Kaine moved into one of the side rooms. A bathroom. She stared into a cracked mirror hanging crooked over the sink. Her brown eyes stared back at her, doubtful and questioning. What was she going to do with this place? The gas-station lady, Joy, may have relieved Kaine of her initial panic over the daffodil, but the history around this house was far too parallel to her own story.
“God, maybe you could say something right about now?” Kaine’s whisper shattered the silence in the ancient house. She gripped the sides of the porcelain pedestal sink and eyed the oxidized copper pipes that rose from the back of the old toilet and into the wall. The plumber had just left. It would do for now, he’d said, but eventually the pipes would need replacing.
“The plumbing was supposed to be updated,” she whispered, still praying out loud as if God would respond. Apparently “updated” meant when it was last installed in 1983. “At least the toilet flushes.” She pulled the toilet handle, and water rushed into the bowl. High in iron, the orange water stained the bowl. Gross. If the toilet water was that orange, she would most definitely need to buy bottled water to drink until the well was tested and a filtering system put in. Which required money. Her savings was going to dwindle faster than she’d planned.
She needed to get Wi-Fi asap so she could log on and complete some of her deadlines for her new position as a virtual assistant for Leah’s husband. It helped that she could do his law firm’s blog from states away. It didn’t help that she was going to need to market herself and get at least four more significant paying clients to make ends meet. Trying to pass herself off as a capable blogger, someone with skills in writing employee manuals and social documents for private companies, was going to be tricky. She’d minored in business, but social work had taken precedence for the last eight years.
There were times she missed the job she’d fled. But now it was mostly because of the money and not the people. In fact, she’d cut herself off from everyone back home, with the exception of Leah. Her passion in life had taken a horrible swing toward surviving, and the pendulum didn’t look as if it’d find its way back in the other direction where Kaine had once served broken hearts. It was hers that was shattered now. Shattered and very alone.
Kaine exited the downstairs bathroom and made her way to a room that was far more intriguing than a bathroom with nasty pipes. It had been a study at one time, or a library. The built-in shelves held only blankets of cobwebs and dust that had collected in the corners and reached down to touch the shelves below.
A mouse nest of bundled straw, droppings, and dust bunnies piled in the corner of the bottom shelf. Mice. Spiders. Murder and mayhem in its history. Her own stalker. The only thing missing was that dog she’d promised herself.
Kaine pulled a dustcloth that hung from her back pocket. Well, this room was as good as any to tackle. It might be one of the only rooms that didn’t need major renovation. Besides, cleaning off the bookshelves would just feel good. There would at least be a sense of accomplishment on her first day here. She’d finish this and then go back into town, grab some dinner, and afterward head to the motel to get some paying work done.
Kaine spent the next hour wiping and sneezing. With a few more swipes of the now-black dustrag, she knelt on the floor by the shelves closest to the bay window. The bottom molding of the shelf jutted out, warped by time and wear. She pressed on the wood and, as she expected, there was no give. The walnut molding was tough and aged into a permanent warp. She wouldn’t be able to just pound a nail in and tighten it that way. Pound a nail? She didn’t even own a hammer.
She ran her hand along the molding one more time, trying to draw hope from its aged beauty. She wanted to imagine the house as it could be instead of as it was. Her future needed to take on some sort of hope or Kaine might well lose her mind.
Her fingers played with the end of the trim piece and edged into a gap behind it. She frowned as her index finger slipped up to her knuckle into the cavity.
“If I scream,” Kaine spoke aloud to only the mice, “it’s probably a gargantuan spider eating my finger, so go get help.” Kaine’s admonition to the hiding rodent and its eight-legged friends didn’t leave her feeling hopeful.
She bent and inspected the gap. Huh. The shelves had a hollow behind the trim work and beneath the bottom shelf.
“Umm.” Kaine’s perplexed pause earned her an echo off the ceiling. Her finger felt the edge of something. A leaf? Paper? Curious, she wedged her thumb into the gap and struggled to reach it. Finally, she grasped it and tugged, maneuvering the paper through the inch-wide gap. It was larger than she’d expected and folded into a long strip.
Kaine pulled it toward her. It was a page from a very old book. She carefully unfolded the page and pressed it against her jeans-clad leg.
Great Expectations.
A page from the old classic by Dickens. Kaine curled her lip. She’d never liked Dickens. He took four pages to explain one setting when he only needed a paragraph. She noticed faded ink in the page’s margins, scrawling, as if someone had taken notes on the story.
Kaine held the page toward the light coming from the bay window.
I am not meant for this life.
Weird.
He will come and take me, and I’ll never find my way home again.
Kaine swallowed. The same anxious feeling she was running from washed over her with renewed vigor. It was as if the words on the page reflected her own soul.
He’s always watching. My life is no longer my own. Hope is difficult to find in the darkness.
Kaine turned the page over and focused on the handwriting in the margin.
But there is hope. I will remember that tonight when he comes for me.
Kaine stared at the page of Great Expectations scarred with the feminine handwriting. When? Who? Someone had hidden this message behind the warped bookshelf. Someone had chronicled a brief moment in her life. One of quiet desperation, and a mirror of Kaine herself.
She folded the paper along its original seams and slipped it into the back pocket of her jeans. With a quick sweep of her gaze around the musty library, Kaine lurched to her feet. She needed to shake this—the feeling of being watched. It was all supposed to be left behind in California. The suspicions, the memories, the unproven break-ins. But the note from decades before fed the emotion that Kaine once again jammed under the surface calm she tried to etch on her face. Even though no one could see it, she needed to sense that power, that control. She was in control of her life. Not him or whoever it was who had made her existence post-Danny a nightmare that no one could share with her.