Chapter 1 #2
“Fine.” I wiped my hands on my dress with a sudden flood of urgency. I just needed to get this over with—to prove there was nothing to be scared about. An old house did not mean it was haunted. Aunt Cadence said so.
An old house, with a lot of rooms, with a lot of empty space, just like I’d always wanted. Still, the irony of Aunt Cadence passing in order for me to get my wish, hurt. And now the one woman that could have proved the house was normal was gone.
Before I lost any courage, I pivoted in the middle of the foyer and banked into the living room, off to the right.
“Don’t leave me here!”
I rolled my eyes and muttered to myself. Of course he’d be too scared to wait alone. But, to my surprise, he didn’t follow.
The living area was just as Aunt Cadence left it—hand-me-down furniture, thrifted art on the walls, and two large, ornate rugs that were nothing more than swirls of beiges and burgundies to hide the stains from when Donald The Chihuahua had potty-training incidents as a puppy.
I wove around the pleather couches that faced the hallway, which opened to the mudroom.
Both the mudroom and the garage were additions to the original house.
I stepped over the threshold—and the temperature dropped immediately.
The lights were off, casting the stick-on linoleum floor in gray shadow. The washer and dryer sat patched with rust, both stale from unuse these past three months. Four laundry baskets, all plastic, one broken, were stacked by a wayward, also plastic, shoe rack.
Nothing looked out of place. Then again, I hadn’t had enough time to go through anything. And the last time I’d graced Harthwait I might have been seventeen? Eighteen?
Years ago.
I collected my breath and opened the door to the garage. The smell of musk and warm dirt swamped my nostrils.
“Good Lord,” I whispered. My face scrunched. “When was the last time you opened this door, Denny?”
As if the walls could hear me. Relay the question back to her.
The garage sat empty, save for the VW Beetle covered in a blanket of dust. Its once bright, cheery yellow now resembled a sun-bleached sticky note.
I waited. Listened, or tried, around the subtle pounding of my heart.
It could have been a mouse. Or a nail had wiggled loose from the tool board on the wall and something had dropped from it? Had a bird found its way through the washer vent somehow and ended up in the garage? Maybe one of the windows in the garage door had broken?
I combed through soil bags, a line of preservatives in unopened boxes, and a cluster of gardening tools. I circled the Beetle.
The door to outside hung ajar. Not a lot—but enough.
I paused. Was that the noise?
Three slumped feed and fertilizer bags were piled a few feet behind the door against the wall, beside a tin trashcan and a rake hanger. If the door had been opened hard enough, it would have hit the feed bags—not the wall, so that couldn’t have been what we’d heard.
Still, I shut the door. Locked it, as if that would prevent anything that might have come in from reentering. There were no animal prints in the thick layer of dust and dirt. No smudges. No flat tires, either. I moved on, skimmed a stack of paint cans on a work bench in front of the car.
The Beetle wasn’t the only thing layered in dust—there was no telling how long it had been since Aunt Cadence had been in the garage.
She only bought the gardening things because of me.
The arthritis had eaten her hands so much over the last ten years, and I’d been traveling for work so much, things just …
fell away. I could practically feel the grime sifting over my tongue with each inhale—
“Lanny,” Sayer snapped, throwing open the door to the garage.
I flinched. My hands flew up to cover my throat out of reflex—and slammed into the paint shelf and the trunk of the Beetle at the exact same moment Sayer flipped the light on with his elbow.
“Are you asking for an insurance claim? Walking around in the dark?” His eyes skated the walls, the opened bags of bird seed. Plastic pots piled in corners and rows. “Did you find anything?”
I hissed, rubbing my knuckles. “Someone has to conserve the electric bill.”
Especially when I was only working with life insurance money. Aunt Cadence had a decent policy, but it wasn’t a lot, and I needed as much of it as possible for renovations. Plus, I’d postponed jobs to get Harthwait ready.
Sayer took a tentative first step into the garage. “It’s cold in here.”
“It’s a garage.”
“It’s June—everything sweats this time of year. I bet the AC unit swims in perspiration.”
My eyebrows arched. “Is that fear I smell on you, Sayer? You’re supposed to be the fearless best friend.”
Sayer’s nose crinkled. He picked up a box of mason jars. They clinked together. “Fearless was not in the job description when I signed up to—”
A bang ripped the air behind me.
I jumped. Sayer screamed as I clambered away from the Beetle. More scrambling—but not from Sayer or me. A nail on metal sound—coming from the other side of the car.
Sayer slipped on the step. He toppled forward with a shriek—I grasped for anything, a shirt, an arm, a belt loop, and ended up with a fistful of Sayer’s shirt hem. His knee hit a shelf, which sent him into a sprawl, and I with him.
We crashed with the box of mason jars in a heap. Sayer took the brunt of the fall and I landed on my side. Glass shattered. Four or five jars escaped, rolling in different directions, all over the glittering shards on the floor.
The banging continued. Rattling. Furious, uncontrollable rattling.
“You’re on my hand,” I grunted, struggling to sit upright. At least my head hadn’t hit the floor.
“Well, your hand is in my kidney.” Sayer pushed at my back.
I rolled away like a wet tangle of laundry.
He straightened his glasses then planted both hands on the garage floor. Dust coated his shirt. “That trashcan is moving—”
I glanced back just in time to see the feed bags beside the door wiggle. They bumped against the tin trashcan—making the same knocking sound from earlier. Something was under the feed bags this whole time and—
A raccoon wriggled from behind one of the bags. It plopped onto the garage floor, all rounded body and tiny, clawed feet. And froze.
There was a raccoon in the house.
“Let it out!” I reared upright with panic.
They could carry diseases, right? When was the last time I’d seen a raccoon in broad daylight?
The thought sent adrenaline rocketing through my body.
Rabies. Rabies made animals do things out of character—like crawl out in broad daylight and hide in someone’s garage, maybe?
“You let it out!” Sayer tried to retreat. He slipped on the slick floor, glass tinkling.
“You’re closer!” I tried to get up. Heat stung my shin and my fingernails, but I didn’t dare look down. Blood made me queasy, especially fresh blood.
Sayer glanced from the door, closest to the raccoon, to the garage door opener, nearest to us. With a grumble and flushed cheeks, he hurried to the button and smacked it with his palm.
The overhead garage light popped on.
The door jerked two inches up—and stopped.
“It’s stuck,” Sayer blurted. At the noise, the raccoon scurried under the Beetle in an attempt to find cover.
A distant voice called, “Is everything okay?”
Evanescence-Evangelina was about to find me with a brand across my forehead that read: Dunce. I am, in fact, not a responsible adult. Please do not help me sell this house.
“Obviously not,” I mumbled. I limped over and squatted next to Sayer, who was now attempting to push the door up by hand. We pulled at the same time—enough for the hinges to click-click-snap and the door to release.
Sunlight swept into the garage and took the chilled air with it.
The sound of heels echoed closer and closer, just as the raccoon scurried out from under the car and into the driveway.
It waddled through the landscaping, the tired and wilted peonies, before whispering its way across the lawn and toward the trees.
Sweat trickled down my back. I looked at Sayer, eyebrows raised. “See. I told you it wasn’t a ghost.”
Evangeline-Evanescence-Elevana found us with labored breaths not seconds later.
“Is everyone—what is going on?” she hissed.
I settled my hands on my hips. A twinge of pain shot up my lower back, reminiscent of a needle inserting itself into my pelvis. Just a subtle reminder that I wasn’t as young as I once was.
Sayer ran a hand down his hip. “I think I pulled something.” Then he paused. Looked over his shoulder. “I ripped my pants.”
“What is that on the floor?” she snarled.
I pushed hair from my face and turned to the woman.
Not an ounce of concern filled her eyes; only chipped irritation.
When she met my gaze, a strange burn started at the back of my throat.
The moment felt almost expectant—like I was the adult that should have things under control. The responsible party.
Because I was.
I shouldn’t have been, but I was.
My mother hadn’t come to her own sister’s funeral. My father wasn’t here to help me. I had no siblings by blood on my mother’s side. No more aunts. No uncles. No grandparents.
Just me and my friend, who I’d almost told not to come, that things weren’t that serious. That I could handle the funeral and the food and the wake, just like any adult should.
And now here I stood, in a dirty garage and with a realtor I didn’t know, not really, in a pile of broken glass.
“Raccoon,” Sayer breathed. “But don’t worry. It’s gone.”
“Well. That is certainly … something.” She said it with a wrinkled nose and pinched cheeks. Eleanora—that was her name.
I brushed myself off, my neck slowly heating.
“So.” I swallowed. “How do you like the house so far?”
Sayer had the decency to shift in place.
Her upper lip, which no longer had a cupid’s bow from an excess amount of filler, puckered. “I was ready to discuss, ah, things with you. But if you’re busy, then I can schedule something another day.”
My body went rigid. Calm. Serene thoughts.
Deep breaths. I licked my chapped lips, pushed down the condescending hint in her words.
I may have given Sayer a hard time about his mother recommending Eleanora, but I’d glanced at her company’s website, albeit however briefly.
She’d taken many historic homes to large buyers—buyers with the capital and time to put into places like this—selling for well above list price.
I needed this woman far more than she needed me.
“Yes, of course we can discuss things,” I said. Casual. Simple. As if there weren’t broken jars on the floor and pinpricks behind my eyes.
“Good,” Eleanora said. She motioned toward me. “It will only take a few moments. I’ll, wait for you in the formal dining room.” Her mouth quirked.
She turned and strode through the mudroom with a high chin. As if she had a better grasp upon the house than I did.
As if she knew I was scrambling. Out of place and utterly alone.