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The client was genuinely distraught. “Did you check your video footage?”
Rose winced and explained there had been a malfunction.Rose decided she didn’t need to know when the malfunction occurred.
“I’ll keep you updated,” Rose promised the client before they got off the phone. “I’m sure we’ll get to the bottom of it soon.”
The client was incredibly displeased. They got off the phone with the air of old ex-friends with nothing else left to say.
Rose poured the rest of the contents of the coffee pot into her mug and left the kitchen to watch seagulls soar over rolling waves. For the better part of the year, she’d woken up and gone immediately to her studio to work on the sculpture. Now, she felt hollow and purposeless.
That was when she remembered the Grayson Estate.At least I have that.
Rose went for a ten-mile run through beach trails and lush forests and returned home for a smoothie and a shower. In a lunchbox, she packed a sandwich, some dark chocolate, an apple, and a protein bar, then drove out to the Grayson Estate to find it swarming with construction workers in yellow hats. Rose got out and watched them for a while, noting their easy tenderness as they secured the doorway and the pillars with construction tape.
Charlie was in conversation with a construction worker on the eastern side of the house, his arms spread wide as he discussed the caved-in roof and the yonder gazebo. Rose approached and caught the tail-end of their conversation, including Charlie saying, “As much of the place needs to be accessible so that Rose can start going through stuff. She wants to clear it all out and then refurbish.”
“There’s a lot of junk in there,” the construction worker said.
“There are always treasures in the midst of junk,” Charlie said.
Rose appeared beside him and stuck out her hand to shake the construction worker’s hand.
His grip was powerful. He grinned and said, “This is some place you got here. It’s rare that a burned building like this can take on new life.” He traced the rooftop with his gaze again, then asked, “Any idea why the owner abandoned it after the fire?”
Charlie gave Rose a look that meantI don’t have you figured out yet, Rose Carlson. But there’s certainly something amiss here.
He’d remembered Oren.
“The man who owned it when the fire broke out eventually did sell it,” Rose said. “But I haven’t looked intowhy.” She remembered her flippancy toward Howard Reynolds last night over dinner with the Salt Sisters and felt a spike of shame. They’d been trying to help. She’d rejected it.
The construction worker whistled. “It’s been weathered over thirty-one years. That’s the truth. But I can show you the areas of the house that are safe for you to enter into for now,” he said. “Follow me?”
Rose squeezed Charlie’s elbow with excitement. Together, the two of them followed the construction worker through the foyer, down the hall, through the kitchen, and back along the edge of the ballroom. As the other construction workers had already warned, the ballroom was a no-go zone, as was much of the second and third floors. But there were numerous hideaways and shadowed rooms that, it seemed, had been completely sealed over the past thirty-one years. White sheets heavy with dust were stretched across sofas and beds and wardrobes; bedrooms were locked, and the wood of thedoors warped. Floorboards creaked beneath them as they walked, dipping their heads into musty bathroom walk-in closets.
The library was located at the far end of the first floor and sealed. Miraculously, an iron key hung to the right of the door on a nail and glinted with ancient promise. Rose removed it and slipped it into the library knob, and turned it. She half expected Charlie or the construction worker to tell her not to, to tell her it wasn’t safe. But they just watched her.
Like the other sealed rooms, white sheets had been strung over everything of value. None of the windows in this room were broken, as far as she could tell, and the curtains had been drawn long ago, meaning that the books had existed in a sort of tomb for all these years. No sunlight. No rain. Nothing had affected them. Rose pulled aside a sheet to assess an entire row of books—all from the eighteen hundreds and in remarkable condition. She raised her eyebrows.
Oren was always a big reader,she remembered. But she hadn’t known he’d had to say goodbye to so many of the books he’d loved.
Why didn’t he come back in here to check on them?She wondered.
Unless Oren had returned after the fire. Maybe it had been Oren who’d pulled the white sheets over the bookshelves. Perhaps he’d tried to protect the things he’d left behind.
Rose certainly couldn’t imagine Zachary doing something like that. Rather, it was the dark shadow of Oren she felt moving through the old house, his thoughts stirring with anger and sorrow and fear. She felt him here asthough he’d only recently been here. As though the years hadn’t come between them.
“This is a crazy collection,” Charlie said, breaking her reverie. “Some of these books must cost a fortune.”
The construction worker remained in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest. “Whoever sealed this room knew what they were doing.”
A heavy moment of silence passed between them. Rose felt Charlie and the construction worker’s eyes upon her, sizing her up. She felt their curiosity.Does she know more than she’s letting on?They seemed to ask.
“I'll start here today,” Rose announced. “Thank you again for your help.”
Charlie admitted he had to hit the road, and the construction worker was needed back with his crew to secure the ballroom and orchestrate a plan to either bolster the integrity of the old roof or pitch a strategy to rebuild. Rose had told them everything was possible, that money was no object. When she’d said that aloud, she’d winced at herself and thought,I sound like Mrs. Walden.
I never wanted to sound like Mrs. Walden.
Rose returned to her car and drove to the nearest store to buy heavy-duty cleaning supplies and face masks to combat the dust. Back in the library, she shoved the dirty sheets into trash bags and cleaned the ancient curtains so she could pull them aside without creating more clouds of dust.
