Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
PRESENT DAY
Two hours later, I follow my phone’s GPS to the address Mom wrote down on a scrap of paper, a little heart beside it with a note.
Welcome home ?
The pencil marks are smudged, like it was written in a hurry.
I pull to a stop in front of the building—a two-story, stand-alone brick building surrounded by a gravel parking lot. There’s just one vehicle here. A cola-brown truck sits at the far end of the lot, backed in and facing the road.
I swallow, suddenly more nervous than before. Margie wouldn’t send me to live with some creep, I know that, but I wish I’d been able to talk to her before I arrived. I’m sure it’s some little old woman she knows from around town, but a confirmation would’ve been nice either way.
I tried to call her once on the way over, but she’s getting her hair done and couldn’t talk for long. Mom says I should just trust them, but that feels more suspicious than anything else.
Some part of me feels like they’re setting me up to live with a woman they’ve decided should be my best friend, too. Like they need my life to mirror theirs in some way.
Trust the process.
The building is relatively narrow. It looks like there’s just one floor of apartments, probably only two actual apartments inside.
The bottom half looks like it used to be an old garage of some kind.
A place where things were fixed. Or stored.
Or hidden. It’s not exactly luxury, but then again, teachers in Clinton can’t exactly afford luxury, can they?
Teachers in general, probably.
I decide to leave the boxes in the car and first go check the place out. If I get a weird vibe from the girl or the apartment itself, I’ll head straight back to Mom’s.
I walk around the building toward the single door on the side, then go through and follow a set of wooden stairs up.
They creak under my weight, but the inside is nicer than I expected.
The walls have been painted white with patches of exposed brick peeking through.
Wall sconces brighten the space with warm lighting, making it all feel cozy.
As someone who has always preferred lamps to overhead lights, I appreciate the ambiance.
On the top floor, I realize I was right about there only being one floor of apartments, but wrong about the number. Instead of two, there’s just one apartment here. A…penthouse of sorts, though as nice as this is, only someone pretentious would call it that.
There are no penthouses in this small town.
The stairs end at a little landing just outside of a black front door. I take a deep breath, adjusting my shirt and running a hand through my hair.
I almost turn around.
Then, with a smile plastered on my face, I knock.
It takes a few seconds to hear footsteps.
And they last…a really long time. It’s like the woman is pacing the house. Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth. My skin prickles. Are there multiple people here? Maybe it’s a family. How would that even work?
Maybe it’s three little old ladies, and I’m about to be their Blanche Devereaux.
I consider bolting, but it’s too late.
The door is wrenched open, and I’m staring into his face.
His face.
His dark hair is longer than it was at the funeral, messy around the ears. His blue eyes narrow, studying me like he’s not sure he’s actually seeing me, and then, at once, we both grimace.
Our protests overlap.
“Ew. You?”
“Hell no.”