In the small hours of the night, she wakes her husband. She has been unable to sleep, she tells him, for fear that the water pipes will burst in the Slater house. She still has the key that Harriet gave her, she whispers. It’s unlikely that they’ve changed the locks.
Without pause or complaint, he draws back the bed hangings. How she loves this man. Together, they walk downstairs in their stocking feet, avoiding the worst-creaking floorboards. There is a sense of completeness in the house tonight—their children asleep, the family sheltered together, safe from the snow. These nights, she understands, will become ever fewer with the years.
They slip outside in their boots and go silently through the snow. The road has not been plowed, and there is a hallowed quality in it. There is no sound other than the rasping of the trees, a cracking branch, the soft drop of snow.
They cross the road and walk along the edge of the woods where their footprints will be obscured. They go over the lumpy span behind the house, Harriet’s dead garden, and let themselves in through the back door. Stepping over the threshold, Cheryl holds her breath in anticipation of what she might find, what disorder or disfigurement.
Inside, they are able to see dimly by the incandescence of the snow. The house is dusty, but otherwise unchanged. Cheryl tamps down the stubborn sensation that Harriet is present nearby, that she is about to emerge from the bathroom. The chunky pine butcher block, constructed by Lars, remains in the kitchen like an orphaned child. There are few indications of foreign influence—some unfamiliar pots and pans, hardcover books, months-old magazines. In the dining room, a Windsor chair dwells in the corner like a silent friend, built and bestowed by Roger himself.
Roger goes directly to the basement door, but Cheryl steps onto the stairs and turns to him.
“While we’re here . . .”
He joins her, and together they ascend. The second floor is sliced low by the slanted ceiling. Harriet’s horseshoe still hangs over the bedroom door, its lintel so low that Roger has to duck his head. Upon entering the room, Cheryl is enveloped by the musty kerosene smell that delivers her instantly back to Harriet’s side, toward the end, reading to her from historical romance novels. The old lover’s knot quilt is still on the bed. Cheryl is unsure how to feel about the new owners using it.
She goes to the window and peers through the grid of glass. There is her own home across the street, nestled and safe in the snow. Safe. She lays her hands on the window’s lower muntin and, bending her knees, heaves it open. A cold gust enters the room, and a few snowflakes drift in.
“What are you doing?” Roger asks.
Cheryl steps to the next window, yanks it open wide.
She turns to her husband, raises her eyebrows. “Don’t you know?”
“Cheryl,” he begins, but does not continue. He follows her into the adjacent bedchamber and watches her open the windows there.
She leans out under one of the sashes, reaching her arm around, and calls, “Where’s the downspout?”
“Cheryl, no.”
She draws herself back in and faces her husband squarely. “It has to happen,” she says. “There has to be exterior proof.”
“But this isn’t proof, this is sabotage.”
“What’s the alternative? Wait until the house decays from the inside? That’s what they’re hoping. There won’t be any proof until it’s too late. Just like the Spaulding house. There was nothing to see on the outside until the walls started to rot.”
Roger doesn’t answer. Cheryl thrusts her head and torso back through the window.
“I found it,” she gasps, extending her arm to its limit. “Come here.”
He goes out of the room. A moment later, he returns with a fireplace poker in hand. He moves Cheryl aside and leans out the window, straining. He grunts, and Cheryl flinches at the sound of metal popping loose. He pulls back into the room with a strange look on his face. She peers out the window, sees the drainpipe dangling like a broken limb, knocking against the siding. A wave of nausea comes through her, as if she has dismembered someone dear to her. She retreats into the bedroom and sits on Harriet’s quilt. Through the nausea, she sends a message of apology to the house. Her intentions are noble. Only noble.
“Do you hear that?” Roger asks. There is a thumping sound coming from above, the step of heavy boots. “It’s in the attic. Maybe animals.”
Cheryl is frozen in place. Reverend Slater was a pious man, but not known as a kind one. He was notorious for his anger, for the violent outbursts that kept his family docile and his community subservient.
“Come,” says Roger, infused with some strange new energy. “Who knows what we’ll find. Maybe it will help our case.”