Chapter 4 Brady #2
After that, the day went by quickly. Clarke stopped by for lunch—brought enough for me, too, which was nice. She brought everything from Collins’s car, even though the car was still on the side of the road. Apparently, Dex’s tow rope snapped when he started to pull away from the car.
“Do you want to take your stuff up?” I asked around four.
Collins was going through a stack of papers she’d pulled from the filing cabinet.
She’d been at that while I had finished placing some piping on a chair.
She mumbled to herself a lot, and she was very…
expressive when she did it—almost like she was talking to someone else.
Or at least thought she was talking to someone else.
Collins looked up from the papers. She had a silver ring on one side of her nose, and a small, silver stud on the other. She had a silver watch, too, which she glanced at.
“Working hard or hardly working?” she asked me with an arched brow.
“I like a bare-minimum day every once in a while,” I said.
“You’re talking to a girl whose entire life is held together by bare minimums,” she said.
I didn’t know that much about Collins. The way everyone talked about her, I almost didn’t expect her to be real.
Everyone—including her family—talked about her like they were never going to see her again.
Her parents talked about her work and her accomplishments like they were memorializing her.
And Clarke…Clarke talked about her like Collins left her behind—like she’d been forgotten.
“I find that hard to believe,” I said. “Don’t you have like eighty national photography awards?” I knew she had at least one.
Collins stiffened and busied herself with the papers again. “I’d love to take my stuff up. Thank you,” she said after a few beats.
I put down my mallet and started walking toward the stairs. I heard Collins’s footsteps follow. “I don’t know if you already know this, but the stairs lead to a pretty long hallway and then there are two separate entrances to the apartment.”
“Because it used to be two units, right?” she asked as we walked up the stairs.
“Right,” I said. “Now it kind of looks like a college dorm.”
“I never went to college, but I’ll take your word for it,” she said behind me.
“So, you have your own bedroom and bathroom, but when whoever combined it did their thing, they did it by taking down the wall between the kitchens and living rooms—which were back to back—and then making one giant one. Well, not really giant. Everything up here is pretty small.”
“I’m not really a big cook, so hopefully I won’t disturb you too much.”
“Oh, I don’t mind at all. Might be nice to not be so alone up here all the time,” I said as we made our way down the dark hallway to her door. I’d tried a few times to install new lights in here, but they always burned out within a few hours. Old electric, I guess.
Collins mumbled something that I couldn’t quite make out, but I did catch “never” and “alone” somewhere in there.
“So this is you.” I nodded toward the door we were coming up to. It was marked as 2B in rusted metal letters. Mine was 1B. I pulled the key out of my back pocket and handed it to her. “You can do the honors.”
Collins stuck the key in the lock and twisted it. The key stopped turning before the door was all the way unlocked, so Collins gave the key a jiggle until the lock gave way and the door opened.
This apartment was the exact same as mine—just mirrored. You walked immediately into a small—and I do mean small—entryway, and the bedroom was a few steps in on the right. It had light hardwood floors that were beat to hell and a large radiator that had been painted white for no reason.
“The bathroom is an en suite,” I said. The hallway to the kitchen was on the left. “That goes to the kitchen. I have to warn you, the tile they chose when it was redone is kind of reminiscent of a hospital. It’s green, white, and checkered.”
Collins smiled, and her dimple appeared. “Hospitals don’t bother me,” she said. “This is great. Thank you so much. I’m, uh…happy to have my own space while I’m here.”
“No problem,” I said. “Thank you for being willing to help me out.”
She looked like she was about to say something else, but her eyes shot to the corner of her living room and narrowed. I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and I quickly turned around to see what she was looking at.
There was nothing there. Again.
“You good?” I asked her.
“Yeah, sorry,” she said shaking her head. “I thought I heard something.”
“You probably did,” I said. “There are a lot of squeaks and creaks in this place. It’s old.”
“Like everything else in Sweetwater Peak,” she said with a sigh. I couldn’t tell if it was a good sigh or a bad one. “Old bones.”
Something about that image sent a shiver down my spine. It was the way she said it—not the way people say good bones or whatever when they’re doing a renovation. She said it like she was resigned to living inside a skeleton.
“Do you need help getting your stuff?” I asked, desperate for a subject change.
Collins shook her head. “No, I’ve got it,” she said. Her tone was sharper than I’d heard it today. Did I do something wrong?
“Thank you again for letting me stay here.” She wasn’t looking at me, though. She was still looking in the corner. It didn’t really feel like she was talking to me either.
“Yeah,” I said. “I can help you get your car if you want. I don’t think my tow rope will snap.” It was pretty new—got it in the winter just in case I needed to get myself or anyone else out of the snow.
Collins shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. It’s just a car.” Her voice sounded detached.
“But…” I trailed off as she just shrugged and walked back down the dark hallway. She swung wide before going down the stairs like she was going around someone.
What was up with this woman?