Bitter House

Chapter 20

We stare down into the dark hole in the ground. The air is cool and musty, more earthy than the basement. I’m brought back to digging up the garden grave, the way the mud seemed to permeate my every sense. I can feel it between my teeth as if I’m the one buried.

“Should we go down there?” I ask.

“No,” Cole says, too quickly. “No. We have no idea what’s down there. It’s not the basement. There could be snakes or rats, and that”s the best-case scenario.”

I swallow. “What’s the worst?”

His dark eyes meet mine slowly, almost like he doesn’t want to look at me. “That whoever is writing these letters is counting on us going down there. Whether that’s because they’re down there waiting on us or they know what is, I’m not sure. But we can’t go down there, Bridget.” He uses his phone’s flashlight to scan the ground below us. A small metal ladder leads the few feet to the damp ground. There are cobwebs in every direction, gnats flying toward the light. He sticks his head into the tunnel, shining the light this way and that. “Besides that, the tunnels could collapse. We have no idea how old this is or where it leads.”

“Maybe it’s not a tunnel at all. We can’t see far into it. What if it’s, like, a safe room or a storm cellar?” I suggest as the idea occurs to me. “In a house like this, they probably had the money to install something like that.”

“A storm cellar, maybe, but still, they had the basement. It was sort of unnecessary. And if it’s a safe room, I’d think there would be more precautions.” He stands, leaning past me to close the door. “Either way, it’s not safe.”

“But the letter writer was right again.”

He nods, and neither of us have to say anything for him to know I’m thinking about my parents now. I swallow, drying my eyes and smearing mud across my cheeks.

“We just have two more letters,” I point out, looking down. “Once we have all the information, we’ll tell the police everything.”

“Agreed.” He runs his foot across the door. “We should probably put the containers back over this. Just in case.”

The insinuation is chilling: just in case someone from inside the tunnels were to try to get into our house. In case they climbed the ladder and pushed open the door. In case they walked into our house. Came for us. Killed us.

Suddenly I’m a child, picturing werewolves and slime monsters crawling up from the tunnel.

We push the containers back into place, weighing down the door with several hundred pounds of stuff, and make our way back upstairs, leaving the light on this time.

I can’t get to the shower fast enough.

* * *

That evening, I’m completely and utterly exhausted, and I use every chance I get to peer out the back windows to look toward the garden as if I expect to see the skeleton hand popping up from the dirt.

As I pull Jane’s chicken enchiladas from the oven, the warm, delicious scent fills my nose, and I try to focus only on that. Cole is back at the dinner table, finishing up what he was working on this morning, when I carry our plates over to him and place them down.

He looks surprised when I set his meal in front of him.

“You made dinner?”

“Well, Jane made dinner. I heated it up.” I sink into my chair across from him, and he closes his laptop before picking up his fork.

“Thank you.”

I draw in one corner of my mouth. “I figured it’s the least I can do after I dragged you on all of my adventures today.”

His smile is soft and sort of lost, his eyes dancing between mine. “I never mind going on adventures with you.”

“Even when they leave your hands looking like that?” I point at his hands with my fork. The palms of both our hands are red and raw from digging.

He stares down at them but nods. “Even when my hands look like this.”

“Such a gentleman,” I tease, taking my first bite of casserole. It’s too hot, so I strategically take deep breaths until I can swallow, the meal scalding my throat and chest as it goes down.

“I don’t know about that,” he says with a laugh. “Just a guy who always wanted his life to be a little more exciting.”

I wave a hand around the room. “How do you get more exciting than this?”

His laugh goes from genuine to serious as it falls away. “How are you holding up, by the way? I know it’s sort of weird with everything we’ve learned.”

I set my fork down, taking a deep breath. “I still don’t know what to believe, you know? On the one hand, everything the letter writer has told us is true, except what we can’t prove, but on the other…I just don’t want to believe it. I want to think I knew Vera. That I wasn’t wrong to trust her. Even if I didn’t always like her, I don’t want to think she was capable of harming anyone—not physically anyway, but the proof is in the backyard. Maybe she fought with my mom over money. Clearly that’s an issue with this family. Maybe it was an accident. Maybe things got out of hand, and?—”

“Look,” Cole says, his voice calm, “as far as we know, Vera had nothing to do with the body in the backyard. It could’ve been there for years before she was here. I don’t know how this person knows about it, but it doesn’t prove anything. And as far as thinking she might’ve hurt your parents, I just…I don’t know, B. It doesn’t make sense to me, you know? I know people do awful things to their family—to their kids—every day, but your mom was an adult, not a toddler who’d annoyed her. Vera wasn’t a monster. Your parents died in a car accident. She would’ve had to plan that. Hire someone. It’s not like she accidentally pushed her down the stairs in a moment of passion, you know?”

I swallow. He’s right, but I don’t know if that makes me feel any better.

“The police ruled it an accident, didn’t they? Your parents?”

We’ve never really talked about them. Or about anything else, for that matter. “Yeah.”

“Then let that be the truth you believe until we have proof otherwise. Until then, it’s just a rumor.”

When we’ve both finished eating, Cole cleans up the meal while I wash our dishes. It’s funny how quiet the house feels now without Vera. Even before, I’ve only known this house with a few people in it—never a house full of people like the Bitters used to have, but her absence is felt in every moment.

I feel Cole move beside me, his arm brushing mine. A yawn escapes my lips as he brushes a piece of hair behind my ear, his thumb grazing over my cheek. “Soap.” He smiles, pulling his thumb back to reveal a bit of suds.

“Oh.” I rub my cheek again to be sure it’s clean. “Thanks again for helping clean up. Me and the meal, apparently.”

He folds his arms across his chest, leaning back against the counter. “We make a pretty good team, you know? I don’t think it’ll be so bad just sharing this place.”

“Yeah, I’ve actually been thinking, and I don’t know if I’ll want to stay here after everything we’ve learned,” I admit.

He nods, chewing his bottom lip. “I can’t say that I blame you, but you should take some time to think about it. Don’t make any rash decisions, okay?”

“What’s there to think about?”

He studies the floor. “I don’t know. I guess I just think…I mean, this house is yours as much as it’s mine. As much as it was hers. And there are still plenty of good memories that have been made and will be made here, you know?”

“Good memories, hmm?”

“Yeah.”

“For example?”

“Well…what about that time we danced in the kitchen?”

“Danced?” The word feels completely foreign and out of place. I have no idea what he’s talking about.

He takes hold of my arms without warning, pulling me to him playfully, and begins spinning us around, dipping me backward. I laugh and roll my eyes. “This time, remember?” he teases.

“Ah, yeah, now it’s ringing some bells.” I wrap my arms around his neck just as he looks down at me, and suddenly, the air in the room shifts. We’re nose to nose, our lips nearly touching. His eyes dance between mine with words unspoken, and when he opens his mouth, I feel his breath on my skin. If either of us tilts our chins forward even just a little bit, I’d finally know what it feels like to kiss him.

Before I can seriously contemplate making the move, he chuckles, dropping his hands down away from my waist, but he doesn’t step back. “Sorry about that.”

“About what?” I ask, my voice sounding bolder than I feel.

“Um.” He swallows. We’re so close in the kitchen that I swear I can feel his heartbeat, our chests touching. With each inhale, he presses against me. He brushes hair back from his eyes, opening his mouth. His dark eyes heat with something dangerous. “I just…” He blinks and looks away. “My point is…don’t let her take anything else from you.”

I swallow, unsure if he’s talking about the house or…something—someone—else. My stomach flips at the thought. When did I stop hating him? When did he start feeling less like an enemy and more like a friend? What if he’s just tricking me so he can keep the house?

With that worry plaguing me, I can no longer focus on how good he smells or how much I like the feel of his hands on my skin. Chills creep down my spine, and I step back, clearing my throat.

The smile dies on his lips.

“Where’d you go?” he asks. “Did I do something or?—”

“I should get to bed,” I say, cutting him off. I don’t know what’s coming over me or why I’m suddenly incapable of controlling my thoughts around this man.

I can’t trust anyone but myself, I know this. Before I can change my mind, I dart from the room.