Chapter 11
CADE
A scratching sound led me into our only working bathroom later that week. I stared at the fiberglass tub that Morgan had rarely cleaned. It sat beneath a window, and white tile covered the front and sides. The sound stopped.
From the radio playing in the kitchen, I could hear the edges of a news report announcing blizzard-like conditions this evening, and temperatures plummeting into the negative twenties.
The bathroom pipes had a habit of freezing up during the cold spells.
It hadn’t been that big of a deal for Morgan.
Or for myself, when it was just me living here, but now that a mother and a baby were in residence, it needed to be taken care of, and fast.
The scratching sound returned, and I scowled.
This kind of noise in hollow wall cavities, during the depths of winter, in an isolated Wyoming ranch, was the definition of undesirable. Whatever critter that took up residence must have gotten in there somehow, which might explain why the pipes kept freezing.
Noelle asked, “Everything okay?”
She peered into the bathroom, eyebrows high. I’d left her in the kitchen, where she had sprawled out paperwork and a laptop, and clattered away at the keys while Lily lounged in her chair, peering quietly at the world. She’d go to bed soon in keeping with her schedule, if history repeated itself.
With a baby, one never knew.
“Cold front is coming.” I tapped the tile wall with the toe of my shoe. “I anticipate the pipes will ice up in this room.”
Her eyes grew.
“What?”
“There’s probably a hole in the outer wall that admits cold air, which freezes the water pipes when it gets real cold. If I pry out the tiles on this tub wall, I could find the hole, seal it, and we should be fine. For now,” I added.
The words should be fine hung in the air.
I added again, “We’re going to demo this room later anyway, right?”
“Yes, but you said you wanted to deal with the furnace first.”
“I think we don’t have much of a choice. A functioning bathroom is the new priority with the cold setting in.”
She shrugged. “Makes sense.”
“Might as well find the hole, close it up if we can, and pump heat into the empty space to keep the pipes from freezing overnight. It’s a bandaid, but it should keep water flowing.”
My justifications, though fair, offered little comfort. I tried to explain the dread pooling in my gut. Should was a far cry from will, and the gap between the two could mean anything.
Noelle folded her arms over her chest. “Do you need help? I’m not afraid to get dirty.”
I pictured tapping away at the tiles and a raccoon or skunk peering out at me—which would be the worst case scenario. Likely, I’d find a mouse den, or a squirrel nest. Still, I wouldn’t take the risk of her being bit.
“I’m 99% certain there’s an animal in there, so it might be best if I do this one on my own with the door closed.”
She sensibly backed away.
My nose wrinkled as I mentally braced myself, thinking through the tools and patching material I’d need from the barn.
This wouldn’t be pretty.
The tile chipped away easily. I could have smashed it in with a maul, but I wanted the critter to run from the noise first. Rabies shots were no fun, and if it was a hibernating skunk? Well, I didn’t want to deal with that fallout, either.
When I had a foot-wide section peeled apart from the floor and halfway up the wall, I reached for a flashlight.
Then I cursed.
As expected, a pair of beady eyes stared at me, shining from beneath the tub.
A hissing sound, and then scrambling, followed.
The critter skittered along the interior wall, vanishing through a hole in the outside wall near the drain pipes.
I could just make out a few trickles of dirt.
The critters probably dug under the porch, found a hole, and curled up beneath the tub, snug and warm.
I cursed again.
Carefully, I peered a second time inside the hollow space beneath the tub, and saw another duplicity of horrors.
Poop.
Piles of it. Mountains of it. Along with shredded paper, degraded squirrel spines, and pine cones.
The poop flowed in dunes. Cold and unpleasantly scented air brushed over my cheeks, as frigid as walking onto the deck.
The strong current moved from inside the wall, which made me immediately suspect there was more than one hole.
Head hung, I muttered, “Well shoot dang hot blossoms on a firecracker’s—”
A knock on the door interrupted me.
“Cade?”
I silenced my string of frustration.
“Just a sec.”
I stood, gathered up the chipped porcelain off the floor, chucked it in a cardboard box.
Then I balled up a towel, and shoved it in the tile hole to keep the beast from wandering in.
When I swung the door open, Noelle stood there.
Her hair hung in a messy bun off to one side, and comfortable old sweats and a baggy sweatshirt kept her warm.
She wore fuzzy, outlandish socks. Lily cooed from her arms, slowly working on a bottle.
A hint of anxiety appeared in Noelle’s eyes.
“Everything okay? It sounded . . . ah . . . intense?”
She’d heard my swearing.
Great. Some impressive cowboy I turned out to be. Noelle was no frail flower; she could handle rude words. But I didn’t like it. She deserved better.
“Well . . .” I ran a hand through my hair, scratching my neck. “The animal left.”
“There was one?”
“Oh, definitely.”
“What kind?”
“Skunk.”
“Good grief,” she murmured. “It didn’t spray?”
“No, and we’re lucky for that. Probably been there for a while, to be honest. It’s gone . . . for now. But I’m going to have to pull out the whole tub to get to the hole that it just departed through.”
She squeaked out, “Tonight?”
“If we want to keep the toilet and hot water functioning through the cold spell? Yes.”
Her heavy swallow sounded like a shot in the night. “We want the toilet to function,” she whispered.
“Exactly.”
Her eyes slid around the room. “After Lily finishes eating, I’ll be setting her down to bed. I can help, if you like.”
I hadn’t told her about the poop yet, and I didn’t want her anywhere near the foul excrement.
Gah.
A wild animal. In the bathroom. Near a baby I had to protect. This was a job for the knuckleheads. They had nothing better to do. They would have already tucked in all the animals with the storm arriving, and the boys had to earn their food and lodging.
I gave her a smile and reached for my phone.
“Thank you, but this is a job for the boys and me to tackle.” Surprise, then maybe a little hurt, flickered through her luminous eyes.
I hastily added, “The space under the tub is filled with poop, and I’m not entirely sure if a skunk is the only animal that’s been living in there.
I found several skeletons, and other issues. Considering Lily . . .”
Noelle took a step backward again. Given the shock in her stare, she may not have realized she did it.
“Oh!”
“I think this is best for them to handle.”
“Agreed. Th-thank you. I . . .” Her teeth worried her bottom lip, and she fidgeted with the bottom of her sweater. “I guess I feel like I’m not very helpful yet. There has to be something I can do.”
I tilted my head to the kitchen. “You’re coordinating, remember? Fixing our meals. Brightening this place up. Figuring out what to throw away. I have no idea how to organize Morgan’s old stuff, nor what to do with it. This is the monkey-grunt labor the boys and I are good at.”
A quick wink seemed to settle her, and I turned my focus to finding Cody’s number. He answered on the first ring.
“What’s up, hoss?”
“Grab Wyatt, gloves, two shovels, the firewood sled, and as many buckets as you can find. We’ve got an animal poop situation in the bathroom.”
An hour later, Wyatt had worn a track through the snowy deck, down the stairs, and over to the nearest dump pile with the wheelbarrow. Cody ripped the fiberglass tub apart with a Sawzall, and I plucked my tenth squirrel skeleton off the ground, flinging it into the closest bucket.
Disgusting.
Snow collected on the window ledge and turned to ice fingers. Each minute dropped the temperature farther, and the wind began to drive instead of warble. The heart of the storm hadn’t arrived yet, and we still had work to do.
“Uh . . . hoss?”
The uncertain tremor in Cody’s voice drew my attention first. I glanced up, saw his tilted head, and asked, “What?”
He stepped back, gesturing ahead. “Check this out.”
Near his feet was the spot where the drain and water exited the house. They were buried underground outside, beneath the porch, instead of descending into the basement and through drains there. Weird, but this was an old house.
I asked, “What is it?”
“A hole,” he drawled with an implied eyeroll. “The hole that the animals created. Look? See the marks? Animals found the pipe, burrowed around it, dug through the wall, and climbed inside. This is where they’ve been coming in, from beneath the porch.”
“As I thought,” I muttered.
I’d spent an hour demolishing tile and the drywall behind it and scooping enough poop to see the obvious, but that conspicuous issue wasn’t what grabbed my eye.
The exposed outer wall did.
I licked my lips.
Pointing above it, I asked Cody, “What is that?”
His gaze followed my pointing finger. There should have been 2x4 boards framing the inside of the exterior wall, but instead there was a bright red . . . door?
Cody put a hand on it.
“What in the—”
“Are we done yet?” Wyatt muttered, returning with three empty buckets, his cheeks reddened. Three of us in the bathroom were a tight squeeze, so he stood in the doorway. Reading the strange energy in the room, Wyatt paused.
“What’s the face for, hoss?”
My suspicions had already started to form, and the weighty ball in my stomach sank farther. I had a feeling everything was about to change.
“What do you see, Wyatt?” I asked, tapping the wall with a finger. “Right here. See this red area?”
Wyatt shrugged. “Yeah. It’s a bright red wall with a design on it?”
Cody knocked away a few pieces of tile I had missed.
“Cade,” Cody said, “it’s a damn door. The wall is a door.”
“Language,” I barked, but the command was weak.
Wyatt echoed our astonishment. “There’s a door in the wall?”
“No,” I muttered, thumping it with my knuckles. “The door is the wall. The other side of that door is the exterior of the house. The walls are . . . doors.”
We didn’t speak for a full ten seconds.
A brush of chilly air brought me around. Weird as it was, it didn’t matter what comprised the walls. We had to seal this place up.
I handed Cody a hammer and pry bar. “Let’s get it taken care of, boys.
First, we need to seal up the hole with a concrete mix I have in the barn.
Wyatt, I want you to go find it. While he does that, Cody, you’re going to peel back more of the drywall and expose the hidden door’s edges.
I’ve got a weird hunch there will be more doors. ”
After this was done, I eyed the larger area, replete with two more doors. “Boys, looks like whoever put our house together made the exterior walls out of doors.”
An hour later, the three of us stood back and stared.
“Walls made from doors and not an inch of insulation to be found along the exterior of your house,” Cody said, clucking. “You inherited a strange place, hoss.”
The feeling of a cold fist squeezing my guts had overtaken my stomach. We’d cleared away the drywall along the exterior wall, discovering that the only thing standing between us and a Wyoming winter was a wall of doors held together by horizontal wooden slabs.
Wyatt said, “You inherited a pole barn turned into a house, hoss. Did you know?”
Cody cuffed him on the back of the head.
“Of course he didn’t know, you idiot!”
The doors continued beyond this wall, into Noelle and Lily’s bedroom, and toward the kitchen. Beyond the confused blur that my brain had become—who built a house from doors?—rang a dozen of questions.
Namely, how long had Morgan lived in Wyoming without insulation? Following that was a flurry of alarm bells, terrifying in their loudness.
Not Morgan anymore.
Me.
This was my house now.
I had inherited a house built from doors.