William stares down the dark, dimly lit street until maybe he can’t see the lights of Adam’s car anymore. And then he goes inside and slams the door shut.
I fall back on my old bed and remember what Adam had told me. Running away is his MO. When things get difficult…that’s what he does. He runs.
Where is he running to? I pray to the old gods it’s not a bar or a liquor store. Even though he’s no longer mine, I also pray it’s not to another woman. I’m too selfish to leave that out of my prayers.
I drag my feet up the stairs and once I’m in my room, I pull off my beautiful, sparkling gold dress and throw on a T-shirt that reaches my knees. I wash my face and brush my teeth. And when I reenter my room, I freeze.
Because it’s filled withowls.
Tiny, brown screech owls line my bed. Barn owls sit at the window slats by the sloped roof. One enormous great horned owl sits at the threshold of the open balcony door. “Hello?” I say. “Nice to see you.”
I don’t know what the owls are doing here, but I’m going to assume it’s similar to when I’m upset and bears or foxes or coyotescome. They are here for comfort. “Thank you for coming. But I’m okay.”
They all just stare at me with their enormous, dark eyes. I sit back on the bed and say, “Okay. I guess you can stay if you want. Just shut the door behind you when you leave, okay? I don’t want ghosts to get in here.”
I’m not making any sense. Ghosts don’t need an open door to get in anywhere. I should know that more than anyone. But I’m too emotional right now to be logical, even in my own thoughts. Everything aches. I close my eyes and will sleep to rescue me from my pain.
Thankfully it doesn’t take long for this prayer to be answered.
32
Adam isn’t back by thenext morning. He’s not there when I get home from work, either. Neither is Nadia, of course.
I text my sisters.Hey, what are you up to? Does anyone want to grab dinner tonight?
Teal:I’m so sorry but I can’t. I got dehydrated last night at the opening and woke up with a gnarly migraine.
Sage:Oak is cutting his first tooth. He was up more than half the night. I’m going to collapse as soon as Tenn gets home from work. How about tomorrow?
We make tentative plans and then I sit down at the kitchen table, wondering what the hell I’m supposed to do with myself tonight. I’m aware I’m experiencing my first heartbreak ever. According to the series I like to watch, that means I should go to the store and get a bunch of chips and ice cream and veg out whileeating my feelings. But the thing is…I woke up feeling kind of numb. I don’t have access to the feelings I should be eating. So food right now, beyond what I need to get my stomach to stop growling, it just doesn’t seem appealing.
I bury my face in my hands and wonder if a Tylenol PM would be a good plan, just to go to sleep far earlier than normal so I won’t have to deal with this restlessness, when I lift my head and blink at the first thing that I see.
It’s the key holder mounted on the side of the cabinet, right next to the entrance into the living room. It’s old as hell, been there since I could remember, which means it might’ve been there when Nadia bought this house decades ago. I stand up to examine it, because something about this is bothering me. And I can’t figure out why.
It comes to me when I see a sticky note next to a collection of keys on a ring hanging on the rightmost hook.Return to Mother Michelle ASAP.
I nod. These are the keys Nadia borrowed from the church for the summer festival. Clearly she’s pretty delayed in returning them to the nun who wanted her to have them for the event, in case someone got locked out somewhere.
Which means I know how to properly distract myself now.
It doesn’t take me longto find the director of education’s office. Almost all the buildings around St. Theresa’s are open, even this late in the evening. There’s choir practice happening in the sanctuary. Bible study in some of the classrooms Nadia used to force me to teach Sunday school to little kids in as a teenager. The director’s office is hidden behind two large rooms. One was where we used to eat Thanksgiving dinner with otherchurchy kids while Nadia did churchy things with their churchy parents. The other was where youth group used to meet up and eat pizza after evening Mass every Sunday. I glance in the big trash can on my way through the room, and yup, it’s got some empty Papa John’s boxes stuffed into the bottom. Very little has changed around here.
The director’s office is locked. I go through the keys on the key ring, and it only takes three to pop the door open. I close and lock the door behind me, and then I am alone in the quiet room. There are two desks wedged in here, between a number of bookshelves filled with Bibles and other religious books. Sage said this was where the strange room was. The one that might answer all my burning questions about the cult that may or may not have met up here for literal decades.
I feel a curl of glee around my belly. Whatever is going on, this is working. I’m barely thinking about the way Adam ripped my heart out and stomped on it last night. It only took committing several crimes, is all.
It takes me a minute to find the door. The room being dark doesn’t help, but I skim my hands on the wall until I find a small, silver knob. From there I make out the door edges. They’re very tight, and both the door and the wall are covered in busy wallpaper featuring piles of books, cups of coffee, and apples in a pattern over a deep green background. Makes me think it was chosen intentionally, to draw the eye away from secret cult entrances. Actually, who am I kidding? That’s exactly what happened. Everything here is intentional, from the removing of key architectural plans in the old book still on my work desk to the wallpaper choice in here.
I slide the keys in, one by one, and it is the smallest, most ornate one—decorated in carved swirls—that fits.
As soon as I turn the key, the door eases open without asound. I have to bend down to peek inside. A smell of earth and moss comes up my way, along with thick humidity. I use my cell phone flashlight and face down into the dark. Well. It’s a good thing I didn’t just march through. Because it’s nothing but stairs as far as the light can reach, made of stone and covered in Hooker’s green lichen. I’d have fallen right onto my face and smashed a cheekbone open, or worse.
Someone grabs the office doorknob behind me and I gasp, leap onto one of the stair steps, and shut the secret door behind me just as the office door swings open. My door locks. It seems to echo all around me, and down into the staircase, with a final sort of dread. I hold my breath, waiting for someone to throw this door open and demand to know what the hell I’m doing. But I hear next to nothing. Footfalls, maybe. Whoever’s in the office isn’t paying much attention to their surroundings. Which, good. Means I can make my way down the stairs now without worrying about being chased.
And that’s exactly what I do.
There is no rail tohold, so I have my left hand clutching my phone, holding the light up, and my right one using the wall for leverage. Because these stairs are not flat, or even stable. One of them has a crack and wobbles under my feet. I shudder when I imagine what on earth could be beneath that I might fall toward if this whole thing broke apart on my next step. An underground river? A den of lions? It’s only now that I begin to get a sense that what I’m doing might not exactly be the fun sort of distraction, after all. I might well encounter something straight from a horror film.
