A House for Keeping

by Matteson Wynn

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Wynnsiders

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Acknowledgments

  Wynnsiders

  A House for Keeping

  Matteson Wynn

  © 2018 Matteson Wynn

  Cover art and design by Michael Tangent.

  All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. No portion of this book may be reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

  Join Matteson Wynn’s Wynnsiders mailing list. You’ll get a free copy of the short story “A Road Trip for Finn” and get updates on new releases.

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  For Moira

  without whom this book wouldn’t be here

  Chapter One

  Magic fingers, my ass.

  I heaved myself upright and gave the vibrating hotel bed the sleepy version of a death glare. After a groggy moment wondering when and why I’d decided to turn on the “magic fingers” in the first place, I concluded it must’ve seemed like a good idea to my road-weary self. Now, not so much.

  I shook my head in an attempt to knock my sleepy thoughts into some kind of order, and memories of the previous night floated to the surface.

  I’d been driving cross-country, and I’d stubbornly stayed on the road longer than I should have. When my head thunked into my steering wheel, it was clear that my choice was either to take a catnap or take a dirt nap, so I’d pulled over, gotten a room, and totally passed out. Fully clothed. I hadn’t even taken my shoes off.

  Classy.

  That put me…

  …Um…

  I felt like that kid in Sleepless in Seattle. I knew I was “somewhere in the middle”—not the desert I’d left, not the East Coast I was heading for—but that was as close as my bleary brain cells could come to a location at the moment.

  So, right. No-tell motel. Lots of vibrating.

  How the hell was I supposed to be Finn the Fearless Traveler if I couldn’t get any sleep?

  Having had my fill of magic for the evening, I looked for the box by the bed to try and turn it off and…huh. No box. So why did my bed sound like a cat with the hiccups trying to purr?

  I wondered if maybe it was the people in the next room getting creative. While part of me applauded my mystery neighbors for their innovative sexy times, I had a lot more driving to do, which wasn’t gonna happen unless I got some shut-eye. Even at 22, a girl needs her rest.

  I considered trying to just sleep through it, but then the hum got louder, so I gave up on that idea and decided to call the front desk. As I leaned over to grab the room phone, the bed wobbled, I lost my balance, and I found myself making friends with the floor.

  It was vibrating, too.

  With a groan, I staggered to my feet. Realizing sleep was not likely to happen in this room, I grabbed my purse off the nightstand with one hand and my rolling suitcase handle with the other, and started for the door. I wasn’t in the mood to negotiate, so I was going to march down to the lobby, and they could just move me to another room ASAP.

  I’d only taken a couple of steps when the floor lurched, sending me stumbling forward. Heart skipping, I scrambled for the door while my suddenly alert brain tried to recall which parts of “somewhere in the middle” had earthquakes.

  I turned the door knob and pulled, did a double-take, then pulled again.

  The door wouldn’t open.

  I leaned back, pulling with all my strength, but the sucker wouldn’t budge. While I was wondering whether kicking it would help, the humming changed to a low roaring sound. Suddenly, the floor heaved, sending me slamming into the door, head first.

  Eyes watering, I stood there, momentarily stunned, face plastered against the door as my necklace swung back and forth, knocking on the door. I had a sudden understanding of how mosquitoes must feel about windshields.

  Peeling myself off the door, I pulled on the doorknob again. This time, the door opened halfway, but then it stuck.

  I shoved my suitcase and purse through the opening, and got one foot in the doorway when an earsplitting crunching sound came from behind me. The door shuddered, slammed partway closed, and then stuck again, trapping me half in and half out, facing into the room. When what I was seeing finally registered through my panic, I froze, gaping.

  The floor was eating the bed.

  It started by sucking down a leg, then moved on to inhale a corner. Within seconds, the whole bed had disappeared.

  I gasped as I realized the rest of the room was sliding toward the growing hole that had just snarfed down my bed. It was like my own special Pit of Sarlacc had opened and was devouring the room.

  Like any good prey, I kept my eye on the thing about to eat me, but I tried like hell to escape. I exhaled all my air, sucked in my gut, and tried to push myself through the door. It didn’t budge, and neither did I.

  The pit, however, was having great success. As I struggled, the nightstand disappeared down the hole, accompanied by a horrible grinding sound.

  Saying a prayer to the skinny-bitch gods to temporarily make me thinner, I pushed and wiggled harder. From the amount of sweat pouring down me, I was amazed I couldn’t just slide through the door.

  A loud crack reverberated through me. Under my feet, I felt a slipping sensation, and then the section of the floor I was standing on tilted downward and began to separate from the wall.

  The door picked that moment to swing open. Arms pinwheeling, I teetered and slid forward.

  A hand clamped down on my shoulder, yanking me backwards, and I landed on my ass in the hallway, with a thud just as—

  The noise was deafening.

  The whole floor fell in, taking everything in the room with it. All that was left was a gaping hole.

  Well, not quite.

  The damn door still hung drunkenly from one hinge.

  Chapter Two

  Adrenaline: Nature’s way of lettin’ ya know that now is not a good time to take a nap.

  For years, I’d listened to the truck drivers who frequented our diner trade tips for staying awake while driving. “Nearly getting sucked down a sink hole” never made the list somehow. Well, it was certainly working for me, and I was putting my newly acquired wide-awakeness
to good use by speeding down the highway.

  As I put miles between me and the Hotel Room of Doom, my thoughts turned to my rescuer. When I’d landed in the hallway, I found myself staring at a pair of worn cowboy boots. When I panned up, the face peering down at me looked to be made of the same cracked leather as the boots. It’d occurred to me that I might be in shock when I found myself starting to count the man’s wrinkles to figure out his age, like you do with the rings on a tree. I was guessing he was a redwood of some sort.

  “That’s it. Focus on me,” he said. “Well, you’re not bleeding, missy, so that’s good. Can you move everything okay?”

  While I wiggled my bits and pieces, people began pouring into the hallway. A teenager had squeezed his way to the doorway of my room and peered in. He said, “Wow! Look at that sink hole!” and then proceeded to take a selfie with the room as his backdrop.

  Boots rolled his eyes and put himself between the kid and me, keeping me out of the photo shoot. Small favors.

  I looked at Boots and asked, “Sink hole?”

  “Did your floor sink into a big hole?”

  I nodded.

  He shrugged, “Sink hole.”

  I must have looked as confused as I felt, because he added, “Not your regular old sink hole, either. That’s a doozie.” He patted my shoulder, checked to make sure the budding photographer had moved on, and retreated down the hallway himself.

  I must’ve still been dazed because it had taken me a full thirty seconds to yell, “Uh, thanks!” after him. He’d waved as he kept on going.

  A huge yawn refocused my attention on the highway. Alas, adrenaline only takes you so far. Plus, my mom’s car Babs was muttering at me, and I’d learned to pay attention to her when she says she needs a rest. Babs and I had a deal. We both just had to hold it together till I got cross-country. After I attended my family’s reunion, I’d be boarding a ship, and she could rest in peace.

  I pulled over at a truck stop just as the fatigue came roaring back to bitch slap me into submission.

  As I sat in the truck stop diner snarfing down a breakfast burrito and working my way through a pot of coffee, I noted the energy level in the diner. The truckers were buzzing like a bunch of teenagers, which meant something juicy had happened. I eavesdropped on the truckers closest to me, but only heard a few snatches of the conversation.

  “Did I hear something about a storm coming?” I asked Sue, my waitress. “I checked my phone, but I didn’t see anything in the forecast.”

  “They’re talking about that freak ice storm,” she said. “Turned the freeway into a slip-and-slide over near the state line. Caused a huge pile-up involving something like a hundred cars.” She topped off my coffee without me even having to ask and added, “You might be in for a little rain, though,” and headed off down the counter.

  Jeez, if I hadn’t left my hotel when I did, I would have been skating across the freeway like everyone else. So the sink hole was kind of a blessing in disguise, I guessed—and who would’ve thought those words would ever cross my mind?

  The waitress was right. Back on the road again, oh boy did it rain. Coming from a place where the forecast had mainly to do with whether the sun was going to bake, roast, or fry you, I’d been looking forward to actual weather, particularly some rain. I had rain all right. All day long, I had types of rain that I’d never even known existed.

  The morning started out okay, with the usual kinds of civilized rain I’d expected: dashing, dancing, and prancing across my windshield. I really enjoyed how the soft tapping soothed my sink-hole-induced anxiety.

  Then the rain got vexing. It seemed like it couldn’t decide if it actually wanted to be rain or some kind of weird drool that confused my windshield wipers so much they emitted disgruntled squeaks as they swiped at it.

  I guess the drool was a warning because I got vomit rain next, arriving in chunky waves. I also had polluted rain, which somehow made my car dirtier. And, then came the blitzing rain, which appeared out of nowhere.

  I frowned at the distressed noises Babs was making as the blitzing rain got heavier. I decided to call this new stuff Gandalf rain—so heavy, you shall not pass!—and I pulled over at another truck stop to wait until it let up. As I was slowing to pull off the highway, I noticed cars around me starting to hydroplane. I patted Babs and thanked her for insisting I pull over before I had to use her as a surfboard. My thanks turned into a growl of protest when she refused to open her door against the wind and rain pushing at her. I sighed. I could wait a little longer to pee. This would be a good time to try to reach the reunion again.

  You’d think that in this day and age, there’d at least be a reunion website set up, but no. The invitation had come with just a phone number.

  On the day I found the invitation, I’d been dismantling Dad’s office. The sale of the diner had gone through, and I’d had no choice if I didn’t want strangers going through all of our things.

  I squeezed into the office, automatically checking for any critters milling about underfoot. Of course, they’d all been given homes, but it was an old habit. Dad had always brought home strays, but after Mom died, he went from a random rescue or two to a rotating herd.

  As I moved past, the pages on the overtaxed bulletin board waved hello to me. I decided to start there and get the “this was your life” portion of the day over with. On the top layer, there were the schedules I’d constructed, the manifests for goods that I’d ordered, the running tally of things we needed. Beneath that, I knew I’d find art projects I’d made and papers I’d written, which Dad’d refused to take down. I sighed, pulled on my big-girl panties, and began ruthlessly trashing or recycling everything.

  By the time I trudged upstairs to our apartment, I looked like I’d been attacked by a crazed paper fairy and lost. My hair made it clear that the fairy had spent some quality time dive bombing it. My clothing was equally disheveled, sporting a nice new hole where I’d gotten stuck on the rough edge of the file cabinet. And to top it off, I was covered with a light coating of pixie paper dust. Why the hell hadn’t Dad gone digital? As the paper cuts on my hands taunted me with their endless stinging, I lamented my dad’s lack of tech savvy. Guys were supposed to be obsessed with gizmos and gadgets, right? Well, someone had forgotten to whack my dad with the technology stick, and now I was paying the price.

  I stood in the living room debating the urgency of my needs: beer or shower? Priding myself on being an effective multitasker, I took the beer with me into the shower. Newly refreshed, I tackled the pile of mail I’d been ignoring. I already had a zillion paper cuts, what were a few more?

  The invitation was buried near the bottom of the stack. Oddly, it was addressed just to me.

  It looked like a wedding invitation, all cream-colored thick paper, hand-lettered in a fancy calligraphy style. It said:

  Foster Family Gathering

  It gave a date, a state, and an RSVP phone number.

  At the bottom there was a note that said: *Directions to come.

  Perhaps the invitation caught me at a weak moment, but I sat sipping my beer and thought, Why the hell not? I’d never met most of my mom’s family. I was heading to the East Coast anyway to start my oceanography degree by doing a year at sea. The timing worked out. But I hesitated. Mom and Dad had had little contact with their families, and there must’ve been a reason for that. But the fact that they were gone made the idea of making connections with my remaining family impossible for me to resist.

  I’d called the number and gotten a standard mechanized recording, not even a personalized message. I RSVP’d and received another letter confirming my attendance and giving the address of where to attend along with directions. Not just local directions, either. They’d mapped a route all the way cross-country, which I found both sweet and weird. But the overkill in the directions department just emphasized the lack of other info. No list of activities. No ideas about what kind of dress code this involved. No idea how many people were attending. I knew fr
om my parents that the Fosters were a huge, old family, spread out all over the globe. But did that mean this was an international thing, or just for the U.S. branch of the family? I didn’t know whether we’d be doing champagne and formal dresses, or if it’d be burgers and dogs in the backyard. Since I didn’t own anything super formal, I was kind of banking on the latter. I’d been dialing periodically, trying to reach an actual person to pump them for info, but so far, I’d only gotten voicemail.

  So I took my momentary rain break there in the car to try calling. Again. And was momentarily speechless when a woman actually answered the phone.

  “Hello?” she asked again. “If this is a crank call, the least you could do is make an effort and throw in some heavy breathing.”

  “Uh, hi,” I said. “I’m, uh, calling about the reunion?”

  “Oh sure,” she said. “I’m Meg. I live at the house. How can I help you?”

  “Meg? As in Cousin Meg?” I couldn’t believe my good luck.

  “Probably. Who is this?”

  “Oh, sorry, hi, I don’t know if you remember me, it’s been a while—a long while—I mean, I’m twenty-two now and I was, like, eight then—but we spent a summer vacation together, and oh my God I had such an awesome time!” Oh my God was right. I’d idolized Meg that summer, following her around, hanging on her every word and deed. Here it was, years later, and I was still gushing like an idiot. What was wrong with me?

  There was a brief pause. “Finn?” she asked.

  “Oh hey! You remember me!” I winced. Dogs for miles would be howling from the high-pitched perkiness in my voice. Ew.

  “…Hello. It’s been a while…”

  “Yeah. I can’t wait to catch up.”

  “You’re coming here? For the reunion?”

  “You betcha.” You betcha? I supposed I should be happy I hadn’t thrown in a “by golly” for good measure. I desperately needed to get off the phone and get a freakin’ grip.

  “Sorry I seemed so surprised. I’m not in charge of the RSVPs so I haven’t seen the list,” she said. “So Finn, what can I do for you?”