Play Nice

The next morning, James says that he’s made an appointment for everyone with a family therapist. Daphne and Leda are coming and staying for the weekend. He’s the steady, reliable family captain again. She realizes he might have acted out of love, or maybe he’s a selfish jerk who lacked compassion for Alex and erased her from his daughters’ lives. It could be both. Alex could have been motivated by love, too, though, Clio thinks. It’s the “action” that really matters, or more to the point, the “perception of the action” (272). She realizes that James wants her to need him.

Roy calls. Clio goes outside, and they talk about the demon; Roy warns her not to engage with it. He says the demon didn’t want Alex to sell the house, and she feared that it would follow her or Clio. She thought she could keep it happy in the house, and it would become “dormant.” He admits that she’d been drinking a lot again before her death, and they were taking some time apart. He also admits that Alex “embellished” the exorcism in order to get a publisher for the book, but the demon is real. Roy assures her that the demon’s attachment to her is very strong, and she realizes she likes being its favorite. Clio invites Roy to the house.

It rains for the next several days, and Clio mostly sleeps. When Daphne arrives on Friday, she’s still mad at Clio. Clio knows her behavior is “making everything worse” (279), but the chaos feels familiar, even comforting. Later, they all go to the counselor’s office, and Roy texts to let Clio know that he’s at the house. She says she’ll be there in a few hours.

Maya, the counselor, asks each person to explain why they’re there. James says that Alex’s passing has been difficult for Clio, and Maya asks Clio to respond. Clio doesn’t want to speak yet, but she decides to say something volatile. She tells Maya she’s there because her father wants to have her committed for grieving Alex, and she admits that she found James’s Google searches. Everyone gets upset, and Clio “turn[s] on [her] tears” (283). Her sisters accuse her of being manipulative, and Clio tells Maya that this is how it goes: Whenever she shows emotion, they start accusing her. When Leda claims she and Daphne suffered more, Maya says it isn’t productive to compare suffering. Leda is furious, and Daphne starts to cry.

At home, James confronts Clio about going onto his computer. Clio claims they are all trying to control her, and she accuses James of gaslighting Alex while he cheated on her with Amy. He admits that he cheated on Alex, but insists that she was a terrible wife and mother, and she got what she deserved. James also says that Clio reminds him so much of Alex, and then he throws his chair against the wall. Clio calls a ride to take her to the house.

When Clio arrives, she sees Roy’s car, but there’s no sign of Roy. Clio calls his phone, and it rings somewhere in the house. She follows it to her old bedroom, but the room is empty. She looks all over, and though she doesn’t find Roy, she finds the vodka in the freezer. Eventually, Clio realizes that the ladder isn’t where she left it, and she climbs up to the attic panel. She cannot open it because there is something heavy on top.

She hears knocking and loses her balance, breaking her nose on one of the rungs. Daphne and Leda are at the door. They tell her she’s livestreaming on Instagram, clearly drunk, and people have been calling them to ask if she’s okay. When Clio tells them about the pressure she feels to always be fun and pretty and fine, and how she’s not those things right now, Daphne and Leda say that they are there for her. Still, Leda obviously blames Clio for “acting out” and “do[ing] the Mom thing” by blaming others for her problems (295).

Clio tells them that Roy is in the house somewhere, and they hear doors slamming all over. Daphne and Leda think it’s Roy, but Clio assures them it isn’t. They enter Daphne and Leda’s room to find the beds standing on end, framing the word “Home,” carved deep into the drywall. Leda blames Roy. When the kitchen cabinets start opening and slamming shut on their own, Leda searches for a mechanism to explain the trick, but there isn’t one. Clio asks if they believe her now.

When Daphne grabs Leda, Leda smacks her, and they begin to fight. Suddenly, laughter shakes the house, and Clio realizes that the demon prefers her because she pays attention to it. It is bored, and now that Leda and Daphne are entertaining it, it’s happy. Clio tries to break up the fight, but she catches an elbow to the head and passes out.

In her book, Alexandra writes about how, even after she left the house at 6 Edgewood, she couldn’t escape the demon. It showed up in her nightmares and muted the world around her.

Now, Clio regains consciousness. Daphne is sitting on the floor, reading aloud from Alex’s book. Leda tries to shut Daphne up, but Daphne says Leda admitted to reading it long ago. Leda says she felt pressure, as the oldest, to know what information was made public. Daphne talks about the pressure she feels to “navigate [everyone’s] bullshit” without getting to have her own (302). Leda says she never gets any attention, that it’s “always about Clio” (302), and Clio reminds them that she didn’t ask them to come. Daphne suggests they have it out, say all the things.

Clio says they’re giving the demon what it wants. Daphne talks about hating Clio and Leda, hating their mother, hating the lies, hating her family, as well as her dependence on them. Leda says that Daphne and Clio envy her because they’re too dysfunctional to have the stable relationship and life she has. She says she knew about the demon, that sometimes it would come to her room when it couldn’t wake Clio. She ignored it, and it would eventually leave, but then she missed its attention. She also tells her sisters that she lied about Clio’s burn to get them out of the house, because Alex would get drunk and verbally abuse her.

Leda storms off, and Daphne and Clio find her locked in Clio’s room, giggling. Leda says that the demon is inside the room and says they can come in.

The room is freezing, and Leda points to the closet. They can hear a man’s voice in the attic, but Leda says not to go up. Something moves the panel, and Roy lands at Clio’s feet. His eyes are gouged out, his face coated in gore, but he is alive.

Leda and Daphne drag him outside, and Clio climbs up. She finds old pictures, empty liquor bottles, and two more copies of Alex’s book. She sees Alex’s handwritten dedication to Daphne in one, but Clio can’t reach the other. Suddenly, the demon peels itself away from the house, and she sees its long snake tongue. It drags her by the hair, and she fights. Clio realizes that Alex “played nice” to survive, so she unclasps her necklace with the snake charm and offers it to the demon. She allows herself to cry—for her mother, her sisters, herself—and the demon drinks her tears, laughing, and retreats into the darkness. Clio climbs down the ladder, unsure if the demon will ever let her go.

Outside, two police cars and an ambulance arrive. Austin comes over, and Clio apologizes. She asks him if he’d believe her if she said the demon was real, and he says he would. After they go to the police station, the sisters get McDonald's, and Clio reflects on their scars: The evidence of their pain. Daphne suggests that this could be a new beginning for all of them.

Clio watches the sunrise from Daphne’s balcony. Clio says she understands now that her heart is something soft, that there’s no point in pretending otherwise. Clio understands that the demon exploited and weaponized Alex’s vulnerability, her substance dependency, just as it exploited Clio’s chaos. Her father taught her that this exploitation is not unique. Her mother taught her not to fight against it, so Clio accepts its existence. The way to win, she thinks, is not to play.

Clio launches a new line of clothing, but she notes that people approach her with caution now. There are whispers and stares because of the “brief public exposure of [her] vulnerability” (319).

Clio introduces Austin and Veronica, and Austin says Clio’s family just arrived. It’s been a year since Clio and James exchanged apologies, but they see each other differently now. She doesn’t need him anymore, so he has no power over her.

A buyer has made an offer on the house, and Daphne says the sale is moving forward. Clio feels strange about passing the house and its demon on to someone else, but Daphne reminds her that it isn’t her responsibility.