by Lizzy Ford
The Door (Part Two)
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By Lizzy Ford
www.LizzyFord.com
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Cover design by Steph’s Cover Designs
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Smashwords EDITION
Published by Captured Press
www.CapturedPress.com
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The Door copyright ©2015 by Lizzy Ford
www.LizzyFord.com
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Cover design copyright © 2015 by Steph’s Cover Designs
All rights reserved.
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No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
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This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events; to real people, living or dead; or to real locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.
Part Two: Chapter Thirteen
Six months later
Carey didn’t return the day I locked the door, though he did send the police to fetch me.
To say my quiet life became a relative circus was an understatement. I returned to New York with the fanfare of a minor celebrity. My mother and entire extended family greeted me at the airport, along with reporters from a few local papers.
I spent a week crying and hiding away with my mom and then another month going in for various interviews by police about my disappearance. I spoke to the juvenile court judge who had replaced mine, went in for mental and physical health evaluations mandated by the court to determine if I was who I claimed to be and at last, attended a court session where I was pronounced legally un-dead and my previous juvenile record sealed. The only upsides to my return to New York: my mom, a lifetime supply of anxiety pills and lots of home-cooked meals.
After the trauma of the first couple of months, my life became a blur of emotions and activity, few of which I was able to recall once I returned to the desert. It was as if I entered a dream the moment I left the door, and I spent my entire experience in New York trying to wake up. For several months, no matter what I did, or how I tried to accept how much my world had changed, I wasn’t able to stop thinking about Arizona and the fates of the Five Peoples. Perhaps it was Caretaker instinct taking hold. The longer I was away, the more persistent my instincts and the more dreamlike my life in New York both became.
The overwhelming attention from everyone I met didn’t fade with time as I had hoped. My life was a dizzying combination of relatives checking in on me and interviews with local media. Everyone was fascinated by the mystery surrounding a disappearance I couldn’t explain. Everything I said made people curious to the point of intrusive, and when I finally refused to discuss any part of my time in Arizona, people only became more intrigued.
It was when I started to receive phone calls and requests from national level media I decided I couldn’t wait any longer. No part of me was ready or willing to become famous. I could barely handle my relatives asking me a couple of questions here and there. I wasn’t ready to become a household name.
After my disappearance, my mom had moved back upstate to handle the books for the family business, an Italian restaurant, which had passed from my grandparents to my uncle. When I finally told her I wanted to take a trip to Arizona, she didn’t even blink. She was determined never to let me out of her sight again and insisted she was coming with me. I had no money and no real plan beyond making sure the door still existed. I only knew I had to return to the desert, because I’d never have the chance to know what happened to Teyan if I didn’t.
But what was there to return to? I wrestled with myself for weeks over this question.
There was nowhere to live, and no one had been through the portal in ten years. I knew nothing of Carey’s whereabouts or about the mysterious Council governing the portals to other worlds. The only evidence I had of their existence was the letter – the one claiming I was the new Caretaker – I kept in my pocket next to the memory rock Teyan had given me.
The desire to go back to Arizona should have been as foolish and irrational as my inability to accept the idea I’d been gone for a decade. On paper, I was twenty nine. In reality, I was the same nineteen year old struggling to move past the incident that robbed me of my trust in people, and confidence in myself, with the added challenge of adapting to new technology, new music, new fashion, new faces in my family. It was surreal, and in the end, all I could think about was returning to the last place where I hadn’t felt like I was a stranger in my world.
With the financial help of my uncle, my mom and I managed to leave New York, in the dead of night, to a location described to the press and our extended family as a private location for a much needed vacation.
A full six months after I locked the door and changed my world, I was back in the Arizona sun. This time, it was December, close to Christmas. Warm but not hot, the desert winter was much nicer than the ice storms and snow we left behind in New York. Dangling my arm out the window of my mom’s car, I started to relax as we drove down the solitary dirt road leading to the location of the isolated former bed and breakfast. The wide open spaces, purple-blue mountains and gentle heat of the sun felt real and familiar, as if I’d finally woken up from my dream and was going home.
We reached the turnoff to the property, and my mom pulled the beat up car we’d driven from New York over to the side of the road by the fence.
I got out of the vehicle and stood at the end of the driveway, frozen, staring.
The door was where I left it.
But the house that had sprung up around it, where the farmhouse once stood, came as a complete shock. The lot had been otherwise empty when I left, and I gazed at the scene before me, trying to understand what had happened in the relatively short time I was gone.
Had another Caretaker been appointed, since I was clearly a screw up? Had I missed my chance of ever seeing Teyan again? Was the door rejecting me and moving on the way the rest of my world had?
The thoughts made my chest tight and achy.
“This place is gorgeous, Gi,” my mom said, moving to stand beside me at the end of the driveway. Her car’s engine rattled from its spot parked along the road. “Why didn’t you mention it when you said we had to come here?”
Because it didn’t exist. The new, single story house sprawled over an area at least four times the size of the farmhouse. It was tan adobe, hacienda style. It fit the desert and southwestern architecture far better than the original house had.
Dismayed by the thought of another Caretaker moving in, and that my trip from New York was all for nothing, I left my mom and trotted towards the house. The closer I got, the more worried I became. What if I never found out what happened to the Five Peoples? Who lived here now? Did they know about the portal?
As I neared, my eyes fell to the large, manila envelope stuck in the crack between the door and jamb.
Gianna was written on the front, along with a stamped address for an attorney’s office in town.
Hands quivering, I tugged the envelope free and opened it.
Gianna,
I was instructed to leave this paperwork for you here. Contained within this envelope are an official copy of the deed, registered to you, and a copy of the paperwork for the real estate trust, also registered in your name, under which the ownership of the house and property are held. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
My g
aze skimmed over the attorney’s name and contact information at the bottom. I flipped through the stack of paperwork included with the note, unable to focus on anything but the letter, which I reread three more times. Lowering the envelope and papers, I gazed up at the door in surprise.
I wasn’t able to imagine how this place had been rebuilt so quickly or who had done the paperwork to leave it to me. Was this Carey’s doing? The mysterious Council he spoke of?
The same magic that made a garden grow in hours?
“Gi? You okay?” My mom asked, stepping onto the porch beside me.
Disbelieving I’d read the note correctly, I handed the paperwork to her wordlessly and watched her read the cover letter.
Her eyes widened, and she stared. “Someone left you this?” she asked, looking up at the wall before us. “A house? How does that happen?”
“I don’t know,” I mumbled.
In the City, only multi-millionaires could afford to live anywhere other than an apartment. A house this size would be beyond the reach of us even if we saved up for several lifetimes.
“Someone left you a house,” she said and began to smile. “What an incredible blessing.”
Would she think the same when she discovered we were supposed to use the house to host aliens?
Some of my angst and worry eased as I gazed at the front of the house.
I had a home. The circumstances were bizarre, but … this felt much more natural than being in New York trying to figure out what to do with my life. It was almost a relief to know I didn’t have to go back to the surreal dream I assumed was reality. The rest of the world that had moved on since my disappearance, but I didn’t have to go with it. I could stay here. In a short period of time, the magic door had become my anchor, a point of reference that lessened my confusion just by standing in front of it.
I rested a palm on the rough, ancient wood. Why was this the only place that felt real?
“I’ll let my brother know we made it. He’s been texting me every half an hour,” my mom said and pulled out her phone to text my uncle. She typed with a smile.
I didn’t know what to think, but her face absolutely radiated happy excitement – and also relief. My mom had worked two jobs to pay the rent for our tiny, run down apartment then worked twelve hour shifts, seven days a week, at my uncle’s restaurant. Was she thinking about how she’d never have to do that again?
I doubted I could ever deserve to be gifted a house, but my mom did. A sense of pride trickled through me at the thought of being able to do something to help her after the ten years of suffering my disappearance caused her.
“What do you say we check out our new home?” she asked with a grin.
A smile slipped free, and I nodded.
I opened the door and stepped into a wide foyer with stone flooring, adobe walls, and skylights.
“Wow,” I murmured, taking in everything.
Our new home was bright, airy and open on the inside. The single story hacienda had tan walls, Saltillo flooring and rugged wooden fixtures. Every room was fully decorated and contained furniture. The décor was a mix of southwestern and modern, very well done, and didn’t look cheap.
The farther we went into the house, the more amazed I became. It had four main wings that formed a square around a large, open roof courtyard at its center. Two wings were lined with guest bedrooms, the third our personal quarters – complete with a private kitchen, bedrooms, living, and dining areas – and the fourth wing made up of common areas, including a large family room, study, huge kitchen, formal dining, and four informal sitting rooms with televisions and tons of seating.
The home was designed for the single purpose of hosting visitors. We walked through the house twice before returning to the courtyard. Compared to the rest of the house, the courtyard seemed unusually bare. No flora or decorations had been placed in the large dirt square at the center of the house. Was it unfinished or supposed to be bare?
The house smelled lightly of fresh paint, furthering my confusion about whether it was built by humans or magic. Was six months enough time to build a house? I had no idea.
“Everything looks so new,” my mom said, echoing my puzzlement. “Who left this place to you?”
I debated how to answer for a moment then went with a scaled down version of the truth. “This used to be a bed and breakfast. The woman who ran it died not long ago, and I guess she wanted me to take it over for her, since I knew how stuff was done.”
“She died before you disappeared?”
I nodded.
“That’s a long time to wait for someone to take over a business.” My mom was looking at me closely.
I shrugged. “She was very eccentric,” I replied.
“So do you want this to be a bed and breakfast?”
“Yeah. Seems like the right thing to do.”
My mom had been dying to ask me more questions about what happened when I was gone, and I could see she wanted to know more about my time before disappearing, too. It was almost impossible to explain this place in a way that didn’t sound crazy or cause many more questions to crop up.
“Oh, do we owe Uncle Tony any money for helping us get here?” I asked to keep her from asking me anything.
“No,” she said with a shake of her head. “Should I let him know we’re staying?”
I felt her gaze on me. After a brief hesitation, I nodded.
“I can ask him to send out our clothes,” she said and withdrew her cell again. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
I released my breath when she hurried away.
Silence fell, and I gazed around, awed by the idea of owning not only a home, but one used to host inter-dimensional visitors. I had no clue how I was going to break the news to her. I was more worried about the Five Peoples finding their way back here. Ten years was an eternity to me; would they even know to try the portal?
My mom returned a few minutes later. “I told him he could come visit if the snow gets worse,” she said cheerfully.
I nodded, half listening. She said something else as she trailed me into the kitchen with its pristine, stainless steel counters and appliances. My mom’s chatter stopped, and I glanced towards her to see why.
She stood in the doorway of a pantry bigger than my old bedroom. “We’ll need to take a trip to the grocery store,” she said. “And probably some money for the utilities.”
I hadn’t considered the money aspect. Even if we had no mortgage, this place was going to cost some money to maintain. A couple of magazines had paid me for articles; I had about six thousand saved up between that and my old savings account my father started for me when I was a kid.
“Well, we aren’t going back to New York,” she mused. “I own fifteen percent of the restaurant. I can sell it to my brother.”
“Are you serious?” I asked, surprised.
“We have a mansion,” she said and waved around the kitchen. “And if you think I’m ever going to let you leave my sight again, you don’t know me.”
I smiled at the determination on her features. “You shouldn’t have to sell your part of the family business.”
“Why not? I’d rather be with you here than with them there. We should have enough to get by until Tony can have the paperwork done up. I’m one mean bookkeeper – it’ll be enough to last us for decades.”
I believed her. If there was one thing I knew about my mom, it was how she could stretch a budget.
“I don’t want you to regret doing this in a year or two,” I hedged. The truth was simpler. I didn’t know if I wanted to spend my life here. If I had destroyed another planet, I’d want to be as far from here as possible.
“It’s settled,” she said firmly. “I always dreamt of what I’d do if you returned to me. I wanted to start over, somewhere where we could enjoy being a family instead of working and missing out on each other’s lives. I didn’t know how it was going to be possible, when we had no money, but I do now. This is our blessing.”
We had b
oth been through hell to get to this point. I nodded with another glance around. Inside, I was panicking a little to know my decision to come here was going to affect my mom as well. I didn’t really trust my own judgment let alone want to drag someone I loved into this.
Then again, this was our second chance. My second chance.
The house really was incredible. And wasn’t I obligated to ensure no one else made the mistake I did by locking the door?
I hated how my fear was always in my way. Even now, standing in a house that was mine, with my mom beside me, my heart was racing at the prospect of making such a large decision.
Taking a deep breath, I glanced around. “Okay,” I murmured. “We can try this.” For now at least.
My insides were shaky and my confidence nowhere near my mom’s. I definitely planned on going through the paperwork left to me, line by line. Perhaps the Caretaker’s real name was listed within, or maybe, contact information for the Council. I didn’t feel fully able to believe someone had just given this place to me. It seemed too good to be true, until I recalled the purpose of the gift: to act as a way station for people from other planets. There were strings attached, but how many strings? What hidden price would I pay to stay here?
Despite my worry, we moved in that day. My mom and I each claimed a bedroom, and we made several trips to town to get the basics and food. It took a couple of days to settle in and learn the layout.
On my third afternoon in the house, I stood in the spacious foyer, beneath the massive skylights lining the ceiling, and managed to smile. No one had shown up to kick us out, and I was gradually becoming more comfortable with the idea no one would. This was ours – we were home.
