“Mrs. Thomas?” Ryan called, walking back into the kitchen with me, opening the closest door, which was her office.
“Mandy,” I said. Nobody called her Mrs. Thomas, and anyway, she wasn’t a Mrs. She went by Mandy, or she went by Mom.
“Mandy?” he repeated, stepping inside the office. He checked under the desk, and I opened the closet, and it suddenly occurred to me what we were looking for. My mom, shut down from the fear. Or worse, unresponsive.
I led him down to her bedroom, where her door was open and her bed still unmade. The bathroom, bright from the LED lightbulbs. The shower door, clear. No place to hide. Everything about the house was out in the open. Even as a child playing hide-and-seek, there weren’t many good hiding spots, besides sliding under the bed, stealing myself away in the dark corner of a closet, or curling up in a ball inside the cabinets.
There was the basement, but the basement was off-limits.
I opened the bathroom cabinets now, even though it made no sense, just to get a whiff of everything that was her—the lotion and mouthwash and the soaps stored in mega-packs near the back.
Ryan kept calling her name.
The kitchen still had the scent of dinner; the pan was soaking in the deep sink. The faucet was faintly dripping, and I reached out to hit the handle, turning it all the way off.
“Mom?” I called again. The room itself seemed to echo. I pulled back the curtains, caught our reflection in the windows that faced the mountains.
I led Ryan down the other hall to my room, which was the only place in disarray. I gestured toward the mess on the floor, the drawers left ajar. “I didn’t do this,” I said. “She must’ve known I snuck out.”
“So maybe she went looking for you,” he said.
“Even if that were possible, she would’ve left a note, don’t you think? Left the alarm on?” My throat was tightening. “Ryan, she couldn’t come to the hospital after the crash. What could’ve been so worrisome that she’d actually leave?”
He touched my elbow gently. “Maybe she called someone first.”
I nodded. Yes. Too bad the landline was down and I couldn’t just hit Redial on it to find out. I’d have to call on my cell. But first, there was one more place to check. I didn’t want to have to call Jan unless I was sure. I opened the door in the hall, just before the kitchen, and stood at the top of the basement steps again. Neither of us ever went down here much—it had a secondary lock near the top, from back when I was a kid who might go wandering. To keep me out of the darkness.
The basement had always terrified me. The dark corners, the absence of windows. I pictured my mother tied up in one for over a year, with nobody around who could hear her scream. I pictured burns on her shoulders, and spiders crawling over her on the damp floor. Neither of us went in the basement alone.
Mom kept everything from my childhood down there. All my artwork, all my old baby clothes, stored in plastic bins and labeled with permanent marker. Boxes of chemistry kits and electronics we used to do homemade projects with, back when she homeschooled me—a volcano bubbling over on the kitchen counter, colorful smoke I’d dance around in the backyard while she watched from the window, smiling.
“Mom?” I called.
Maybe she came down here, and maybe she slipped and fell. Maybe she was looking for something. Maybe the fears overwhelmed her—me gone, the alarm off—and she locked herself down here. But the lights were off….
I used to imagine monsters sneaking up from the basement at night, that that was the reason for the lock at the top of the door. I used to think my mother knew about the monsters, but didn’t want me to worry.
A silly thought. The lock worked from the inside too—a precautionary measure, so we could never be trapped. And she didn’t think of my own worrying much. She raised me on it, taught me to look for it, to find it. To live with it.
I ran my fingers against the wall until I found the switch, then started down the steps. The basement was still unfinished, with bulbs hanging directly from the ceiling. We searched around the stacks of bins, but there was no sign of my mother.
One more thing. One more possibility…
I stood in front of the far wall, staring at the subtle lines that marked the door. As far as I knew, it hadn’t been opened in years.
The door wasn’t hidden, but it did blend in to the natural delineations in the stone wall. I flipped open the compartment that looked like a circuit breaker, exposing the dial, like a safe.
“What’s that?” Ryan asked.
The panic room. “One more place to check,” I said.
Jan was the only one who called it the panic room. Mom told me it was the safe room. The room that, regardless of what was happening in the world around us, we would always be safe in. Jan twisted it around, made it into the place we would only go in a panic. I used to see it like my mother did—a last resort. Reinforced walls, safe against acts of God, that could withstand even a tornado. Fireproof walls that would last until help could arrive. A radio so we could hear about what was happening outside, and food and supplies to last us the duration. This was a room I should always feel safe in.
But the way Jan asked me about it, years later, twisted it around in my head, turned it into something dark and ugly and full of shame. “Tell me about the panic room, Kelsey,” she’d said, sitting across the couch from me. “How often does your mother close herself up in there?”
“I don’t know,” I said, even though I did. Rarely. Very rarely. But suddenly I didn’t know if that was a safe answer.
“Does she ever bring you in there with her?”
With this, I knew the answer wasn’t safe. “No,” I said. I was ten years old, and I had just learned the power of a lie. Jan smiled.
Mom used to bring cards to play in there. Once, we had dinner out of dehydrated food and stored bottles of water, blankets rolled up like sleeping bags on the blue carpet. It was an adventure, she’d said, and I’d believed her.
But it was also a drill. If the alarm sounded, the protocol was to come down here immediately. No matter what. This was the safest plan.
There were only two people in the world who knew the code. It didn’t matter how many times Jan had said it was safer to have a backup, or to be sure to write it down—What if we got locked inside, knocked unconscious? How would someone get us out?
That fear, apparently, didn’t measure up to the other. Only my mother and I knew the code. Meaningless, and therefore unbreakable, she had said. As far as I knew, my mother hadn’t been in there in years—not since Jan came into our lives. She was getting better. She was.
But. If the alarm shorted, somehow taking the gate offline with it, and she didn’t feel safe, she could’ve locked herself down in the basement, and then inside the room. She could’ve gone to my room first, trying to bring me there with her. But there were limitations to her bravery. It all made sense. And when she couldn’t find me, maybe she left the front door open for my return.
My mother in the panic room would be a setback. My mother in the panic room might be a reason to have our living arrangement reassessed. My mother in the panic room would be reason to lie.
Hope and dread, swirling in the pit of my stomach.
Ryan narrowed his eyes at the dial.
“Turn around,” I said to Ryan. Not because I didn’t trust him, but because my mother would want it this way. If she was in here…If she was in here, it was a problem.