Chapter 9
Byron had called to let her know that he’d spoken to Mrs. Foggarty, and that she had in fact wanted her door left exactly as it was. Thank you—so she had made a good call. Cleo had already called that day to decide what they’d be having for dinner that night, so she wasn’t expecting to hear from her any time soon—so why was she standing on her porch?
“Hey,” she said as she fiddled with the gate latch, “Is everything all right?”
“Not really,” Cleo said, “It’s been... a really shitty day, and I’d really like it if I could just exist with someone and not... not exist as Nurse Cleo right now. Is that all right?”
The pain in Cleo’s voice was tangible. Abigail rushed from her front gate to the porch and, ignoring Cleo’s protests that she was fine, enveloped her friend in a tight hug. Well, as tight of a hug as she could engineer with one hand still holding the umbrella and the other gripping her bag holding the sunflowers.
“Of course,” she said, “absolutely, we can do whatever you want. Do you want to talk about it?”
“No,” Cleo sniffed, breaking away from the hug, “but thank you.”
Abigail nodded, swapping the sunflowers to her umbrella hand while twisting to unlock the door with her free hand.
“Here, let me help,” Cleo said, smiling sadly as she took the sunflowers.
“Thanks,” Abigail said, “now, tea?”
“Uh, if you’re having some, but I’m not...” Cleo trailed off as she stepped through the open door, “Uh... Abby?”
“What?” Abigail asked, following her, and turning to lock the door.
Cleo was pointing down the hallway and Abigail cringed.
“Oh, that,” Abigail said, annoyed, “yeah I finally went digging in one of the holes and I found wires—surprise surprise—but the plaster kind of disintegrated...”
“And you just left it there?”
“Well,” she said, “I swept it into a pile... listen cheeky, I don’t remember ‘comment on people’s housekeeping’ on the list of polite conversation topics!”
Abigail laughed as she turned but stopped.
“Uh—no, for the record, I did not leave that there!”
Stretching back from the original spot for at least five feet were chunks of plaster and white dust. On the floor where the trail stopped were the pliers, still attached to the end of the wire. Cleo stepped into the kitchen to deposit the sunflowers and rejoined Abigail at the pliers.
“Damn, I must have forgotten to take these off and the weight of them pulled it from the wall...”
Cleo was staring, mouth open.
“That’s bonkers,” she said, “wall plaster shouldn’t just...”
She made a poofing motion with her hands.
“No, but I think it was patched badly. Look at this.”
Abigail retrieved the flashlight she had been using the other day and flicked it over the paint on the wall where it met the ceiling.
“See?”
Cleo pointed, “Oh wow, it’s totally a different color!”
“Yep,” Abigail said, “And—cover your nose.”
Pulling her shirt collar up over her nose, Abigail waited for Cleo to follow suit, then gently tugged on the wire hanging from the wall. A shower of plaster dust and paint shimmied down the wall.
“Look, it goes all the way down and across the ceiling,” Cleo said, “Into...”
Her sentence trailed off. A two-inch-thick line that perfectly matched the one these wires had come from crossed the ceiling and stopped against the thick wooden door frame of the study. Abigail tugged on the wire again, harder this time, and peeled away the plaster the rest of the way down the hall to outside the study, where it took a sharp right-angle turn and pulled plaster and paint down from the ceiling.
“What the heck, Abby?” Cleo said, “Look, it’s pulling the frame!”
She was right. The wire was making the wooden frame bow in the middle. With one hard yank, the wooden piece creaked and dropped off, causing both women to stumble backwards in shock. Abigail could see where the wire went next: it curled around to the totally blank side wall.
“Come on,” Abigail said.
“Come on? This is making a massive mess. What if it’s asbestos or something!”
Abigail heard her but the concern was outweighed by her anger and the boiling feeling that this was something she needed to know—right now. Everything about her time in Newport had been either avoiding the past or diving in after it, and today, it had dived for her even when she was trying to avoid it. The mess this was creating in her very recently completely clean house just didn’t matter right now.
She was already through the door and pulling hard on the wire, the length she had already yanked out of the wall spooling on the ground behind her. Cleo stepped over it and stood well back as Abigail pulled. The wire traveled a little way across the wall, hugging the ceiling, and then made a sharp angle down the wall until it stopped hard about a foot away from the ceiling.
Cleo grabbed the flashlight, “look at the wall.”
It was the same effect Mrs. Foggarty had used on the sunflowers, and it was the same color, but Abigail could clearly see a line where it changed direction. She tugged again, and the wall moved. A tiny, horizontal crack appeared just above where the wire had stopped. She yanked again, harder this time, and the crack expanded.
“Abby....” Cleo said, her voice tense.
A large chunk of plaster fell away, exposing a piece of brown sheathing. Abigail stared at it as she tugged again. The crack across the wall spread further, and she realized what was happening—the whole wall was coming towards her. A sharp pull on her arm made her step backward as a four-foot-square sheet of thin sheathing fell away from the wall and hit the floor. She and Cleo coughed, even though they had instinctively covered their noses with their shirts.
“I swear if this is asbestos,” Cleo said,
“I give you permission to kill me,” Abigail said.
“I wasn’t asking permission,” Cleo retorted, “what the hell is this Abs?”
The weird tingling feeling in the back of her mind that Abigail only felt when she was recalling a memory or when she was about to remember something prickled her. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to clear it away, though what she actually wanted to do was tap the back of her head—hard. It didn’t actually help but it always felt like it would.
Cleo’s hand hadn’t moved from Abigail’s arm, and she was glad for the slightly painful but warm anchor to reality. Behind the panel she had just pulled out was a set of shelves and a gun safe.
“I don’t know, we... we didn’t have a gun.”
“Okay, so why...?”
“I don’t know... it can’t be from when we lived here, it just can’t be.”
The tingling grew stronger, along with the twisting nausea in her stomach. She closed her eyes again and tried to put herself in the study in the last memory she had there. She was seventeen. She was waiting at the door. She needed to tell her dad something—
“Abby?” Cleo asked, breaking her concentration.
“I—I’m trying to remember something,” she replied, squeezing her eyes tighter. “The last proper memory I have here is from senior year. Mom had sent me to get Dad. Dinner was ready. I was at the door… I couldn’t see him, but he said to come in…”
In her mind, Abigail followed her teenage self into the room as she stepped across the threshold. She quirked her head to the side. The door frame was different… why was the door frame…? Her attention moved from the door frame as she remembered telling her dad something: she’d made a joke about dinner. From the corner of her eye, she caught sight of the blank wall behind the door—but it hadn’t been blank then. There was a set of built-in shelves scattered with books and trinkets. There was also a flash of metallic gray of something as her father turned to face her, pressing his back against the shelves.
The tingling faded as the memory slipped away from her. Unfortunately, the nausea stayed.
Silently, she stepped forward.
“What are you doing?” Cleo hissed.
“I just need to check...”
Abigail reached out and brushed her fingers against the combination lock, twisting left and right in a familiar pattern.
The door clicked open.
“Abby! You said it wasn’t yours!”
Cleo was next to her now, holding onto her arm again tightly.
“It’s not,” Abby said, “It... must have been my dad’s. He always used my mom’s birthday combined with mine... for everything.”
A tidal wave of nausea and panic flooded through Abigail’s veins, and she turned on her heel to make a run for the bathroom; the only thing that could make today worse was throwing up on Cleo.