by Lisa Unger
“I don’t know,” said Claudia, her throat constricted with fear, hands shaking.
She went back to her room and grabbed the baseball bat she kept by her door, all of Ayers’s warnings about living alone on an isolated property in a strange town ringing in her head.
“Go into my bedroom and lock the door,” she told Raven, who’d looked at her wide-eyed.
“Really?”
“Call the police if—”
“If what?” Raven’s voice went up a worried octave.
“If—anything.” She tried to keep her voice low, calming.
Claudia had no intention of waiting in the bedroom, hiding. No. She’d come too far for that. She wasn’t even sure what she’d heard. Inside or out? In the basement or the attic? She closed the door on Raven, waiting until she heard it lock. Then she stared down the dark stairway. She paused, listening. Just the wind outside, moaning, strong enough that the windows rattled.
She’d read an article once about how a predator had lay in wait in a woman’s attic for days, biding his time until she was alone in the house, listening to her through the ceiling. He’d snuck down from the opening in the closet, raped and killed her in her own bed. This story had haunted Claudia for days, the idea that he’d been up there, listening to all the private moments of her life before he ended it. It came back to her now, but she pushed it away.
Claudia headed down the stairs, slowly, still shaking, flipping on lights. The doors to the outside and the basement were locked; she saw that right away. No windows broken. Pretty quickly, she was reasonably sure that there was no one inside. Her heart rate slowed. Whatever she heard must have been outside, she thought.
The truth was—and she was surprised by this and a little ashamed—that she was already narrating it, thinking about how she’d write it for her blog. Things that go bump in the night! Something like that. Once upon a time, she’d have been paralyzed with fear, barricaded in a room with Raven, waiting for the police. Time, enough of it, fades everything like hot sun on cloth, even the worst trauma—if you let it. She thought her therapist would applaud her bravery, if not her judgment. In the years after the attack, Claudia had wanted so badly for the world to be okay again, and eventually it sort of was.
“Mom!” called Raven.
Raven came halfway down the stairs, her black hair up and wild, her sleep shirt, a giant purple tee she’d gotten when they saw Wicked on Broadway last month, shifting down to expose her shoulder. Her eyes were red, glistening on the lashes. “I called the police.”
“You did?” Claudia was surprised. Raven was not so tough after all.
“I was scared.”
“Okay,” said Claudia, reaching for her. “Better safe than sorry.”
Raven came to her and wrapped her arms around tight, holding on, sinking in like she used to do when she was small, as if she wanted to close off all space between their bodies. Claudia grieved the physical intimacy she used to have with her daughter, the heat of that little body, the silk of her peaches and cream skin, the smell of her hair. When they’re small, they’re part of you, on you in bed, showering with you, climbing onto your lap, holding on to your leg. Slowly, slowly, they start to move away, and if you love them, if you want them to feel safe and free to explore the world, you have to let them go. Mostly.
“We’re okay,” said Claudia, relishing the feel of Raven in her arms. “We’ll wait for them to come. I’m not going into that basement alone.”
“No,” said Raven, shaking her head. Claudia looked at the door, still bolted from the outside. “No way.”
It was a horror movie basement—huge, more dark corners and shadows than spaces where the light reached, bulbs hanging from wires that dimmed and brightened mysteriously, cold spots and boxes full of she didn’t even know what. The electric in the house was old, needed a total overhaul—which Claudia could not afford—so that explained why the lights in the house were always browning out. But it seemed like there was an energy to it. Things went dark at odd moments—like when Raven was having a tantrum, or Claudia was alone in the house, wondering what the hell she’d gotten herself into. It would be just like the lights to go off when she was down in the basement, alone and terrified. The thought made her shudder.
There was so much work to be done there. There had been some flooding last year, so there was water damage. And two of the beams had come down, which apparently didn’t compromise the house, according to the engineer that had been out. Still, he’d said, I wouldn’t spend a whole lot of time down here until you shore up those areas You never know what else is going to come down. He’d pointed out some cracking in the other beams. Maybe that was what had made the noise. Perhaps another beam had come down.
And there were so many boxes down there, old furniture from a past tenant, just junk. There was a workbench, rusted tools, an old exercise bike, clothes, papers, books, a box of old toys. Claudia had no idea who any of it belonged to, why it had just been abandoned down there. There had been multiple tenants on the property since her father bought it. But no one had lived there in more than ten years. Who just left a house with all their stuff and never came back? Claudia could spin out a hundred dark scenarios, but now was probably not the time. Sorting, donating, selling, junking all that stuff—it was all on her ridiculously long “to do” list.
But there was something about the basement that repelled her. She couldn’t be down there alone, and Raven hated it, too. So they’d been avoiding it.
Claudia and Raven huddled on the stairs together, baseball bat beside them, afghan from the couch wrapped around them.
“I’m sorry about today, Mom,” said Raven. “It’s just hard sometimes. To just ignore people and the things they say.”
“I know, baby,” she said. “I get it. But when you lash out at people, you just give them energy, make things worse. When you stay silent, hold your head up, and walk away, you take everything away from them.”
“But isn’t that just like saying it’s okay?” said Raven. “When do you get to stand up to people?”
Claudia sighed. She didn’t have all the answers. Not by a long shot. “Sometimes that is standing up.”
“I want the test, Mom,” her daughter whispered. “I want to know.”
Claudia blinked at Raven, who held her stare like a prizefighter.
“What does that have to do with anything?” asked Claudia. “Was today—was it about that?”
Raven shook her head, sighing, as if Claudia were terribly slow.
“Somehow everything is about that. How do you not understand that?”
The headlights of the approaching police cruiser traveled across the walls, saving Claudia from getting into it with Raven. She knew this day was going to come; she thought she was prepared for it. She wasn’t. There was no script for a situation like theirs. People barely even wanted to talk about it.
Claudia stepped out onto the porch and down the steps to greet the officer, who looked like he wasn’t much older than Raven. Really. His unlined face and wide green eyes, his beefy arms made him look like a high school football player. He even had a smattering of acne on his chin. How old did you have to be to be a police officer, actually?
“Ma’am,” he said. “I’m Officer Dilbert. You called about a suspicious noise.”
Yeah, that was right. She was a ma’am. She was nearly forty, young looking, in shape (not skinny, but fit). Still the days of “miss” and “honey,” of the goofy smitten stares at her prettiness? They were fading fast. Not that she cared. Hey, everyone was young for the same amount of time; every girl gets her turn for a blushing youth. And at the end of the day, pretty didn’t seem to be worth very much at all. But Claudia was noticing it lately, how she had almost receded from the stage, from any hope of hotness. After a certain age, women who were trying to look “hot” were really just succeeding at looking sad. Lately, she was going for well-turned-out, elegant, attractive. Which in sweatpants and oversized tee, hair crazed from sleep—nowhe
re close.
“That’s right,” she said, taking her hair down from the knot at her crown. “Thanks for coming out.”
“I think I saw your problem on the way up the drive,” he said, glancing back at the barn. “That barn door looks like it fell off?”
The millennial way of ending a statement like a question. It annoyed some people she knew, like Martha, for example, who was annoyed by most things. But Claudia didn’t mind it. There was something modest, something gentle about it. It acknowledged the many possibilities of a situation. As if, it looked like the barn door fell off and that’s what made the noise, but, you know, hey, maybe that wasn’t it at all.
Yes, of course, the barn door. Claudia was certain that’s what it was. What else could have made such a bang? Somewhere in her subconscious, she must have registered it otherwise she might have been more afraid.
Claudia walked over to the barn with young Officer Dilbert, him towering, as big as a refrigerator, which was a rather nice quality in a cop. The rain had stopped, but the ground was saturated, the trees around them bending and whispering in the high wind.
There it was, the huge barn door laying flat on the ground. Officer Dilbert removed a big black flashlight from his belt and shined it, moving in close. Claudia could see where the hinges had ripped from the wood, leaving rusted, exposed nails. The latch at the door had ripped completely off, lay on the ground practically dissolving into a pile of rust. The barn was another thing she hadn’t had time for. They’d been there only a month. Which was weird. In a way, it felt as if she had always been there.
“It looks like—and it’s hard to tell because the wood is so old?” he said, moving in closer. “Could someone have pried this off?”
She came up behind him and saw the scratches he was examining. She remembered how it looked that afternoon; even the handyman had noticed it. The one she hadn’t hired on the spot the way she wanted to. She put a finger to the gouges in the wood. There it was, the dark creep of suspicion, the edge of paranoia. But, no. No. He wouldn’t have come back here and done that, just to get the work. No, that was crazy. Or was it? The world was a dangerous place, and she knew that better than most. People did all kinds of unthinkable things, all the time. But he was a nice guy; she could see that. Couldn’t she? And he came highly recommended by Madge.
“Oh, no,” said Claudia. “I don’t think so. It was really needing repair. I put a call in to Just Old Doors this afternoon. They’re coming out early next week.”
He gave a quick nod. “I’ll take a look around just the same if you don’t mind?”
“Of course,” she said. “Thank you.”
He looked very serious as he made his way around the back of the barn, his hand resting on the gun in the holster at his waist. She fought back the urge to tell him what a good job he was doing, very thorough and brave. Why do you always treat people like they’re in kindergarten and you’re the teacher? Ayers had recently asked her, not unkindly really. Actually kind of amused. He’d been down at the school for orientation day. She’d been talking to the principal, complimenting him on something or other. Did she do that? She really didn’t think so. Martha was like that, but surely not Claudia, who really didn’t consider herself an authority on anything.
Raven had put on some clothes and a long sweater and was standing on the porch, arms folded, watching as Claudia returned.
“Just that barn door,” Claudia said. “It finally fell apart.”
“Like everything else around here.”
The sullen, oh-so-disdainful Raven had returned. The sweet clingy one, the one who loved Claudia and had always thought she was so wonderful, was gone again; she came and went. Every time she disappeared, Claudia prayed she wasn’t gone for good. That little person was the truest friend she’d ever had, the kindest, the most honest, funniest, sweetest little dear. In the dim orange light of the lamp beside the door, her daughter looked more like an unfriendly stranger.
“Well,” said Claudia, forcing brightness. “That’s why we’re fixing the place up.”
Raven glanced away, wrinkling her nose. Disgust. With the place? With her mother? Claudia didn’t dare ask.
“I want to stay with Dad this weekend,” she said, looking down at her toes—which she’d painted black. Once upon a time it had been all pink and sparkles, princesses and unicorns. Now Raven’s fashion palette was black, slate gray, and light gray, and black again. “He said I could.”
Claudia nodded, wrapping her arms around her center. “That’s fine. Sure.”
It crushed Claudia when she did that. It shouldn’t. It was normal for a teenager to pull away from her mother, to try to pit her divorced parents against each other, to want to hurt Claudia a little. But the twist, the anguish Claudia felt—as if someone were mercilessly squeezing her vital organs (it wasn’t an exaggeration; she literally felt physical pain sometimes)—almost always brought tears to her eyes.
She turned back toward the barn so Raven couldn’t see her face. Claudia had never been good at hiding her feelings. Anyway, Raven wasn’t looking, didn’t care; her perpetually angry teen went back inside, slamming the screen door behind her.
five
“Maybe it’s my imagination, but I wouldn’t say you seem overly happy to see me, brother.”
“Of course, I am,” said Josh, staring at the eggs in the pan. The words sounded fake on the air, probably because he was definitely not happy to see his older brother Rhett. Not at all. In fact, he’d hoped never to see him again. The fact that Rhett was back was a little like thinking you had beaten cancer only to discover during a routine visit to the doctor that it had returned, more virulent than before.
Their mother, on the other hand, was as giddy as a schoolgirl. He’d never seen her face light up the way it did when Rhett walked in through the door of her bedroom last night, as if Jesus Christ himself had come down from heaven.
“My baby,” she’d said. “My Rhett. Am I dreaming?”
He’d sat beside her, and she’d petted his head, tears welling up in her eyes.
“Hello, Mama,” Rhett said, leaning his forehead against hers. “I’ve missed you. I’m sorry I’ve been away so long.”
“Never mind that now,” she said. “We’re just glad you’re here. Aren’t we, Josh?”
She didn’t remember. There were so many big dark spots in her memory now; sometimes Josh could tell it took her a second to recognize him. The dementia seemed to come and go. She remembered things from his childhood that he had long forgotten: his red bicycle, the striped shirt he insisted on wearing every day when he was five, screaming bloody murder when she wanted to wash it, his stuffed bear Buttons. He noticed that it was the unpleasant things mostly she claimed that she couldn’t recall—like the reason Rhett had been away for as long as he had. And Rhett knew that Josh wouldn’t be the one to remind her. Mama’s boy. The taunt still echoed around in his head, like so many of the things Rhett had said over the years.
“Sure are,” Josh had said a beat too late, earning a dark sideways glance from his brother. Even now that look could make him shudder.
“You don’t look a day older,” she’d told him.
“Neither do you,” he’d said. “You’re as pretty as you were when we were boys, Mama.”
“Oh, silly,” she said, clearly pleased and placing a palm to each of his cheeks. “You always were a charmer.”
Rhett did look older, his face a landscape of deep lines, his black hair thinning and going gray. But his body was lean, muscles sinewy and rock hard, hands thick with callous. If anything, he looked stronger than he had when he was younger. He was still broad through the shoulders and a good four inches taller than Josh. Any softness there might have been to him once—and there hadn’t been much—was gone. He was hard hewn, as jagged and stealthy as a shiv.
“What are you doing here?” Josh said now. He’d served his mother her breakfast, bringing it upstairs on a tray like he did every morning before work. Now he put a plate in
front of his brother. Eggs, bacon, buttered toast. He poured coffee in the red mug with the chipped handle, put it down on the table.
“A man can’t visit his family?” Rhett said.
Josh poured coffee for himself and pulled up a chair. His father had made the long wood table. He’d used wood from an oak that had been struck by lightning in the backyard. One of the larger branches smashed through the roof of his father’s workshop. How old had Josh been—maybe ten? The sound had been so loud that he had jumped to his feet before he even fully woke up, hearing his father and brother already thundering down the stairs.
“My goodness,” said his mother. She clutched at her nightgown and reached for him as he walked out into the hallway. “What in the world was that?”
He’d stayed behind with her, the storm raging outside. From the window, they could see how the branch had fallen, hanging by splinters still, the bottom of it piercing the gabled roof of the workshop. Josh marveled. Such solid things . . . the old oak, the barn turned workshop, things that seemed so fixed in the world, immutable—fallen, smashed. His father was swearing downstairs; his mother had Josh wrapped up tight. He would always rather be with her than with them.
He ran his hand along the surface of the table. In the grains of the wood he always thought he could see the old man’s face, pulled long in disappointment the way it often was in life. The table, like everything his father made, was as solid as it was the day they carried it into the kitchen. Josh ran his hand along the perfectly straight edge. Measure twice, cut once.
Josh was aware of that notch in his throat that he always seemed to get when Rhett was around. His brother was a loaded gun waved in the air, a storm gathering in the distance. You just didn’t know what was going to happen. Maybe nothing. Maybe something awful.
“The truth is,” his brother said, pushing at his eggs. “I need work.”
Josh felt a dump of dread and resentment in his middle, rubbed at his eyes with a calloused thumb and forefinger so that Rhett wouldn’t see it on his face. He heard the television come on upstairs, the dripping of water from the leaky kitchen sink faucet. He’d redone the counters and resurfaced the cabinets last year, but the kitchen with its old four-paned window and fading floral wallpaper needed an overhaul.
