Chapter Fifty-Three
Present Day
The door slams behind Hayley as she flings herself down the wide stone steps and across the lawn, racked with sobs, trying to catch her breath.
She’s ruined it. All of it. Kelly’s antique china, the elegant table, the white silk chair cushion, the beautiful rug . . .
That’s bad enough. That’s horrible.
She’ll have to use her babysitting money to pay for all the damage. She has almost $200. She definitely won’t be able to get the jeans at Nordstrom Rack now, and maybe not even the sweater, depending on how much is left over.
But that’s not even the worst thing.
She cries harder, blinded by tears and wiping her nose on her forearm, which is disgusting, but she doesn’t even care.
The worst thing of all is that she’s ruined any chance that her parents will ever, ever trust her again. Especially Mom. Especially since she made Hayley promise not to even unlock the door or go outside.
She hadn’t meant to. She couldn’t help it. When she saw the mess, she panicked, and all she could do was escape. She ran to the front door, threw it open, and rushed out of the house without realizing what she was doing.
Now, though, it sinks in. She goes absolutely still.
What if Mom doesn’t even have to know about this part?
What if Hayley goes back to the house right now, and locks the doors, and stays there, just as she promised?
Maybe the mess isn’t even as bad as she thought. Maybe she can clean it up. Most of it, anyway.
Maybe Mom and Dad will understand that it was an accident. They’ll have to see her as an adult if she offers to pay for it, because that’s what adults do, right? They take responsibility for their mistakes.
And everyone makes mistakes. Nobody’s perfect.
Hayley turns and heads back to the house. Seeing movement in a second-floor window, she stops short.
Oh—it’s a cat, looking out as if expecting someone.
“Hi, Bibi! It’s okay! I’m staying here,” she calls. “I’ll be right in.”
She climbs the steps and crosses the stone terrace to the door. It’s huge and carved of dark, heavy wood, the knob attached to a scrolled iron plate.
For some reason, it won’t turn.
Probably because it’s so old. Or maybe it’s sticking in the heat. One of the closet doors back home is hard to open when the weather is like this.
Hayley dries her sweaty hand on her shorts and grabs the knob again, twisting harder.
Still, it refuses to open.
It takes a moment for it to dawn on her that she’s locked out.
There must be a key hidden out here someplace.
At home, they used to keep one under a big clay flowerpot. But then one day the key disappeared, and they had to change all the locks, mostly because Caleb was scared that a robber had stolen it and was going to come back when they were sleeping.
Hayley is pretty sure that’s not what happened, because the key was lost on a rainy day when she and Chloe were playing on the porch and moved the flowerpot out of the way.
She didn’t mention that to her parents when they figured out that it was gone, but she did look around on the muddy ground by the porch just in case it had fallen down there. It hadn’t.
Well, maybe it had, because she only looked for, like, a minute before she saw a snake. Which might actually have been a worm. She’s not afraid of slithery things, but she doesn’t want to touch them either.
Okay, so where would Kelly hide a key on her porch?
Hayley looks around, then down at the welcome mat beneath her flip-flopped feet. She steps off it, reaches down, and lifts the corner. No key.
There are big stone planters on either side of the door, but they’re either really heavy or they’re bolted down, because there’s no way she can budge one.
She looks all over the rest of the terrace, lifting seat cushions and poking around the potted palms. No key.
Now what?
She’s going to have to call Mom and tell her what happened. That’s the grown-up thing to do.
Mind made up, Hayley reaches into her back right pocket for her phone.
It isn’t there.
She checks her back left pocket.
No phone.
But she’d just had it . . . when?
In the dining room, when she was trying to FaceTime Chloe.
She was so annoyed when she didn’t pick up that she threw the phone down on the table.
Then she must have been too busy breaking the saucer and spilling the coffee and trying to clean it up to grab her phone again before she ran out the door.
“Stupid. You’re so stupid!”
Stupid, and trapped.
Maybe Haven Cliff really is cursed.