“I most certainlydo notwant the house. And my mother knew it. This house and I, and that damn pool—we’re done with each other, and have been for many years now.” She paused, looked away. “There’s also the trust.”
Our grandmother had set up the fund once it became clear that Lexie might never be able to support herself. I didn’t know the details but was always relieved to know that it wouldn’t be on me and my crappy human services salary to help my sister financially.
“At any rate,” Diane went on, “the trust was set up to be passed on to Lexie’s children, should she have them. If not, it was to go to you.”
“Oh,” I said, dumbfounded.
“Michael Knox, the attorney who oversaw it all, will be in touch soon.”
“The trust payouts are quarterly; it’s a decent chunk of change,” my father added. There it was again—the pang of guilt and regret that he knew facts about her life I was clueless about.
“I’m going to run back to my place, get cleaned up, and get to the office,” Diane said. “I’ll grab us some takeout and wine for dinner and stop by later.”
“Perfect,” I told her.
“Sounds good,” my father said.
“In the meantime,” Diane said, throwing us warning glances, “maybe you two should get out of the house for a while today. And stay the hell away from that pool.”
The stairs leading up to the attic were narrow and dark, and when I reached the top, I smelled dust, mothballs, and things long abandoned.
The floral wallpaper, yellowed with age, was peeling in places. Thewide pine plank floors were once painted white but were now worn down to bare, splintery wood.
Immediately to the left of the attic door a rack held old coats. Beneath it, a heavy cedar chest. Opening it, I found it stuffed full of linens—tablecloths, curtains, a wool blanket, and a worn yellow-and-white baby quilt. I closed the trunk and turned to see the brass bed shoved against the wall, still covered with a white sheet. I held my breath as I whipped the sheet off, half expecting… what? A fossilized old woman? A jar of chattering teeth?
Of course, there was nothing but a stained old mattress.
Something moved behind me. I turned slowly. The coats were moving, swaying on their hangers. Someone was there behind them.
“Hello?”
Pig jumped out, and I screamed, stumbled backward.
“Damn it, Pig!”
He brushed up against my leg, purring, evidently quite pleased with himself.
Sunlight filtered in through a big half-circle window. I made my way to it, kicking aside stacks of paper and photos. Beneath the window was an old folding table Lexie had been using. Tubes of paint, uncleaned brushes, palettes caked with layers of crusty mixed colors. Abandoned teacups and small plates of crumbs. More joints stubbed out in saucers. And then, three objects I recognized immediately: an old cut-glass doorknob, a tarnished silver fork, and a porcelain faucet handle with the wordCOLDon it in black. The treasures from the old hotel that Lexie and I found in the woods when we were kids!
The day we found the doorknob, buried in leaf litter, we thought it was a giant diamond. Then Lexie had picked it up. “It’s a doorknob!”
“It must be from the old hotel,” I said. We looked at it, took turns holding it, wiping the dirt off. “What do you think it was like? The hotel? It must have been pretty fancy, right?”
Lexie looked around the woods, squinting. “Maybe,” she’d said with a smile, “maybe it’s still here.”
“Huh?”
“Maybe somewhere there’s a magic door leading to the hotel,” she said.
“What, like in another world?”
She nodded. “Like a fairy world, and now we’ve got the knob, so we’re the only ones who can open it,” Lexie said. “It’s in these woods somewhere, hidden. That’s where the peacock comes from!”
I laughed. “Right. A fairy-world peacock? Makes perfect sense, Lex.”
Now I picked up the doorknob from Lexie’s art table, turning it in my hand, watching the way the cut glass caught the light coming in through the window. I held my breath. The room was utterly still.
No magic door opened.
