Windfall

by Tempe O'Kun

  She didn’t see his arm until it wrapped her shoulders. He pulled her into a hug and she dared to breathe again. “You were scared and you needed someone to talk to. I’m glad you can talk to me.”

  Kylie didn’t trust herself to speak, so she just pressed herself against the solid warmth of his chest and let a long, rattling sigh escape her. She wrapped her arms around him and buried her muzzle in his shirt, feeling saner than she had in months.

  — Chapter 6 —

  The Past

  The next morning saw Kylie hunched over the kitchen table, nursing a cup of coffee like it held the answers to her problems. She hadn’t slept much, still riled up from the talk the day before. Max had been understanding last night, but he might still have second thoughts about staying in a house with a couple of mentally-unstable otters. Not likely, but some guys didn’t like surprises. She chased the thought from her bleary mind.

  Caffeine was better than sleep anyway: easier to summon on command. She’d only made one mug, since the husky was somehow always perfectly chipper without it. Then she realized his absence from the kitchen, where he’d normally be wolfing down a bowl or three of cereal. She padded over to his room and knocked. The door swung open.

  Sitting up in the small bed, a dressed and showered, Max pored over old records on his laptop. He looked up. His tail thumped the mattress. “Hi.”

  “Hey.” She leaned against the doorframe, wrapping her paws around the warm cup. She tried not to think about warming up against Max’s fluffy frame instead. “What’re you doing?”

  “Checking the journals against census data and public records for the house.” He tapped a claw on the screen. “None of your ancestors living outside of Bourn Manor show indications of being crazier than average, and only about one in a generation went crazy here.”

  “Great: I’m an only child.” Still, a fine mist of relief dispersed through her mind. She took a sip of coffee, letting the heat flood her muzzle. “Granted, not all craziness shows up in census data.”

  The husky’s ears lifted with concern. “No, but it’s an interesting pattern.”

  She set aside her worries of imminent madness, slipping into the room. She figured Max might have the right idea. Better to look for answers than sit around worrying herself sick. “Okay, so what could be in an old house that would make people go crazy?” She counted off on webbed fingers. “Hallucinogenic fungus, isolation, lead pipes, chemical imbalance, ancient curse…”

  “Well, if it’s anything like the curse from Season Two, we should learn about the cure after the first commercial break. This place does run on a well, though—could have lithium in the water or something.” He jerked a thumb at a map on his laptop screen. “You know, from those silver mines you mentioned.”

  Kylie glanced at him. “Been poking around the Internet, have ya?”

  He shrugged, blushing. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.” Clearing his throat, he sat up straighter. “Anyway, I called the hardware store—they sell well-water test kits. We can run down there whenever.”

  “You’re cute when you’re smart, Maxie.” Slipping out her phone, she pulled up some satellite imaging of the property. “I don’t think there are any mines uphill of us.”

  “Wouldn’t have to be uphill if it’s a deep enough well.” Another shrug, this time while closing his laptop. “Anyway, we could look around the house too. Lots of rooms full of old furniture and boxes. Maybe there’s weird mold or something.”

  The otter’s gaze narrowed. “This sounds suspiciously like cleaning.”

  Max smirked. “I may have been talking to your mom before you got up.”

  Her sleek arms crossed while her tail swayed in amusement. “You don’t need to kiss up.”

  He sat up a little straighter on the mattress and patted her shoulder. “Nothing says I can’t help you both.”

  “Okay, but first: breakfast.” She padded over to the cupboard, retrieved a box, and shook it at him. “Your day’s cereal ration.”

  “Mmmm, Baco-Puffs.” The husky licked his lips.

  Hours passed. After a quick trip to the store, they set about their investigations. The otter looked through the glass of water holding a test strip, watching Max through the distortion. “All the bands are turning blue or green.”

  A vaguely husky-shaped blob studied the box. “Those are the nonpoisonous colors.”

  She rose from the barstool, palms on the countertop. “Yay?”

  The big dog turned the box over to examine the other side. He didn’t look terribly satisfied either. “Partial yay. We don’t have an answer, but we’re not being poisoned.” He pitched it into the garbage with a wry smile. “Good thing, too. If I picked up heavy metal poisoning, I’d have a hard time convincing my family to let me visit again.”

  Next came the excitement of the mold test. As she had predicted, the collection process included a fair amount of cleaning. They tested the easy places first: Mom’s study, the living room, the kitchen, and three bedrooms. Coming up with nothing in the first round of samples, they scoured the rest of the hulking edifice’s vast and dusty drear for anything to scrape into disposable test tubes.

  Upon returning to the living room, Max shook the last of the vials. “House’s free of harmful mold, looks like. I put some aside to see if it grows, just to be safe.” He placed a petri dish in the cabinet under the sink. “And for what it’s worth, I didn’t really smell anything that seemed, you know, moldy.”

  Kylie sighed, draping backwards over the top of the sofa. “Great…”

  He cocked an ear at her.

  A roll of her eyes translated down her body. “No, I didn’t want the house to have deadly molds. I just want a better answer.”

  Padding across the worn hardwood floor, he patted her stomach in a reassuring manner.

  Kylie, head still resting on the cushion, smiled up at him, not shying away.

  “It’s probably just as well we tested for all this stuff.” His wide shoulder shrugged at the room. “It’s an old house.”

  The otter rolled off the sofa, then let her head tilt back with a forlorn breath and tipped forward at him. “Now what?”

  He didn’t budge as she leaned against him and thought for a moment. “You could stop eating strange mushrooms from the woods.”

  “I don’t.”

  He stroked his chin. “You could start.”

  She swung her hips to swat his rump with her tail.

  The husky just grinned and poked through the cupboards, as though he expected to find something more interesting than toaster pastries and cobwebs. “I have no idea what your family ate back then. Any old cookbooks lying around? A recipe for mercury casserole would explain a lot.”

  She brushed hair from her face and rested her cheek on a closed fist as she watched him bustle about the kitchen. His nose was working, she noticed, like he was trying to sniff out a clue. Adorable. “Sorry, we Bevys only document our descents into madness.”

  He spread his wide paws. “For all we know it was some kind of gill fungus on the local trout.”

  “We don’t eat raw fish straight out of the river.” Her fists propped on her hips.

  His paw spread as if holding an idea. “Sushi.”

  “Trout sashimi?” She pressed her hands together under her chin in thought. “That’s a good idea, but I don’t think these ancestors knew about sushi. My family only discovered sushi in the 60s.”

  Max pondered, looking out the window as the beaver contractor unloaded more roofing supplies. “Has to be something…”

  She looked up at him, then toyed with the hem of his shirt. “You’re being really great about all this, Max. Most people would have just told me not to worry.”

  He smiled his winning smile, wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and pulled her tight against his chest. “This was bugging you, so we’re gonna fix it. I’d hate to go back home and leave you all twisted up over this.”

  Kylie fought the impulse to nuzzle the tuft of soft fur
poking from his collar. Her hand drifted halfway from his flank to his chest before she could stop herself, though he showed no sign of noticing. She hurried the conversation along with a clear of her throat. “So, um, now what?”

  “Hmmm.” The husky let her go and used the sofa as designed. He grabbed a journal from the coffee table and flipped through the pages one by one, careful with each yellowed leaf. “Skimmed these last night. Let me take another look; might find some leads…”

  Kylie’s phone buzzed. She swiped a web across it to wake it up.

  Laura: {Honey, can you come up to the attic and help me?}

  The younger otter patted Max on the shoulder. “Well, Mom has summoned me. Come save me if you find anything.”

  He nodded and smiled, looking up from the old diaries. The books, scaled to otter paws, looked so tiny in his.

  She padded to the stairway, then paused, hand on the wall. “You know you don’t have to do all this, Max.”

  “You’d do the same for me.”

  A twitch of amusement worked through her whiskers. “Make sure you give me a call when you think your family’s going insane.”

  With a smirk, he settled back in the sofa and nosed into a book. “That ship has sailed.”

  Giggling, the lutrine bounced up the stairs. Two flights later, she poked her head into the musty attic. “Hey Mom. Did you need to talk about something?”

  “Hmm? Not really.” Her mother hefted a box onto an old desk, opening it with a puff of pulverized packing tape. “I just don’t have time to accomplish much else before I head out, so I thought my darling daughter would help me clear out some of the attic for a few minutes.”

  Kylie rolled her eyes, but waddled over to a stack of suitcases and started exploring her family’s untidy past. A dusty hour passed. She and her mother made a small dent in the attic’s sea of clutter. They even found a cache of antique cannonballs, rusting in a far corner under a banner for some kind of crab festival.

  Light streamed through the attic window, glimmering through the swirling motes as her mother continued sorting junk. The space stood packed to the rafters with cardboard boxes. She shifted one of them, which dislodged a billow of dust and a small baseball bat, which clattered to the floor. The younger lutrine sneezed and examined it. “Huh.”

  “Little league bat.” Laura looked up, elbows-deep in an especially tall, rattly box. “It belonged to your grandfather.” She poked her head inside, then came out wiggling spiderwebbed whiskers. “Couldn’t bring myself to part with it.”

  “You mean it wasn’t worth any money.”

  “Yeah, it’s that too. It’s got a weird stain on the end.” She tsked her tongue at the club’s business end. “Stick it in your great uncle’s old room when you go down. Oooh, but try this first.” The elder otter hefted a full-height garment bag. The bag appeared to be from an era when plastic was both coveted and dyed obscene hues.

  Unzipping it, Kylie found a pleated and laced monstrosity in white. Nacre beads shone with iridescent splendor, heedless of forgotten years. “Whoa. I don’t remember seeing this.”

  “I only show you heirlooms when I’m sure you won’t destroy them.” Seated, Laura peered up over her glasses. “It’s your grandmother’s wedding dress. In surprisingly good condition too; it’s not even discolored. Why don’t you try it on?”

  Shedding her vest, she managed to nuzzle and hula her way into the garment, then got her mother’s help in securing the various straps, hooks, and doodads. Before the dusty mirror, Kylie stood in her grandmother’s wedding dress, which clung to her every curve. “Okay, so I’m the exact shape grandma used to be.”

  “Looks good on you. At least one of us might get some use out of the thing. For about an hour twenty years ago, I almost had use for it, but I was in the wrong end of the country at the time.” Digging deep into a strongbox, Laura lifted and untied a roll of ancient canvas, revealing a polished seashell handle poking from each pocket. “Here we go…”

  The younger otter perked up over her shoulder. “What’re those?”

  “Your great aunt’s sushi knives, probably from her trip to Japan. We should start using these.” She drew one, which sliced the heavy scabbard threading with a steel whisper. “Ooh, careful; they’re sharp.”

  “They’re only sharp on one side.” She peered down the length of the blade. A little tarnished, but the straight edge gleamed like a katana.

  “It’s for right-handed people. Or left handers. A gal loses her grip on the particulars after forty years.” The elder otter pulled another knife from the set. “This one’s sharp on the other side—it’s for shelling crab.”

  She took the implement and admired its form and balance. A glint of pearlescence gleamed caught her eye. In another old box, she saw it: a perfectly-split nautilus. Wondering if one of her ancestors had eaten it, she shifted the knives to her other hand and picked up the shell.

  Max walked in. His ears and eyebrows rose.

  Only when she saw the husky’s eyes widen did Kylie consider what she looked like, standing in a half-dark attic, wearing a musty old wedding dress and clutching an ancient seashell and a pair of wicked silver knives. “Uh, This isn’t how it looks.”

  His eyebrows inched up.

  Careful not to impale herself, she propped fists on her hips. “Okay, so it’s a little bit how it looks.”

  An amused snort rose from her mother.

  His eyes traced her up and down in that distant authorial way. Then he swished a little wag through the dusty air. “It looks nice, actually. Very classy.”

  “You don’t know the half of it.” Reaching into an old jewelry box, Kylie draped an intricate seed pearl torc around her neck. “Pretty swanky, huh?”

  He looked it up and down. “That’s more opulence than I’m used to seeing from any Bevy.”

  Kylie spun to a regal pose. “We were quite the affluent bunch once, darling, if you can believe it.”

  He woofed a little laugh. “I have a harder time believing your mom didn’t sell it when she liquidated the assets.”

  The middle-aged mustelid shrugged. “Uncle Leister hung it up as a wind chime, so I didn’t notice it.” She hefted an old oak bucket, etched with intricate cameos. A few pearls rolled around the bottom. “Plus, we used to keep this by the table on oyster nights.”

  The younger lutrine let out a little whistle at the workmanship and wondered how much more information she’d have access to if her mother hadn’t funded living in Hollywood with the house’s contents. “Why didn’t you just rent this place out?”

  “That was Plan A: turns out no one wants to rent our old, creepy house.” Her mother gave a dry chuckle. “Plan B collapsed too: the market couldn’t support another haunted bed and breakfast.”

  Max smirked. “Too bad you don’t have any fields—we could’ve put in some crop circles to give you an edge.”

  “No, no, Max, I said a haunted B&B. That crowd doesn’t appreciate mixing genres.” Laura’s phone made an antiquated telephone ring. She set down a stack of old photos and frowned at the screen. “Sorry kids, I’ve gotta take this.” She headed back down to her office.

  After she watched her mother vanish down the stairs, the younger otter’s arms sprung into the air. “We’re free!” She waggled her body in celebration, then turned to let him see the row of buttons down her back, making sure her tail dragged along his ankles. She cast a little smile over her shoulder. “Help me out of this, would ya?”

  Ears erect and pink, he swallowed and leaned in to undo the tiny clasps.

  The fact that he seemed taken aback might be a good sign. Then again, as an otter and an actor, she might be placing too little value on the power of partial nudity. She cursed herself for not wearing more interesting undergarments. Then she forgave herself: Max’s innocent little mind might overload at anything too scandalous. “How ya doin’ back there, Maxie?”

  “F-fine.” His thick fingers fumbled. “Almost got it…”

  As the last of the
buttons sprung free, she slithered out of the garment. Heartbeat skipping, she hopped halfway into her shorts and and shirt before remembering to be sultry. To compensate, she made sure to be extra sensual in zipping up her fishing vest. She stopped as soon as he looked, hoping it would draw attention to her cleavage.

  Tucking the dress back into its garment bag, the blushing dog looked anywhere but at her. “Shouldn’t we keep cleaning?”

  “Max, Maxie, my dear dog.” Trotting across the creaky boards, she pulled a shedding feather boa from a hat rack and tossed it over her shoulders. “We’re just actors. Without her artistic direction, we won’t do anything right.”

  The big canine nodded, then led her downstairs, past the serious business chatter of her mother. He plunked back down onto the sofa and flipped through an open journal on the coffee table. “I just had a section that might help us…”

  She flowed onto the cushion beside him. “The one about sweet, bitter words in the tongue of darkness? Or the one with the writhing coils of inside-out serpents, lacking heads or tails?”

  “Neither, actually. It’s right at the end.” He paged through the blank pages at the back of another journal, going too far and having to backtrack. “Ley lines, moon maps, ah! Here we go: ‘I did it! I burned the bastard’s house down. Need to get out of here before he sends his master after me. Leaving immediately. Have stashed supplies at shack. With luck, I’ll be able to come back and reclaim this information for the benefit of all the world.’” He smiled. “Think that shack’s still around?”

  “Could be.” Her gaze swept down page after page of ramblings. “Think there might be more clues there? If he was planning to come back there…”

  He scooted closer to read over her shoulder. “It’s certainly possible. Maybe even more journals.”