“Sure.” It sounds good, but it’s not like she has much choice.
“Great.” His eyes sparkle above his mask as if they’ve just made a date, and Sarah’s stomach warms.
Until he adds, “Lock the door and don’t leave the room,” and she remembers why she’s really here. Her skin crawls as she imagines him hammering plywood across the doorframe, the brute strength of his arms driving in the nails one by one.
When she stands in the front window, picking at a muffin and watching the truck drive away, she realizes she forgot to ask him for a phone charger.
The wind surges, battering against the windows like a bird fighting its reflection. Sarah picks upThe Tempestand the mug of coffee and sinks into the recliner. Caleb’s mother has writtenMeredith Vasson the inside cover in the neat handwriting Sarah would expect from a teacher. The name suits the delicate woman in the photo on the vanity. Sarah flips the page to Act 1. She doesn’t need the CliffsNotes to know she’s Ferdinand, washed up on this unexpected island.
As she turns the pages, she smells tobacco, so faint she’s not sure she’s imagining it. The sickly sweet scent pricks her nose and sends the hairs on her arms rising. She squirms in the chair, the air suddenly sucked out of the room like it did every time Ben entered. Her lungs strain to breathe, her senses convinced someone is looming behind her. Caleb’s father, reading over her shoulder.
She tosses the book on the bed and springs out of the recliner, heart racing.
She’s alone, save for the shrieking wind. The house, though, is silent. Caleb’s brother, Elijah, must be asleep. No ghosts stirring, except for the ones in her head.
Rattled and reluctant to sit any longer, she unlocks the door.
She can’t be carrying the virus. Since the start of the pandemic, she’s barely interacted with anyone other than Ben. It’s been months, and neither she nor Ben have even gotten a cold. She’ll just have a quick look for a phone charger. Caleb has a cell, so there must be one lying around. She won’t rifle through papers or open any drawers, nothing that would violate his privacy. If she doesn’t see one, she’ll return to her room like a good girl, and no one will be the wiser.
Sarah puts on her mask, slips her dead phone into her pocket, and steps into the hallway with her half-empty coffee mug. If anyone catches her outside her room, she can say she was hoping for a refill.
There are two doors ahead, one closed and one open. Elijah must be sleeping behind the closed door. She doesn’t want to wake him; she’ll have to peek into Caleb’s room another time. She’s afraid to, anyway, in case she finds something that’ll make her dislike him, like a stack of porn magazines or the same World War II history books Ben owned.
She tiptoes down the stairs, breath straining behind her mask with the effort to keep quiet, and finds the kitchen. It’s as outdated as the rest of the house. Rustic wooden cabinets, brown patterned linoleum, a backsplash of orange and white tiles. Sarah almost laughs out loud at the beige rotary phone hanging on the floral wallpaper. She picks up the receiver, but remembers Graham’s cell still has a Toronto area code. She reluctantly puts it back. Nice girls don’t make long-distance calls without asking, and being nice is how she’s survived this far.
She locates the coffeemaker, the carafe blessedly half full and the heating element powered on. She refills her mug and then locates the milk. The fridge holds mostly convenience foods that can be eaten by hand. Baby carrots, cold cuts, a grocery store rotisserie chicken, a leftover slice of pizza on a plastic-wrapped plate. Sarah smirks. A bachelor fridge.
No phone charger plugged into the outlet with the coffeemaker, however, or lying out on the table or laminate countertops.
She splashes milk in her coffee and slips off her mask to drink. Sipping carefully, she wanders into the dining room, where a grandfather clock loudly echoes her fraught heartbeat. The bite of furniture polish and tobacco lingers in the air. She checks behind her shoulder for Caleb’s father again, but sees no one.
A bulky teak dining set squats in the middle of the room. On one side, a matching hutch is stacked with books instead of the good china, mostly faded classics like the ones in her room and a few textbooks on hospitality management. A cluster of framed photos face the hutch on the opposite wall. Meredith Vass holding a baby on her lap. A grim-faced elderly white couple. A pair of chestnut-haired boys standing in front of a Christmas tree, the older a lanky adolescent, the younger a chubby-cheeked toddler. Next to them, in another photo, Jacob Vass lounges in the plaid recliner, a pipe jutting from one broad fist—identical to Caleb’s fists, Sarah notes—laughing so heartily the camera reveals the metal crowns at the back of his mouth. Meredith perches on the arm of the recliner, hands crossed demurely, her own smile tight and close-mouthed. The smiles of the dead.
Sarah turns away from Caleb’s family and crosses the foyer to the front room. It’s granny chic meets hunting lodge: wood paneling, floral upholstery encased in plastic slipcovers, and a stag’s head mounted on a wall. Surprisingly the room doesn’t smell the way it looks; it smells faintly of bleach, like the motel.
She clutches the coffee mug for warmth, unnerved by all the relics of the past. She’s not used to living in a home with so much history. The scratches on the dining table, the shiny spots on the staircase banister, the scuffs on the floorboards all betray previous inhabitants. She’s afraid to stray onto the front room’s vinyl floor runners for fear Grandma Sweet will appear and scold her for drinking out of an open cup around the good furniture. Heaven knows this house has the space for ghosts, and anyway, there’s nowhere else for them to go in this remote location.
Sarah continues her creeping to the back of the house and finds a den. It appears a typical bachelor sanctum, leather sofa pushed aside to make room for a weight bench and treadmill in front of a large-screen TV. But a chill travels across the back of her neck and stirs her hair. She hears a crashing like ocean waves, and for once, it’s not the blood in her ears.
The glass sliding door that should look out on the backyard is slightly ajar and covered in yellowing newspaper on the outside. A corner of the newspaper lifts and rattles, and she smells the cedar and turpentine scent of Elijah’s parka. Curiosity gets the better of her, despite her pounding heart. She slides the glass door open, revealing a large painting on an easel.
But that’s not what holds Sarah’s attention. The wall ahead is made of plastic sheeting, thundering under the wind’s fists and rippling like the choppy surface of a lake. Through the semi-transparent plastic, the woods are twisted shadows. Like in the paintings at the motel, and on the easel’s canvas.
Similar canvases are propped to the left and right, against the room’s glass sides. An old dresser serves as a makeshift palette, its top mottled by blobs of paint. A handful of brushes sits in a coffee can on a folding table littered with paint tubes, gnarled twigs, and a small animal skull. A shearling coat hangs over the arm of a loveseat, twin to the recliner in the main bedroom.
Sarah recognizes the coat from the photo of Caleb’s father upstairs. Is this Jacob Vass’s studio? His hands—Caleb’s hands—would be capable of the furious brushstrokes.
“Dad was putting in a sunroom,” says a voice from behind her, “but he never got the chance to finish it.”
Sarah spins around, splashing coffee over her hand. A young man in his twenties stands in the doorway. He’s shorter and leaner than Caleb, and his eyes brown instead of blue, but he shares his brother’s wayward chestnut hair and easy posture. He’s not wearing a mask, revealing softer-edged cheekbones and a sloping nose, as if a sculptor had started to chisel Caleb’s face but gave up. His mouth is thin, stubborn, and a little sad.
“You must be Sarah,” the man with Meredith Vass’s mouth says.
A roar sounds in Sarah’s ears, and it’s not the plastic billowing in the sunroom’s paneless windows. “You shouldn’t be down here,” the man says. Like Caleb, he has a forehead that frowns too much.
She wipes her wet hands on her jeans and offers a contrite smile. “I’m sorry, I got restless.”
The drooping line of his mouth turns up, and he transforms. He’s not as handsome as Caleb, but his manner is sweet and boyish. The roar in Sarah’s ears hushes. The guileless pleasure on his face instantly puts her at ease. “It can be our secret. I’m Elijah, by the way. Caleb’s brother.”
