We left Pete’s car where she’d parked it, inches from toppling over the hill. The subject of the reservoir was closed and tucked away, as were other subjects as far-reaching as mothers we were avoiding and girls come back to life. The night was filled with strange things, but what wasn’t strange was being together with my sister again. That was the one thing that felt right.
We followed a path of stones to the house, with Ruby leading the way, saying, “Watch where you walk, step only on the stones, that’s why they’re there, no, don’t walk on that one, walk on that one, that’s right, that stone there,” until we reached a series of short, squat steps and then a door. It was unlocked, and unpainted, and had a hole where the knob should be. Even so, she opened it wide and ushered me in.
Indoors, with a few lamps on to see, the house was revealed to not exactly be a whole house yet. It was a house in progress, one being built up around us as we stood inside. The walls and floors were half-completed, formed from scraps and panels of wood, electrical wires for who-knew-what gaping out from above. And yet furniture was arranged in the room—a table and chairs, a love seat on one side, a couch opposite. It looked like someone had insisted on moving in too soon. Or that the furniture was planted here first, and then the walls of the house were put up around it.
Ruby made no comment on the state of the house. She took a practiced step over a hole in the floor, indicating where to put my feet to avoid falling in, and then gave a quick tour of the downstairs: kitchen to the right, living room and den to the left, bathroom through this hall and around that bend. There were more doorways than it seemed there should be, if the only rooms downstairs were the ones she mentioned, but when I asked where the extra doors led, Ruby smiled and said sometimes you need more than one way to reach the outside.
There was no introduction to Jonah, the new boyfriend, whose house Ruby treated as her own. She said he was around somewhere, but she didn’t feel like looking. I’d meet him tomorrow, she said. She’d get him to make us breakfast or something.
Up a set of stairs, turning sharp corners without a banister to hold on to, we reached the second floor, where a hole in the floor meant for a ceiling fixture was poked through with a glowing pole of light. I could see wall frames where eventually there’d be walls, but now I could see through the walls—as if I’d grown X-ray eyes. It seemed that if you walked down a hallway, only when you reached the end would you know if it held a room, because we walked down one and there was nothing, and then we walked down another and there was a door.
“This one’s yours,” Ruby said.
I went to the door, but it didn’t swing open. It was propped there, leaning against the frame and not secured by hinges. A single push, and it could topple.
Here, for the first time, she acknowledged the state of the house. Maybe she was getting worried, now that she could see my reaction.
“Jonah’s going to build it up to something great,” she said. “He is. It takes time, I guess. But I told him. I told him, ‘My sister’s got to have her own room.’ And so he made sure. He should’ve gotten this door working first though.”
“Thanks,” I said. But I was thinking how Jonah knew about me, building this room for me before he ever met me, and tonight was the first I’d heard of him.
“I wanted you to have a room that’s all yours, Chlo. There’s a bathroom up here and everything. And it’s bigger than your old room at the Millstream, too. And your old bed’s in there, and your furniture.”
She picked up the door in both her arms and moved it aside so we could enter. She made a motion that I should go in first and then hovered behind me, close enough to step on my heels if I backed up even one inch.
“I know this room isn’t like that little truck-thing you were living in at your dad’s, but you weren’t thinking of leaving just yet, were you?” she teased. She’d practically whispered this up against the scalp of my head, so I couldn’t see if she was smiling as she said it—though I felt sure she was. Smiling.