Chapter Two #3
Sienna’s mouth opens, but before she can say too much, she shuts it again, forcing her attention back to the model house.
Her gaze drifts up to the second floor, both wings laid bare.
She recognizes the bedroom she shares with Malcolm, draped in yellow, as well as Millie’s, awash in blue, and what must be Jaxon’s, the only room rendered white.
She gets her first look at the rooms on the other wing as well.
A cozy green nook—that must be Cate’s. A room in shades of pink, for Priscilla.
And a room as purple as a bruise. Kenzo’s.
It feels voyeuristic, being able to see inside the other writers’ rooms, to reach in and touch the beds, part the tiny curtains.
Which is silly, since they aren’t really theirs.
And that’s the model’s failing. This is the house as it belonged to Fletch, not as they’re currently inhabiting it.
The rooms are there, but not the typewriters or their stacks of colored paper.
Not Cate’s oversize cardigans, or Priscilla’s fuchsia-colored suitcase, or the giant bag she heard Jaxon lugging up the stairs.
Sienna watches Kenzo pull back the violet curtains in his model bedroom, moving so carefully, as if a sideways breath might upset the whole thing, and she finds herself saying, “I can’t believe you write horror.”
He glances up at her, one black brow lifting slightly.
“It’s just,” she adds, “you seem so . . . normal.”
Kenzo shrugs, prodding the model sofa in the model drawing room, the one that was trying to swallow him when they arrived. “Maybe I just get all my demons out on the page.”
“No deep dark secrets then?” She knows she’s fishing, but she can’t help it. Kenzo strikes her as the type who keeps his cards close to his chest.
“What can I say?” He gingerly lifts a miniature crossbow from its mounting in the model foyer.
“I just like scaring the pants off of people.” But Sienna can tell it’s more than that, and sure enough, after a moment of studying the tiny weapon, he goes on.
“Reading horror is like hitching a ride with a stranger. You’re on edge, guessing all the things that could happen, but never knowing if or when they will.
But writing horror means being the one behind the wheel. ”
“So it’s all about control?”
He considers. “Mostly. Not all. I also like the fact that anything can happen.” He replaces the crossbow on its hook and withdraws his hand from the model.
“Horror isn’t just jump scares and haunted dolls.
It’s myth, and lore, and family secrets.
It can be scary, sure, but good horror doesn’t happen without heart.
And sometimes there are monsters, but those are just constructs, foils.
At its core, horror is about humans. What we’re capable of. And what we’re capable of surviving.”
Sienna smiles. “Wow.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” she says. “It’s just a great answer.”
“Did it sound too rehearsed?”
“Not at all.”
“Good.”
“Was it?” she asks.
“Entirely.”
Sienna laughs.
“But it’s still true.” Kenzo nods at her. “Your turn. Why did you choose thrillers?”
Sienna hesitates. “I didn’t really choose,” she says.
“It was just what Malcolm wrote. And then I started helping him, and changing course never felt like an option.” She hears the words as they leave her mouth and hates them.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she adds, trying to salvage her pride.
“I liked the challenge, and the work was fun.”
Until it wasn’t.
“It’s not too late to change course. We’re all just works in progress.”
She gives him a look.
“Too cheesy?”
“Way too cheesy.”
Kenzo chuckles. “I mean it. If you could change now, which you totally can, what would you write?”
She studies the mini marble squares on the foyer floor.
One corner of the little rug beneath the foyer table is rucked up, and she smooths it down.
The truth is, she doesn’t know. She likes novels in all shapes and sizes.
She’s always read widely—unlike Malcolm, who won’t even look at other genres—always cared less about where a story’s shelved than how it makes her feel.
She doesn’t think it matters what she writes, so long as it excites her.
That’s what she misses. The electric shiver of a great idea. The whir of her thoughts as her mind races through the possibilities. The pride of a perfectly worded line. The way time stops, and falls away, and it’s just her, and the story.
That’s what she wants to get back.
And maybe she can.
After all, Sienna Buchanan—soon to be Wood—doesn’t have to follow in her husband’s footsteps.
Sienna Buchanan—soon to be Wood—could write anything. She could write romance. Or historical. Or she could write thrillers because she wants to.
She realizes Kenzo is still waiting for an answer.
She lets out a nervous laugh. “I guess that,” she says, “is the million-dollar question.”
“Two million,” counters Kenzo, “if you count the money for Fletch’s ending.”
Sienna has just opened her mouth to marvel at the sum when she notices something odd about the model house. She was so taken by the other details—but still, she can’t believe it took her so long to pick up on it.
There’s a third floor.
Not a big one, but a kind of attic space, a hollow turret, on her side of the house.
Large enough for a single room. The other bedrooms are all neat and tidy.
This one alone has been rendered differently, as if it’s lived in.
The bed, small enough to fit in the palm of her hand, and yet so detailed she can see the carvings in the wooden headboard, the duvet thrown back, as if its occupant has just gotten up.
There’s something oddly ascetic about the space.
It’s smaller than the other rooms, and sparsely decorated.
A black typewriter sits on a narrow desk before the open window, and a handful of loose papers are scattered like leaves over the rug, across the floor, as if the breeze has blown them off the table.
But it’s the tiny red hat hanging on the desk chair that tells Sienna what she already suspects.
“That was his room,” she says softly, and she can’t help but imagine that this is how it looked, the day he died.
She pictures Arthur Fletch flinging back the duvet, getting dressed, and heading out for his swim, rapping his knuckles on the stack of pages on his way out, a promise that he’d come back and finish what he started.
There’s a door, leading onto a hidden set of stairs that runs down from the attic room to the second floor—her wing. Which doesn’t make sense. There are only three doors on that wing. Jaxon’s, Millie’s, and theirs.
But then Kenzo leans in and touches a spot on the patterned wall between Millie’s and Jaxon’s rooms, and a small door, disguised by the paper, pops open.
“I found it last night. The actual door, I mean.”
He says it like it’s nothing, but for the first time, Sienna feels a nervous prickle. “Last night?” For a second she’s back in bed, being woken by the scream, rushing toward Millie’s room, where someone, somehow, got in.
“I spent most of the day looking around, trying to get inspired. This isn’t my genre, after all. I needed to get in the right headspace.” Kenzo’s tone is still casual. “I found the door on the model, first, and went to check it out after everyone went to bed, but it was locked.”
Sienna frowns. “Was that before or after you snuck the note into Millie’s room?”
Kenzo’s expression flickers, first surprise, then hurt. “That wasn’t me.”
“You said you liked scaring the shit out of people.”
The hurt vanishes, replaced by his usual dry humor. “Ah, mine own words, come back to haunt me. I do. In books. But I don’t make a habit of—”
“Has anyone seen Sisi?”
Malcolm’s voice echoes through the house.
For a moment Sienna stays where she is, crouched behind the model.
“Need me to fall on the sword?” asks Kenzo. “Or send him on a wild goose chase? Or lead him down the garden path? Sorry, I’m running out of sayings.”
She sighs and gets to her feet. “Thanks, but I’ll bite the bullet. Or face the music. Fight my own battles. Or—fuck, I can’t think of any more.”
“And they call us wordsmiths.”
Kenzo swings the model closed and follows Sienna back into the kitchen.
“Ah, there you are,” says her soon-to-be-ex, who has the audacity to look well rested, his salt-and-pepper hair swept back, dressed in slacks and a sweater with the elbows patched—a look she used to think of as sexy professor and now feels more like belligerent grandpa.
He’s standing at the counter with Priscilla and Millie, three sheets of paper laid out between them, one yellow, one blue, one pink.
Cate arrives, handing over a fourth, the same two words printed on pale-green paper.
GET OUT.
Malcolm’s gone into full detective mode, scratching his chin (a tic he insisted on giving to their latest PI, the devil being in the details and all that) and hmming thoughtfully as he hinges forward, examining the letters in search of the damning misaligned G.
She didn’t see Kenzo duck out, but now he returns holding two pieces of paper, one lavender, the other white. The lavender is his, which means the white sheet belongs to—
“I took the liberty of getting Jaxon’s, too,” he says, as if saving them the trip.
Sienna studies Kenzo.
“What?” he adds. “The door was open.”
“Excellent,” says Malcolm, even though it’s not.
If Kenzo were the one behind the message, he could have just framed Jaxon. Or he could have used Jaxon’s typewriter to make himself look innocent. Not that any of this has occurred to Malcolm. Sienna shakes her head. He really would make a terrible detective.
Malcolm adds the samples to the set. They stare down at the counter.
Six pages, each with the two words typed in hard black capitals.
GET OUT. GET OUT. GET OUT. The effect is disconcerting, but so is the fact that they’re all identical: The G is perfectly in line with the rest of the letters.
Sienna steals a glance toward Kenzo, but he doesn’t look guilty or relieved, just perplexed.
“Huh,” he says, cocking his head.
“What does it mean?” asks Cate, eyes wide.
Malcolm rubs her shoulder. “It means, dear Cate, the game is afoot!”
Millie sighs. “Thanks for trying.” She looks up at Malcolm. “And thanks . . . for your help . . . earlier.”
A little warning light goes on inside Sienna’s head. She’s seen enough doe-eyed novices look at Malcolm that way, over the years. She clears her throat.
“With what?” she asks, trying not to sound like a jealous wife.
“It’s not a big deal,” murmurs Millie, blushing in a way that doesn’t help her cause.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” says Malcolm, letting his hand come to rest on the girl’s shoulder. Sienna glares at the point where skin meets cotton and forces her mouth into something like a smile.
“Go on, then. Share with the group.”
Priscilla cocks a brow. Kenzo and Cate stand there, in rapt attention. Malcolm chuckles, but he must be able to feel the heat radiating off Sienna, because he removes his hand from Millie’s shoulder as he explains.
“I heard some distress coming from Millie’s room. Turned out, she was having a spot of bother with the typewriter.”
“I made a mistake,” she cuts in. “On a laptop, you know, it doesn’t matter, you just go back, but these things are so clunky, and if I went too fast, my fingers kept tripping, so I’d gone slow, and I’d made it all the way down to the bottom of the page, and I couldn’t believe I’d have to start over. ”
Sienna stares at her, bewildered. “But . . . why not just use Wite-Out?”
Malcolm nods. “Exactly what I said. And Millie here goes, ‘What-Out?’ ”
Between the arching brows and the earnest look, his impersonation is spot-on. He laughs, returning to himself. “So I showed her how to use it.”
Cate’s the only one who looks like she’s taking mental notes. Sienna feels bones groan beneath her skin. Kenzo just shakes his head. Priscilla takes off her pink glasses and pinches the bridge of her nose. “My god.”
“What? I’m sorry I wasn’t alive before computers.” Millie claps her hand over her mouth.
Priscilla and Sienna exchange a tired look before the reality of it hits Sienna. Whether or not Millie’s typewriter is the one who woke her up that morning, she’s already started writing. Panic winds around her ribs. Ticktock, goes her heart.
She and Malcolm better get to work.