But all I could find were his old work clothes that he’d never use again, and the ratty slippers that I really needed to toss, and a few coins scattered across the wood floor, strewn with dust.
I yanked all the clothes off the hangers in a desperate last-ditch attempt to find anything, the metal hangers colliding as they swayed. Until I became a girl sitting in the middle of a heap of musty clothes trying to hold her shit together.
This is what you get for listening to the senile, Nic.
This is what you get.
I stood back up and took a deep breath to steady my hands, but the tremor still ran through my fingers. My head dipped down and I tried again, bracing my arms on the wall in front of me, my forehead resting on the plaster, my eyes focusing on the grains of wood below me.
Dust on the floor, a bobby pin that must’ve been here since my mom was alive, and two tiny screws beside my left foot, kicked into the corner. If I were slowly losing my mind, where would I keep things? I tapped the screws with my bare toe, and as they rolled, I saw that the faces were painted white, like the walls. I checked above me—there was an air-conditioning vent missing its two bottom screws. The top right corner was only partially secured. I sucked in a breath and felt a surge of discovery, of hope. My shaking hands twisted the loose screw until it fell to the floor with the others, the vent hanging at an odd angle, the rectangular duct behind it now exposed.
I couldn’t see in from this angle, but I reached inside and felt paper—notebooks with spiral binding. I pulled them out, letting them crash to the floor, a few loose-leaf sheets raining down on top. I stood on my toes, reached deep inside, and scooped what I could out of the vent. Papers and dust and notebooks littering the closet floor. How much deeper did this go? How far into this house did my father’s secrets seep? I imagined papers lining the spaces between the walls, like skeletons.
I jammed the heap of clothes against the wall and stepped on top, pushing myself higher so I could see into the darkness. The vent cut at an angle, jutting upward at ninety degrees near the back. I’d reached for the few remaining scraps, my fingertips just grasping the corner of a yellowed page, when the doorbell rang.
Shit.
Shit shit shit.
Not enough time. Not fast enough. Could they get a search warrant this fast? Would they know what they were looking for? Where to look?
I froze, holding my breath. My car was out front. They knew I was home.
The bell again, and the dull thud of someone knocking. I didn’t have to answer. Out for a walk; in the shower; picked up by friends. But did it matter if I was here or not? If they had a warrant, they didn’t need me to be present to gain entry, I was pretty sure.
I moaned and shoved everything back into the duct. Crumpled the pages and threw them in as far as they would go. Then I replaced two of the screws, but the doorbell rang again and I fumbled with the third screw, so I shoved it into my pocket, then raced down the stairs, my hair a wreck, my clothes a wreck, as if I’d just stumbled out of bed.
Good.
I took a deep breath, made myself yawn, and opened the door.
The sun stood behind Everett, who had his phone out, his hand raised to the door as if about to knock once more. He beamed as I threw myself into his arms with unrestrained relief. Everett. Not the police. Everett.
My legs were wrapped around his waist and I breathed in his familiar scent—his hair gel and soap and starch—as he walked us inside, laughing. “Missed you, too,” he said. “Didn’t mean to wake you, but I wanted it to be a surprise.”
I slid down his body, took in his jeans, his lightweight polo, the suitcase on the porch. “I’m surprised,” I said, my hands still on him—his solid arms, the strength of his grip—real. “What are you doing here?”
“You asked for my help, and you have it. This is one of those things that needs to be handled in person. Also, I wanted an excuse to see you,” he said, his eyes quickly skimming over my disheveled appearance. His smile faltered, and he tried to hide it under feigned confusion. “Where did I put the suitcase? Oh, there . . .” He pulled his suitcase inside the doorway, and when he looked back at me, his expression was typical Everett, calm and collected.
“So what do we need to do?” I asked, shoulders tense, a headache brewing behind my eyes.
“I already stopped by the police station on the way here. Delivered the paperwork and demanded they cease all questioning with your father, pending evaluation.”
I felt my entire body relax, my muscles turning languid. “Oh, God, I love you.”
He stood in the middle of the living room, taking it all in: the boxes stacked around the dining room and foyer, the rickety table and the screen door that creaked. The floor that had seen better days, the furniture that had been awkwardly pulled away from the walls for painting. And me. He was definitely looking at me. I pressed my palms to my hips to keep them still.
“I told you I’d take care of it,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said.
And then it was just Everett and me in this place I thought he’d never see, and I wasn’t sure what to do next.
His eyes skimmed over me one more time. “It’ll be okay, Nicolette.”
I nodded.
“Are you okay?”
I tried to imagine what he must be seeing: me, a mess. I hadn’t showered since yesterday, and I’d been digging through closets all night. I’d had way too much coffee, and my hands kept shaking if they weren’t holding on to something. “It’s been stressful,” I said.
“I know. I could hear it in your voice yesterday.”
“Oh, crap, don’t you have work?” What day was it again? Thursday? No, Friday. Definitely Friday. “How did you get away?”
“I brought it with me. I hate to do this, but I’ll be working most of the weekend.”
“How long are you staying?” I asked, brushing by him to drag his suitcase—bigger than an overnight bag—away from the screen door.
“We’ll see your dad’s doctors today, and hopefully they’ll have the papers we need by Monday. But I’ll have to go after that.”
I thought of the notebooks in the vents. The door that wouldn’t lock. The missing people, then and now. “We should stay in a hotel. This place has no air, and you’re going to hate it.”
“Don’t be silly,” he said. “The nearest hotel is at least twenty-five miles away.” So he had checked, and he wasn’t counting the budget motel that definitely had vacancy on the road between this town and the next.
“So, show me the place,” he said.
Suddenly, I didn’t want to. I shrugged, marginalizing the house and all it represented—no longer thinking, That’s my dad’s chair, and my mom’s table, that once belonged to my grandparents, that she stripped down and refinished—instead turning it into a box of wood, trying to see it through Everett’s eyes.
“It isn’t much. Dining room, living room, kitchen, laundry. Bathroom down that hall and a porch out back, but the furniture’s gone and the mosquitoes are killer.”
Everett looked like he was searching for a place to put his laptop, specifically, the dining room table. “Here,” I said, shuffling the receipts and papers into piles, scooping things up and dumping them into the kitchen drawers I’d just emptied.
He put his laptop on the cleared table, along with his accordion-style briefcase. “Can I work here?”
“Sure. But there’s no Internet.”
He made a face, then picked up a receipt I’d missed—Home Depot, the nearly illegible date highlighted in bright yellow—and frowned at it.
I took it from his hands and balled it up like it was inconsequential. “Nobody’s lived here in over a year. Kind of wasteful to pay for Internet.” Not to mention we didn’t have an Internet line before that. Around here, service cut in and out from the satellite if there was an inkling of bad weather, and it wasn’t worth the annoyance for my dad. Most everyone could check email on a phone, but only one service provider worked, and it wasn’t Everett’s. “You could use the library? It’s near the police station. Not too far. I could drive you.”