Chapter 3 #2
“The other two aren’t coming back, you know.
Not really. Not once Steph buys that little house she wants, and you know she’s going to.
A pet would make it less lonely for both of us.
It would be good company for me after everyone else moves out, and for you.
You know, when I go out and leave you alone. ”
The lock clicked open with a hopeful snap.
“Yeah, right,” he muttered. Pushing to his feet, he picked up the half-finished meal. “Better deal with this, I guess.”
The house’s attention followed him from room to room, dimming lights as he left and brightening when he reached the kitchen.
The back door opened for him when he tied up the kitchen garbage to put it out.
On the porch, the light brightened to near daylight incandescence.
When he came back in, the door swung ever-so-slowly shut, and took a long, agonizing minute to finally clasp.
“Thanks.” He absently patted the door.
As he was glancing around the kitchen, trying to decide what to do next, a bell over the opening between the kitchen and the office dinged.
There were three of them there. One labelled SHOP, one JAKE, and one LABYRINTH OF DOOM, all with Sharpie-written yellow sticky notes.
It was the shop bell that had rung, and Steven hurried to the front of the building to greet the couple he’d seen leaving the B and B earlier.
“Evening.” He grinned at them, and they smiled and nodded back. “I’m Steven. Just let me know if you have any questions or want something specific.”
“Thanks. I’m Becky, and this is Josh. We’re staying across the street. At the B and B.”
“It’s a great little place. Lucky and Kreed are fantastic hosts.”
“The food is so good,” Becky gushed.
Josh had wandered off to look through a rack of back-dated Motorcycle Mojo issues. “Hey, Beck, I don’t have this issue.”
“But do you need it?” She half grinned and rolled her eyes to Steven, then turned to Josh, who proceeded to defend his need for All The Issues.
Steven let them debate in peace, while he opened a battered box at the front counter and proceeded to inventory the vintage Harlequin Romances inside.
By the time they left, he’d emptied the box, then refilled it with their purchases—fully a third of the Harlequins and over a dozen old motorcycle magazines.
Part of him wondered if the items would appear on eBay in a few weeks, but a larger part of him didn’t care.
The money in his till from the sale would pay a bill or two, and that’s all that really mattered to him.
Once he’d watched them haul their finds back across the street to the Oaks, he turned out the shop lights, flipped the OPEN/CLOSED sign and locked the outer door.
“Another day, another dollar.” He patted the front counter, and the till jingled faintly. He pulled out the drawer, taking it with him to the kitchen, locking the door between the shop and his living quarters behind him, then sitting to count out the float for the next morning.
He’d finished balancing the receipts, updating the books and making the deposit bag when his twin sister, Stephanie, let herself in the back door.
“Hey, Sis.”
“Hey, Bro.” She flopped into the chair across from him, spun the heavy canvas bag and peered inside. “Looks decent.”
He nodded. “Not bad, actually.”
She pulled a change pouch from her purse and dumped the noisy contents onto the table as well. “Tips.”
He poked around in the pile, pushing the loonies and toonies to one side. “People really love you.”
She grinned wide at him. “They really do. And this is only a third. Jake took the rest.” She sighed and settled back in her chair, toeing off her shoes. “They love our little brother more.”
A chill band loosened from around Steven’s chest, as it always did when Steph indicated Jake had had a good day. “Who doesn’t?”
“Right?”
“He’s doing okay?”
A tight expression passed over Stephanie’s face, there and gone in a flash, and she smiled. “Sure. You know, you could walk across the backyard with me and come for supper. He and Lucy invited us both.”
“I ate.”
She eyed the TV dinner box sticking out of the blue bin. “Did you, though?”
“Steph.”
“Fine. But you can still come. They won’t care if you don’t eat.”
“I’m good. Besides, there’s still that stack we cleaned up out front, and I don’t like having empty shelves in the shop, so I want to unpack more romances for that section.”
“Dad’s books have been sitting down there in their musty boxes for a decade. They aren’t going anywhere.”
“Exactly.” He zipped up the deposit bag and pushed it towards her. “All the more reason to get them up here and on a shelf. No one is going to buy them out of the Labyrinth. Can you drop that at the bank at some point?”
She pushed it back at him with one finger. “Why don’t you?”
He gritted his teeth. She knew why. “Becca might be working.”
“So?”
“So it’s awkward. Who likes to see their ex every day?”
“Ignore her. She’s a bi—”
“Don’t do that. She had her reasons for leaving.”
Stephanie snorted. “Because you don’t like extreme sports? Please.”
“It wasn’t just the snowboarding. She likes being out. I don’t.”
“Don’t make her right, Stevie.”
“Right? About what?”
“I know she called you a homebody, but I’m worried it’s going beyond that. This place is closing in around you.”
“No, it isn’t. I’m settling in. I thought you’d be happy about that.”
“There’s a difference between settling in and becoming a recluse.”
“You always bitched at me for not being around right after—” He snapped his mouth shut.
“I’m here now. And I know you did all the heavy lifting with Jake at first. I know I didn’t support you like I should have.
I can’t go back, but I can make it so you don’t have to worry about the shop at all.
I like running it. You can go do your own thing.
I know you want that little house down on Riverbend, and your share of the insurance will buy it, but you’ll still have to pay bills.
You’ll need a job. Something outside of this place, like you always wanted.
Jake doesn’t need you here anymore, and neither do I. ”
“Stevie—”
He held up a hand. “Go have supper with Jake and Luce. Have fun. I’m good. I have to do some research on the Harlequins anyway, and then inventory them.”
“I don’t like leaving you alone so much.”
“I’m not alone. I have…” He glanced around the kitchen. “This place. Wilma?”
The kitchen lights abruptly went out, leaving them with just the light of the fan over the stove.
“She doesn’t like Wilma,” Stephanie whispered.
“You think?” Steven chuckled. “Sorry,” he said louder. “I’ll find something better.”
The lights came back on.
Stephanie pushed to her feet, picking up the deposit bag as she did. “It’s weird, isn’t it? You’d think we could figure out her name. We’ve only lived here our whole lives.”
“That’s just the thing, though. We’ve been here our whole lives. To her, we might as well be part of the walls. And we never noticed her antics until Kreed and Lucky started talking about how Mildred reacted to them.”
“The Oaks seems nicer,” Stephanie said.
“She feels listened to,” Steven pointed out. “Kreed bows to her every whim.”
The lights flickered out again.
“Clearly our house does not feel heard.”
For a few seconds, the kitchen was bathed in a hard strobe, light and dark, flickering from brilliant to black over and over.
“She never acted like this when we were little,” Stephanie said.
“She had a whole family then.”
“And Dad.”
He nodded. “And Dad.” He gazed up at the ceiling. “We miss him too, House.”
The lights evened to a soft glow.
“You should go, though,” Steven said. “You know how Jake gets if you don’t keep to the schedule.” He glanced at the clock. “Supper’s in ten minutes.”
“You sure you won’t come?”
“I don’t want to leave her alone. The last time she froze the pipes and almost flooded the Labyrinth.”
“It was January and minus thirty-six out. I don’t think the pipes were her fault.”
“If she didn’t freeze them, she also didn’t keep them unfrozen. She doesn’t like to be alone.”
“Steven—”
He stared at her, daring her to contradict him.
“Whatever.” She heaved out a breath and turned to the back door. “We’ll be all the way across the backyard if you change your mind.”
“I know.”
“Fine.”
“Okay.”
If she tried to slam the door on her way out, the house didn’t let her, and for that, Steven was grateful. She might not like that he preferred to stay at home, but then again, she didn’t have to like it. She just had to let him be who he was.
The bell labelled LABYRINTH OF DOOM tinkled, and he glanced up at it.
When they had been kids, their father would ring the bell when he was down there going through one of his many boxes and he found something he thought one of them might like.
For a long time after their parents had died, the house continued to ring the bell daily. Steven had tended to leave, wander the town, do anything anywhere he couldn’t hear that stupid bell.
When the house began to ring it multiple times a day, Steven had finally gone down, intending to yank the connecting wires out of the wall. Instead, he’d wandered through the maze of boxes, remembering how much his father had loved to open them, like it was Christmas every day.
He didn’t do more than wander and feel lost that first time, but eventually, he’d opened a box, then another, slowly taking over where his father had left off, acquiring books, selling books, cataloguing books, expanding into magazines, comics, graphic novels, and most recently, vinyl LPs.
He hadn’t stopped missing his parents. He figured none of them had. But he still had his twin and their younger brother, the shop and the house, and it was getting better.
He glanced at the bell now and smiled. There were always more boxes.