Chapter 14
That Weird Dent in the Couch
Maisie
I’m wrapped in my ratty gray bathrobe, the one with the coffee stain on the sleeve that refused to come out despite three treatments with my best stain-fighting soap. My wet hair drips down my back as I walk into the living room with my first cup of the day.
The sun streams through the eastern windows, catching dust motes and turning them into tiny constellations.
On the couch, Oz has spread himself into a perfect cushion-mimic, his iridescent surface dimmed to match my grandmother’s quilt.
Only a slight shimmer betrays him when the light hits at certain angles.
“You’re getting better at that,” I tell him, sipping coffee. “That’s a very convincing dent in the couch.”
Oz ripples slightly in acknowledgment. “I studied the depression patterns in the foam.”
I snort. “Charming.”
A sharp knock on the front door cuts through our morning calm.
Three rapid raps, confident and familiar.
My heart lurches.
“Shit!” I hiss, nearly sloshing coffee down my front. “That’s Gram. She’s early.”
Oz immediately flows off the couch, a teal-purple waterfall heading for the hallway.
“Under the bed,” I whisper-shout, pointing frantically. “She never goes into the bedroom. Stay there until I figure this out!”
The knock comes again, more insistent this time.
I cinch my bathrobe tight, run fingers through my dripping hair, and take a deep breath before pulling the door open.
And there she is, standing on my porch with the morning light haloing her silver-streaked hair. She clutches her worn leather Bible under one arm, a canvas bag of felting wool and tools propped against her hip, and a gift bag in one hand.
Her face breaks into a wide smile.
“Well, look who’s still in her pajamas at eight thirty in the morning! Must be nice.” She leans forward to kiss my cheek.
“You’re early,” I say, my voice coming out higher than intended.
Gram waves this off like it’s a minor technicality. “Craziest luck, Maisie Louise. Not a single stoplight from Montana to here.”
“You must have been going ninety the whole way,” I say, eyeing her suspiciously.
“The Lord protects the righteous,” she says with a wink, stepping past me into the house without waiting for an invitation.
“Shouldn’t you be resting?” I suggest, not because I want her gone, but because she’s pushing eighty and just drove through half the country.
“I already rested. I took a power nap when I arrived earlier this morning. Then I took care of my alpacas—Basil tried to make a break for it again, bless his stubborn heart—then I came straight here.”
She drops her bags on the coffee table and pulls me into a hug, her woolen sweater smelling like lanolin and coffee. She then holds me at arm’s length, studying my face with narrowed eyes.
“You’ve been eating,” she says, her gaze sharp and assessing. “And sleeping. Your eyes have lost those raccoon circles, as cute as they were.” Her head tilts. “What changed?”
I scramble for an explanation that doesn’t involve an eight-foot slime monster living in my house. “The big order is keeping me busy. Too much to do to mope around.”
Gram gives me a look that says she’s buying exactly zero percent of that explanation but will let it slide.
For now.
Her eyes drift to the couch, where the cushions still bear the indentation of Oz’s recently departed form.
I realize then that he’s heavier than he seems, which is very unfortunate for me.
“You got yourself memory foam cushions?” she asks, pointing to the perfect Oz-shaped indentation. “Do they even make those? Looks comfortable. But leaves a weird dent, doesn’t it?” She squints. “Sort of looks like Gumby was sitting there.”
“It’s just… the cushions are old,” I say, moving quickly to sit on the offending dent. “So, you’re here! Early! What a surprise!”
Gram narrows her eyes at me for a moment, before reaching into her canvas bag and pulling out a small felted alpaca. “I made you this, back in Montana.”
She holds it up between thumb and forefinger, turning it so the light catches the fiber.
It’s small enough to fit in my palm, cream-colored with a tuft of unruly wool on its head and two tiny black bead eyes set slightly too far apart, giving it a look of perpetual mild alarm.
“It’s Basil. See the expression? That’s his ‘I found the weak spot in the fence’ face.”
I take it from her, and the wool is impossibly soft against my fingers.
Gram’s felting has always had this quality, each piece dense and warm and slightly lopsided in a way that makes it feel alive.
“He’s perfect,” I say.
Gram settles into the armchair across from the couch, the one with the reading lamp and the permanent butt groove that belongs exclusively to her.
She then folds her hands in her lap the way she does when she’s about to stay awhile, fingers laced, thumbs circling each other in slow orbits.
Her eyes move across the room with the unhurried attention of someone taking inventory.
“So,” she says after a moment. “You going to offer your grandmother some coffee, or do I need to invoke Exodus 20:12?”
“That’s ‘honor thy father and mother,’ Gram.”
“Grandmothers are implied. It’s in the subtext.”
Regardless, I get up, grateful for the excuse to move, and pour her a cup.
Gram takes a long sip and sets the mug down on the coaster I keep on the side table for exactly this purpose.
Her hands find a loose ball of roving from her bag and begin working it automatically, fingers pulling and rolling the fiber without conscious direction, the way other people breathe.
“Well,” she says, “I’m happy to be here. And whatever’s got you so jumpy, you can tell me whenever you’re ready.” She smiles, easy and open, and her thumbs press the wool flat. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I blow on my coffee and try to calculate how long I can keep Gram in this one chair.
The bedroom door is closed, at least.
I think I closed it.
Did I close it?
I was too busy panicking to remember.
Gram’s fingers work the roving into a small oval shape, her hands moving like they have their own agenda.
“This house smells different,” she says. “What’s that? Mineral, almost. Like creek stones. A new ingredient?”
My stomach drops.
“Yup,” I say quickly. “I’m experimenting with kaolin clay bases. Very earthy.”
“Mm.” She doesn’t look up from her felting. “Smells nice. Clean.”
Something creaks down the hall.
Gram’s eyes flick toward the sound.
“Plumbing,” I say. “The pipes make noises. Old house.”
A soft thump from under the bedroom door, like someone adjusting their weight.
Gram’s head tilts.
I set my mug down too hard and coffee sloshes over the rim. “Wow, these pipes sure are chatty today! Must be the temperature change.”
Gram watches me mop up the spill with my bathrobe sleeve.
Her expression is unreadable.
Then she returns to her wool, humming something that might be a hymn.
The bedroom door nudges open about two inches.
I catch it in my peripheral vision and my entire body goes rigid.
Gram’s back is to the hallway.
She can’t see it.
She can’t see the faint iridescent shimmer on the edge of the doorframe, or the way the door seems to be holding itself ajar.
“Gram,” I say, my voice climbing, “would you like breakfast? I could make eggs. I have eggs.”
She looks up at me, her eyebrows raised at my sudden enthusiasm for domestic labor.
“You don’t even like eggs. It’s always pancakes with you.”
Wow. I’m so nervous, I’ve forgotten my own breakfast preferences.
“I meant pancakes. So I’m going to head to the kitchen, where pancakes get made.”
“Take your time, honey. I’m comfortable.”
She reaches for her coffee, and as she does, the bedroom door eases itself closed with a soft, deliberate click.
Gram pauses, cup halfway to her lips. “Goodness, that door,” she says.
“The latch is finicky,” I say too fast. “It drifts. I keep meaning to fix it.”
Gram turns in her chair to look at the closed door.
She studies it for a long, terrible moment.
Then she turns back to face me, and there’s something knowing in her expression that makes my pulse skip.
“Drifty doors,” she says mildly. “Or a haunting.” She takes a sip of her coffee and winks at me.
“Ha! Yes, or that!” I flee to the kitchen and yank open the fridge, grabbing milk and pancake mix with trembling hands.
Pancakes.
I can make pancakes.
I’ve made pancakes a thousand times.
My hands know the motions even when my brain is short-circuiting.
I focus on my pancakes with the intensity of a brain surgeon.
One flip. Two flips.
The batter is golden and perfect and I’m absolutely not thinking about the eight-foot slime creature under my bed who apparently cannot stay still.
Gram hums.
The same hymn from before, something about grace and wandering.
Her foot taps in no particular rhythm.
“You know,” she says from her chair, eyes on her wool. “Whatever’s making your house creak, Maisie Louise, it sounds content.”
She says it the way she says everything, like it’s just biblical truth.
I flip another pancake and pretend my face isn’t the color of a beet.
Gram goes back to her felting, humming her hymn, utterly satisfied with herself.
Over the next three days, Gram becomes a fixture in my house.
She arrives each morning with her canvas bag and her Bible, settling into her armchair like she’s claiming territory.
She felts while I work.
She asks about the business, the order, my sleep.
She makes herself useful in ways that feel like surveillance wrapped in love.
And by the third evening, when Gram finally gathers her things and heads home, I collapse onto the couch and stare at the ceiling.
The fan clicks.
Once, twice, three times.
Click.
Oz reforms beside me, rising from the gap between cushions where he’s been hiding all day, compressed flat and nearly invisible.
His surface shimmers with exhaustion, the gold threads dim and slow.
“You can’t keep doing this,” I say.
“Doing what?”
“Squishing yourself into nothing for eight hours at a time.”
Oz says very seriously, “I can hide for as long as you need me to.”
And while I know he’s trying to be reassuring, all it does is make me feel worse.
Keeping Oz a secret is getting more and more impossible. Not just because of Gram, but because of all the questions without answers in this town.
Somewhere out on the ridge, Mrs. Pritchett is hunting for her stolen Bel Air and whatever pulled apart that coyote, and Gary still hasn’t found Captain.
Between Gram’s holy radar and Mrs. Pritchett’s casserole-fueled warpath, it’s going to be impossible to keep Oz hidden forever.
But I simply turn to him with a forced smile and say, “We’ll figure it out.”
But a big part of me isn’t so sure.