Chapter 5 #2
I’d spent the better part of my day base-painting the kitchen, which had been a bloody russet red and had taken three coats of white to correct.
I waited for the paint to dry while sorting through knickknacks, then starting on the first layer of sage-green paint.
The cabinets would be next. I’d take the doors off, sand, and stain them to a bright driftwood brown before reattaching the doors and touching up the trim. Then I’d get the handles screwed on.
I peeled the shipping lid back, stared at the handles inside, and frowned.
They weren’t what I ordered.
I pulled out a barstool, collapsing into it and covering my face with my hands. “I should have just gotten the ones from Home Depot,” I groaned. I suppose this was my punishment for trying to save a few dollars.
The front door burst open.
I jumped.
Emma strode in, white tank and shorts plastered to her body. Sweat dewed her collarbone. Her knees were patched with porcelain, as were her hands and areas around her mouth, but it only emphasized the honey in her hair and the deepness in her eyes.
“I come bearing gifts.” She dropped two reusable shopping bags on the counter, both covered in palm trees and toucans.
“I’m ready to strip some wallpaper, boss.
” She withdrew a bottle of fabric softener and a handle of vinegar.
When mixed with portions of hot water, it usually stripped wallpaper like a champ.
I sighed. “Hopefully.”
Her nose wrinkled. “What’s wrong with you?”
I shrugged. Mom. The primer taking so long to dry. The cabinet handles. Everything.
When she continued to stare at me, I said, “That wallpaper’s been up so long, I don’t know if it’ll come off in one go.”
Emma’s hands dropped, but her shoulders tightened. “I got it. Don’t worry.”
A muffled, “No!” came from upstairs. Then a heavy thud, like a box filled with donation clothes, dropping to the floor. “Lanny!”
I stifled a groan. My head dropped back, eyes closed. “What?”
“I think I chipped the sink.” A pause. “Or not.”
I sighed, then said, loud enough for Sayer to hear me over his music, “I’m replacing it anyway.”
More banging. Emma slipped out of the pantry with an old deli meat container and a pack of toothpicks. She peeled the plastic lid off, set it aside, and got to work opening the vinegar bottle.
With all these fumes, we’d be as high as a kite before sundown.
Sayer’s footsteps grew louder. I pictured him leaning over the banister, glasses askew. “I’ll go ahead and tear up this transition strip. I splintered it when I tripped and—”
“That’s fine.”
He shuffled away.
I slipped from the stool and opened one of the three windows in the breakfast nook, then flipped the living room fan on. A separate, short fan hummed in the corner of the kitchen floor, facing the last section of wall that hadn’t dried yet.
“See? Who needs expensive contractors when you have us to help you,” Emma said, pert. She poured a cup of vinegar in the container, then unscrewed the fabric softener. “Cheap labor and great community.”
I nodded, biting my lip. She was right. Not necessarily about the cheap labor, but the great company—and a reason for the house to be filled with explainable noises. Not children crying, which I’d failed to mention to either of them yet.
The idea of explaining what I’d heard—or what I hadn’t heard, since the crying hadn’t woken up Emma—made all four corners of my heart twist into knots.
“I saw Ivan in town,” she said. She measured out the softener, careful to not look up.
“Mm.”
“He asked about you. I didn’t know he still lived here.”
I continued arranging the roosters.
“He seemed—interested.”
“You know I’m not the dating type,” I told her. Heat started in the middle of my back. Tingles through my fingers, but not from butterflies.
“He’s a nice guy, Lan.” She started stirring the stripping concoction with a couple of toothpicks, then unpacked the rest of her finds.
A packet of switchblades, a new set of screwdrivers, and a box of 120-grit sanding pads.
“If nothing really happened back at graduation, why don’t you just talk to him?
He doesn’t have hard feelings. Otherwise he wouldn’t have asked about you. ”
I left the roosters to grab the shipping tape. I ripped three long strips off and plastered the rooster box shut. “I told you. We went different ways. It would be awkward.”
“But people reconnect all the time—and he said he’d already run into you.” She paused. “You didn’t tell me.”
I prickled. “There was nothing to tell. He said hi. I said hi. I left.”
The air grew charged. Metallic shards, jittering between us.
“Lan—”
A crash from the second floor broke Emma’s sentence. The dingy kitchen light fixture, dangling and centered above the island, rattled.
Both of us stood frozen. I turned, ready to storm the steps and see what had happened, when there was a rustle. Not as loud, but similar to shoes scuffing over hardwood. A low grunt followed. Almost meek, Sayer called down, “Uh … guys.”
The music Sayer had been playing quieted. Then clicked off.
“Can you, uh, come up here for a second?”
“What … is that?”
The three of us stared at the hole in a lengthy, detached silence. Walls were easy to patch. I’d done it before. Still, my lips parted, then shut. Over and over, until I swept my hair off the back of my neck and sighed in defeat.
“I don’t know,” Emma whispered. Her fingers drummed against her cheek.
“There’s something behind the wall?” My stomach pulled into itself like I might throw up. The hole gaped large enough to see through, but dark enough that I couldn’t exactly tell what it was.
“I’m so sorry,” Sayer said, hands in his hair. He started to pace. I shook my head, eyes shuttering. “I can fix it.”
“I don’t care about the strip,” I said. “Are you okay?”
“So I was pulling, right.” He bent down and grabbed the broken transition strip in both hands to re-create the image.
“The strip broke and I fell backward into the hall and my head hit the wall and—” He splayed both hands open and shook them in emphasis.
“This happened. I swear I didn’t mean to.
It was really hard to pull up.” He held out the transition strip, as if proof were needed.
“Sometimes they can be.” I winced.
Emma stepped between us, arms out, then took Sayer’s cheek in one hand and grabbed the back of his nape with the other. “Are you dizzy? Can you tell me what day it is?”
“What are you doing?” He tried to pull away. “Stop. It. I’m fine.”
“There’s plaster in your hair.”
“It’s sheet rock, not plaster,” he corrected. He brushed himself off, then batted Emma’s hands away when she tried to grab his head again.
“Recite the date and time.” She took him by the shoulders instead and looked him dead in the eye. Sayer barely stood an inch taller than Emma. “I mean it. Pronto.”
He blinked. “June, uh, twelfth? Maybe four o’clock—”
“Wrong. It’s four thirty.”
“You know what I mean.”
I knelt while they bickered to get a better look. Sure enough, there was something on the other side.
She shook him a bit. “Sayer.” Held up her index finger. “Follow it.”
“What are you—”
I pressed at a dangling piece of sheet rock, then pulled it off in a puff of dust, as Emma exclaimed, “Just do it! It’s for your safety!”
“Okay, okay!”
I leaned closer and flicked the dust away. Whatever it was, it was solid wood. Not a support beam or a stud. Had it been covered on purpose?
A tightness started in my throat. I scratched the inside of my wrist. Dug a fingernail in. A slight, barely there hint of pain to ground myself. Focus.
I’d seen people cover plenty of things before—fireplaces they didn’t want to take out, linen closets, sometimes crawl spaces (which I wouldn’t recommend). But this looked different.
With a sharp breath, I stuck my arm through the hole. Brushed my fingertips over the bevel—sure enough, it felt like a door.
Emma crouched next to me. “Oh! What is that?”
“Is that a door?” Sayer leaned over my shoulder, his head inches from mine. I leaned away.
“I think so?” I said. I swallowed once, twice, a trickle of excitement bleeding into my veins. Sayer grumbled something that sounded like, “Should be, it hurt well enough.”
“Should we try and open it?” Emma whispered, so quiet I almost missed it.
“I don’t know,” I said.
The molding was bumpy in a few places, which usually meant it was handcrafted, not mass-produced. I stretched my arm completely through, fingertips searching for an end. There it was.
By feel, I couldn’t reach far enough to tell if it were bedroom door—where would the room have been? Or overly large window shutters. But where this was placed, right beside the stairs that led to the third-floor attic and my bedroom, meant this wasn’t a window, but perhaps an old linen closet.
But I didn’t remember Aunt Cadence mentioning a renovation. As far as I knew, she hadn’t so much as changed furniture since she’d moved in.
I reached up, searching.
“Do you feel anything?” Emma whispered. Her breath tickled my temple. Sayer, unable to see anything, straightened.
I winced. “I can’t—”
My fingers wrapped around a knobby doorhandle. Then something shifted in the air, like a wet blanket draping over a shivering body in a cold wind. Goosebumps crawled all over me. My peripheral grew shadowed, spotty, until the speckles bled into splotches and everything vanished.
The hallway went dark.
I blinked but saw nothing but darkness, as if someone had turned out the lights in a windowless room. Only muffled voices—maybe Sayer and Emma—mumbled far, far away. I squinted, squeezed my eyes, focused on the thrum of my heart in my ears.
Tell me I am no man, a voice growled. Unfamiliar, gritty. Tell me!
I blinked again, hard. Then, ever so faintly, shapes appeared in a gray haze around me. I wasn’t in the hallway anymore, but a … room.