how the evening would unfold. When Cleo returned, she’d changed into her UVM sweatshirt and an old pair of pajama pants. It was the strict uniform of returning to your childhood home, somewhere you can regress into your teenage self without judgement. She glanced about the room now, taking it in before flopping on the cushy armchair across from Margot.

“So,” Cleo began, sinking deeper in the cushions, “what’s it like living in a haunted house?”

“Oh, come on.” Margot said, handing over a full wine glass. “It’s actually really nice. You know, the rattling pipes at night and apparitions in the pantry add a certain charm. And I never have to deal with annoying neighbors, they’re all too scared.” 

Cleo snorted and swirled her glass. “I bet you play those creepy little nocturnes to complete the ambiance.” 

“It was Clar de Lune,” Margot chided, rolling her eyes. “And it’s not creepy, it’s romantic.”

“Sure,” Cleo said, taking a long sip, “Romantic if you’re a vampire.”

Margot laughed, but then fell quiet for a moment, watching the heavy fall of snow accumulate outside the window.  “It does get quiet in here,” she said after a pause, her voice growing soft. “Sometimes it feels like the house is waiting for something to happen.” 

Cleo glanced at her over the rim of her glass. “Maybe it’s not the house.” She shrugged, casual but not unkind. “I know you like your job and being on a college campus, and the piano lessons are great. But sometimes I worry that you’re cooping yourself up in here. You could throw some dinner parties. Or apply for a better job. Or, I don’t know - adopt like seven dogs. Just do something.”  

This was always the thing with Cleo. Her drive was so bright and sharp, it could dazzle and cut in the same breath, slicing clean through gentle sentiments without meaning to. It wasn’t that she didn’t care; she did, almost too much. But ambition was her native language. Anything quieter, smaller, was foreign to her. The sisters all regaled in the time Sophie, the second eldest of the family, told Cleo she was taking time off to stay home with her newborn. 

“Why?” Cleo asked, genuinely baffled. That same confusion flickered now. 

Margot smiled, recognizing this look in her sister. “I’d settle for a working radiator.” 

They both laughed, wrapped in the comfort of being with someone who understood even when you fumbled your words. God, that feeling was so good, and so rare. The sisters had always been able to read between the margins of their conversations, the unspoken meanings that stitched their words together. Nothing ever escaped them, even after months of being apart. Maybe this was just a part of being born knowing your siblings, sharing the first same home on this Earth, you instinctively understand them even when you don’t want to. Margot would always know her sisters - always ache for them, always miss them. So tonight, she and Cleo would let this conversation drift away for another evening when they weren’t two glasses of wine deep, and when the pleasure of being known since birth could still hold its shape.

“I’m glad you kept the place,” Cleo said finally, stretching her legs until one socked foot nudged Margot’s ankle.

“Me too,” Margot replied,  “Even if it is haunted.”