It was a new day. Sleep helped, Kaine had to admit. The Oakwood Motel was a strip of five small rooms available for overnight or long-term rent. A double bed with white sheets and a bedspread made of shiny polyester from 1994. The walls had wooden-framed pictures of the ocean, something Kaine found to be quite ironic since she had fled that very scene. A sink, a toilet, a digital alarm clock on a nightstand, and about the only up-to-date thing in the room: a flat-screen TV with cable. And Wi-Fi. She’d gotten in some blogging for Leah’s husband and answered a few emails. A client referral proved to be good, so she sent a contract of agreement to consult for them. More money would be essential.
Not far from her thoughts for the evening was Grant Jesse. Joy too. The only people she’d met in Oakwood, outside of the red-lipped teenager who’d registered her at the motel. They’d been kind, really. She needed to work on relaxing now and allowing herself time to process Danny’s death from two years before while not constantly looking over her shoulder. It was hard to swallow that justice wouldn’t be meted out on Danny’s behalf, but maybe it was time to put it aside. Since she was the only one who kept alive the idea that he’d been murdered, not just killed in a random car accident.
Foster Hill House greeted her in the morning, not looking any friendlier than the day before. But, Kaine mustered her will to continue and focused on the good memories of Danny. His satisfied grin when he finished a project. He would be proud of her when she completed restoring this place.
Kaine tried to remind herself of that as she looked up the stairwell to the second floor. She felt for her back jean pocket. Pepper spray. Check. God help her. She was a paranoid mess. In another life she could see Danny right now, as if he were beside her. His brown eyes would be sparkling with anticipation for the latest hands-on project. His brown hair would be ruffled and his tailored shirt untucked over blue jeans. But it was more than the attractive life that radiated from him that first caught her eye at the church she’d visited at the behest of a fellow social worker. It was his love of everything. Unabashed. Uncorked. Even for her. She held her secrets to herself, yet he gave her the room to do so. Even when her career began to drain every last ounce from her, he watched her go each morning, waiting . . .
She swallowed the lump that crowded her throat. She owed him this. For the morning that she didn’t come back when he stood there at the door and asked her to stay. For the kisses she shrank away from. For the day that he died.
The stairs creaked beneath Kaine’s feet, but they held. That was a plus. One check mark in the pro column of Foster Hill House. She let out a breath as she reached the top of the stairs, where a long, dank hallway, as creepy as a horror movie, met her. It was barren, with the exception of more spider webs, another large mouse nest, and a disintegrating painting that hung askew midway. She tiptoed over to it, the walls closing in and suffocating her with the presence of imaginary ghosts. What footsteps had walked these hallways? Young, old, child, elderly? The note-riddled page from Great Expectations was still in her pocket. She felt for it. Had the person who left it walked this hall?
Kaine’s skin crawled and goose bumps rose on her flesh as if she were being watched. She rammed her hands into her yellow hoodie’s front pocket as though that would somehow make her invisible.
The painting was so covered in dust, Kaine couldn’t make out much color, let alone figures. Running her hand across it, she regretted that choice immediately and swiped it against her jeans, attempting to wipe the grime off her palm. It was weird there was still a painting in this house, as if all previous owners had been afraid to take it down.
A face stared back at her from the cracked, peeling canvas. An ancient woman in a black dress that appeared to be from the Civil War era. Kaine tipped her head, locking eyes with the vacant dark browns of the woman long dead. She couldn’t be more than forty. Her face was average, her lips pulled tight. Maybe from sitting so long while the painter painted her? Kaine wondered what she had been thinking or what her eyes had seen. The war, newspapers with Abraham Lincoln in bold letters and quotes, maybe death? Kaine swallowed. She could connect with this woman, if only by that one thought alone.
Her cellphone shattered the chilling stillness. It flipped from Kaine’s hand as she jumped at the sound. Catching it in midair, she rammed her finger down on the screen’s green answer button.
“Leah. Sheesh!”
“Are you all right?” Leah’s voice, so familiar, brought reality rushing back to the historic tomb into which Kaine had wandered.
She wrinkled her face in disgust as if Leah stood in front of her. “I’m creeped out, that’s what. This house—it’s sketchy.”
“That bad?”
“Well, it’s not good,” Kaine countered, biting back the added accusation that the realtor Leah had sworn by had, indeed, scammed Kaine.
She gave the woman in the painting one last study. Kaine could almost feel her gaze searing into her back, begging her to step back into time and rescue her. That was it—the woman looked afraid.
“Are you going to stay?” Leah’s question followed Kaine into the first room. A bedroom, empty and cold.
“I have to. I’m saddled with the place now.”
“No, you don’t. Come home to San Diego if it’s so horrid. We can put it back up for sale and you can live with us until you get back on your feet.”
“No one but me would be stupid enough to buy this place. Besides, you know why I left San Diego. I can’t come back. I can’t—”
“Are you sure there isn’t an element of truth to what the police said? Maybe you really do need to take some time and just rest. Get more counseling. It was helping you. I could tell it was and—”
Kaine froze in the doorway of bedroom number two. “Don’t, Leah.”
Silence.