by Lisa Unger
Troy pushed out an annoyed breath. They’d been at it an hour, while Claudia looked on, thinking about what came next after the kids gave up. Who could she call? Not someone in this town; Raven had been right about that. Raven and Troy switched places, and then Raven got to work.
“It’s just a matter of lifting the pins—that’s what he said, right?” she said, sounding like she knew what she was talking about even though they all knew she didn’t. “You can kind of feel it.”
“I couldn’t feel anything,” said Troy. He held the flashlight for her. Claudia used Troy’s phone to look for locksmiths out of town.
“Shit,” said Raven.
“Language,” said Claudia.
“What’s wrong?” said Troy.
“The paper clip broke,” she said, dropping her head into her arms. “It broke off deep in the lock. It’s stuck in there.”
Troy issued a sigh. Then, “What about the barn? If you think it’s a tunnel, then there would have to be another door. Where else would the tunnel go?”
Claudia shook her head. “If it is a tunnel, it could lead to anywhere—out in the woods, even. Maybe it’s just a hidden room. Or a crawl space.”
“Can we go look?” asked Raven.
“Go ahead,” Claudia said.
They were on a treasure hunt, she figured. Let them enjoy it. She used to set up elaborate Easter egg hunts around the apartment and the building, even once at Martha’s place in Pecos. Raven would run around excitedly searching for the brightly colored eggs. She’d be so thrilled with any little trinket she found inside, so thrilled with the hunt itself. She had that kind of flushed excitement now.
They weren’t going to find anything, but let them look. They pounded up the stairs, and she heard the front door slam behind them. She got down on her belly for a moment and examined the lock. She tried unsuccessfully to catch the broken bit of metal with her fingernails. She lay there a second until she felt a kind of chill move up her back. She got up quickly and hurried up the stairs. She didn’t want to be down there alone.
It was truly starting to dawn, now, regardless of the upbeat tone she tried to take in her almost-post about it. A darkness, a terrible sadness had settled into a hard knot in her gut. A family had been murdered here, a young girl tortured and left for dead. They couldn’t stay here, could they?
She closed and locked the basement door, crossed the creaking hardwood floor of the hallway and moved into the kitchen. She sat in a chair at the table, and dropped her head into her arms and started to cry. She wept really. Big, gulping sobs. How stupid. What a mess she’d made of all of their lives—hers, poor Ayers’s, Raven’s. The worst part was that she had been trying to do the opposite. She had always actively sought to overcome adversity, let the light in, move through trauma. But no. Melvin Cutter had marked her that day. Her life since then had been little more than a reaction formation, a fight against the encroaching darkness that he brought with him.
And Raven’s, too. Why else would she have sought out Andrew Cutter? Ayers had told Claudia about this boy, of course. Claudia kept waiting for Raven to tell her about it. She never imagined that she’d go looking for him. It was Claudia’s fault. Who was she to keep Raven’s identity from her?
She had to call Ayers, talk all of this through with him. Even now, he was her closest friend, the one she always wanted first when things were good, when things were bad. They spent hours on the phone sometimes, late at night, when Raven was sleeping, just talking and talking. His voice the only honest and sure thing in the world. She needed to tell him about all of it. Where was her phone? Like her reading glasses, she was always putting it down somewhere and then walking all over this huge house looking for them. How many hours did she spend just looking for things she’d lost?
She went upstairs and found her phone and glasses in the room she was using as an office. She was surprised to see a slew of missed calls—two from Ayers and three from Josh Beckham. Ayers, she figured, had returned from his weekend in the Caribbean (how nice for them) with Ella, to somehow learn that Raven had been in the apartment. But what did Josh Beckham want? Why would he call so many times? It was weird. In fact, he was weird. There was something off about him. She’d detected it in those first moments, and she ignored it because she was desperate for help with this mess of a house. She’d call him and tell him not to come on Monday. She had a lot of thinking to do.
She was about to call Ayers and tell him everything, eager to hear the measured cadence of his voice. Even when he was mad or worried, he was calm. Through their dating years, the early years of their marriage, he was her counterweight. If she flew off the handle, got flustered, nervous, emotional, he was calm, even, soothing. But it was his calm that eventually undid them. Why in those dark days and years after did it seem like distance, like apathy—like weakness? But that was so long ago now. So long.
She picked up the phone to dial when the doorbell rang. Something about the sound of it, and the heavy silence that followed, filled her with dread. Then, it rang again.
• • •
RAVEN KEPT LOOKING EVEN AFTER Troy gave up. He wasn’t that into it. He’d always been this way. He’d be all into whatever game they were playing—hide and seek, or tiger tag, or whatever—and then he’d just suddenly lose interest, say he was tired or hungry. Raven always made him keep playing. Once, he fell asleep hiding under her bed. It took her forever to find him.
He’d been sniffling since the house. Now that they were kicking up dirt and dust and even ancient remnants of hay, the sneezing had commenced. He was sitting on some old empty wooden crates, scrolling through something on his phone (always on that stupid thing, worse than any girl!), sneezing explosively every few minutes.
She kept looking around—behind an empty old locker, rusted and tilting, a riding lawnmower with four flat tires, a stack of leaking paint cans (wasn’t that a fire hazard?), a bunch of tarps piled in the corner. Everything was dirty, untouched, obviously sitting neglected and forgotten for years.
“It wouldn’t be on the wall,” said Troy. “The door? It would be on the floor.”
She thought about that. Duh. Obviously.
“Oh, yeah,” she said. She shuffled her feet around a minute, kicking up more dirt and some hay. She gave up, too, walked over to her friend to see what was so interesting on his phone. She could see that he was nearly out of charge. He’d mentioned it earlier, that he’d forgotten his charger. Claudia had said he could use hers, but they’d all just forgotten in the excitement. What would he do if his phone died? He’d probably burst into flames.
He then sneezed so loudly that it was more like a shout, causing Raven to jump, startled.
“You do that on purpose,” she said, “make your sneezes so loud like that.”
“I don’t,” he said, then he gave her that wide Troy grin. “Those underground railroad sites, by the way? They’re pretty rare. Most of them have been found.”
“Do you think there could be a tunnel, though?”
He shrugged, looking up at her.
“I suppose it’s possible.”
She moved in closer to him, so their legs were touching.
“I’m sorry,” she said. She’d been wanting to say it since last night.
“For what?” he asked, sitting up and taking off his glasses. He wiped the lenses on the bottom of his tee-shirt.
“For last night,” she said. “For dragging you out to that club, then out here. I’m a pain.”
He put his glasses back on, and there was that look again. It brought the heat up in her cheeks. Which was weird. Because it was Troy.
“I’d do anything for you,” he said, his voice low. “Where you are, that’s where I want to be. You get that, right?”
She looked away from him, then back.
“You’re my best friend,” she said. It was almost a whisper.
He took her hand, smiling. “Yeah,” he said. “Duh.”
He knocked her with his knee. She squeeze
d his hand hard, then she danced away from him, went back to looking around on the floor. She shoved over a pile of boxes. Nothing. She started stomping her foot, listening.
“I like it here,” said Troy.
She shot him a look. “Even after all of this?”
“This place,” he said, looking around. “It has a history, a story to tell. Even if it’s a sad one, a scary one. It makes this place not like other places.”
“Like me,” said Raven. “Like Mom. Bad things happened. But we’re still standing. There can still be good.”
They both heard it when she hit it. Her stomps were these dull thuds connecting with solid earth. And then there was a hollow, echoing sound. She did it again. Troy got up and came over, together they got down on their knees and started clearing away the dirt, the debris, even old hay that had been collecting for years and years. There was a long, wide piece of wood. Someone had cut a space for it in the ground, buried it under earth and hay. If she hadn’t been stomping, if they hadn’t moved all the boxes around, it would have been totally invisible.
“Help me,” said Raven.
They cleared away more dirt and hay, tried to lift the wood out by digging their fingertips in and lifting. No, that wasn’t going to work. They needed a crowbar, which, luckily, Raven had carried with her from the basement—just in case.
She dug the edge of it in, beneath the wood, but wasn’t strong enough to lift. Troy took over and as the wood came up, she dug her fingers under and lifted, pushing the big flat board up and pushing it over where it landed against the boxes with a thud. That’s when they saw the seam in the floor. They both got down on their knees and started brushing the earth away. They saw the latch, locked with a newish padlock.
“Wow,” said Raven, breathless. Murder. Missing money. A hidden tunnel. Crazy.
“This one’s locked, too,” said Troy. “Newish, like the other one. Compared to everything else around here.”
“Did you bring the other paper clip and the tension wrench?” she asked, holding out her hand.
“How long ago was it? The murders,” he asked, looking at the phone to answer his own question. “Two thousand and seven. More than ten years ago. That’s like forever. Why would you steal a million dollars, then lock it up for ten years?”
“They died,” said Raven. “That dirty cop stole it, hid it. Those men came looking for it, didn’t find it. They killed him before he told them where it was. And no one ever found it. Until now.”
“Do you think that’s what happened?”
“What else?”
“Maybe whoever took it hid it and then couldn’t come back for it for some reason,” said Troy. “You know how, like, serial killers suddenly stop killing and the police are all like: maybe he went to jail for something else. Maybe it was like that. Whoever stole it and hid it went to jail, and when they get out, they’re coming for it.”
“No one knows about this door we just found, not even my mom.”
Troy shook his head. “Someone knows.”
Raven felt a little chill come up under the heat of her excitement.
“Can I have the tools?” she said.
“It doesn’t work,” said Troy.
“Let me try.”
She lay flat on her belly and got to work. She wanted to open it herself. She wanted to work on it as long as she could. She didn’t want to tell her mom; she didn’t want to call a locksmith or the handyman. Because she knew deep down what would happen. He’d come out and with whatever tools he had, he’d easily open the locks. And guess what he’d find. Just an old, musty tunnel leading from the stupid basement to the stupid barn. And there wouldn’t be anything down there. It would just be empty. Or, if there was a big bag of money, Claudia would just call the police. End of story. All the mystery, the fantasy, the possibility of things would be gone.
Like Andrew Cutter. Just another loser.
Sneaking out to meet him, scamming her way into the club, flirting her way backstage, she’d been tingling, alive to the electricity of possibility. Who was this cool-seeming guy? What if he was her half brother? Would there be some deep connection, the kind of thing she’d always hoped for from a family member? He was cool, handsome, talented. If he came from Melvin Cutter, and so did Raven, maybe she could still be okay, still Raven, a bright future anyway, no matter the horror of her origin. She wasn’t just a mistake, the unwanted result of an act of violence.
But then there he was, the real Andrew Cutter, not the imagined guy, subject to all the laws of reality, of cause and effect. He may have been talented, but he was also angry, bitter, and not nice. He had circles under his eyes, and his breath smelled a little. He looked, under all of that, when she stared right in his eyes, sad, broken, confused—just like Raven felt sometimes. And all that sizzling, tingling energy of possibility grew dark and turned to a confetti of ash.
She eased the clip and the wrench in, knowing she wasn’t going to open the lock but enjoying the energy of thinking that she might.
Troy leaned over her for a few minutes, then drifted away. Then he lifted his ear to the air, got to his feet, and walked over to the grimy window.
“Who’s that?” he said.
“Who?” she said.
“That guy.”
Raven reluctantly got up from the lock and went to stand beside him. She saw the hot blond guy from the other day, the handyman. What was he doing here?
“That’s the guy who’s helping my mom,” she said.
They watched him a minute. He rocked back and forth on his feet, looked around.
“You don’t think your mom posted that blog, do you?” asked Troy.
“No,” said Raven. Although you never could tell what Mom was going to do. She was unpredictable in some ways, did what she wanted. She was flighty. Raven could see her agreeing not to post, then forgetting she wasn’t supposed to and pressing the publish button.
“Then what does he want?”
“I don’t know,” said Raven.
They watched as he waited on the porch. Then the door opened, and he disappeared inside.
thirty-two
There was something different about Josh. What was it? Whatever it was, Claudia didn’t like it. She didn’t open the screen door right away, blocked the entrance with her body.
“I tried to call,” he said. “Sorry to bother you.”
“What’s up?” she asked.
She felt that tension of which her self-defense teacher taught her to be mindful. That feeling of discomfort, even if you don’t know what it means, it means something, he warned. It means stay on guard. Women don’t honor their feelings, talk themselves out of it. But he seems so nice.
Josh was still doing that boyish rocking thing. But he wasn’t looking around, he didn’t have that sweet, slightly nervous laugh. He didn’t seem shy anymore. Today, he looked right at her, wearing a handsome smile. He seemed older.
“I think,” he said, “when I was down in your basement, I might have dropped my best level. I had it in my pocket. Maybe it slipped out when I was moving those boxes.”
“Oh,” said Claudia. “Really?”
Had he moved boxes when he was down there? They weren’t down there for long, and she’d been with him.
“I need it for another job that I promised to finish this evening,” he said. “Do you mind if I just run down and check?”
“Well,” she said. She didn’t want him to come into her house. Why was it so hard for her to say no? “This is not really the best time.”
That wall beneath the stairs was all torn up now. How was she going to explain that?
Still, she stepped back and moved to unlatch the screen door. Why was she saying no with her words and yes with her body? She was a pleaser, that was why. She couldn’t stand not to be nice. According to her trainer, this inability to protect your boundaries was the number one reason most women were vulnerable to predators. Too nice.
His smile widened and he tilted his head a little, then pu
shed inside. “It won’t take a minute, I promise. I wouldn’t bother you if it wasn’t important.”
She had a choice here. She could get firm, get loud. No, she could say. Please go. And I won’t be needing you on Monday. But that was harsh, wasn’t it? What if he really just needed his level? He’d come and go. She was just jumpy, edgy from everything that had happened. Wasn’t that it?
When someone doesn’t respect the boundaries you have politely set for yourself, watch out for that person. But she hadn’t really set her boundaries, had she?
Then he was in the house, moving toward the basement door. “I’m sure I dropped it. You know how you hear something, and then it’s only later you remember?”
He was lying. She wasn’t sure how she knew it. But she knew it. Close up she saw how tense were his shoulders, how frozen his smile. She gave him a tight nod and he moved quickly toward the basement door. She looked around for her phone. She’d left it upstairs. Ugh. As he moved down the stairs, the sound echoing, she went to stand over by the landline. Why was she so nervous? Just the other day, they’d spent hours alone together. He was fine. She was losing it.
“I’ll go down,” she said.
“No, no trouble,” he said, pushing past her. She stood and let him go.
Should she say something about the state of the wall, make a joke? He probably wouldn’t think anything of it. You couldn’t really see inside the space unless you shone the flashlight. Maybe he wouldn’t even notice.
She moved over to the kitchen and looked out the window, toward the barn, but she didn’t see the kids. That’s when she saw Scout. He was early; she usually didn’t see him until later in the day. He sat, gray and regal, his nose up to the air. She’d call Troy’s phone and tell them to stay in the barn until the coywolf was gone, until the man in her basement was gone. But when she picked up the phone, the line was dead. She stood there a moment, pressing the talk button a couple of times. It wasn’t the first time this had happened, old wires that the phone company was supposed to replace. Usually, it came back up right away. But no. This time it stayed dead.
