Page 29 of What You Never Knew

I begin gathering the shoe boxes up to put back in the closet, but a creak on the stairs freezes me midmotion. “Hello?” I call out. Leslie Swann’s warning about the place having many ghosts runs through my head, but I quickly tell myself to get a grip. It’s an old cottage with lots of sounds, nothing else.

I finish putting the shoes back and am scooping up the pile of dresses when I hear another creak. Turning off the light in my parents’ room and shutting the door, I head straight for the stairs. Looking down into the dark, I can’t see anything. I flick on the light and there’s nothing there, but as I move downstairs, I can’t shake the lingering feeling that I only just missed someone.

After throwing the dresses in a laundry basket in the bathroom, I pour the dregs of the wine bottle into my glass and take it with me as I do a quick round of the cottage—opening each closet, peering out windows into the night, then locking each door.

The inspection makes me feel better. Again I tell myself it’s just an old cottage with creaks and drafts, all of it magnified because I’m here on my own. Putting my empty glass in the sink, I turn off all the lights and head up to my bedroom.

Something wakes me from a deep, wine-fogged sleep. Was it another creak, louder this time? Was it real or in my dream? I have that distinct feeling, yet again, that I’m not alone. Rolling out of bed, I go to the door. Grasping the handle, I turn and pull, but it won’t open. Twisting it from one side to the other, I can’t get it to budge. My head is still foggy with sleep and I can’t figure out if I’m doing it right. I give the door one more tug, and still it won’t open.

Shuffling back to my bed, I’m just too confused and groggy to know what’s real and what’s not. Too afraid to actually find out. I pull the covers over my head and fight to find sleep again.

In the morning I forget about the locked door and get up to go use the bathroom. As soon as I turn the handle, I remember. The door still won’t open. So it wasn’t just half sleep and a lot of wine that rendered me useless. The door is actually locked, and it would have been done from the other side with a key.

I give it a kick, but it’s a futile action. Panic starts to rise up in me. My phone is dead, with no charger in here, and nobody is due to come to the island until Ezra arrives back tomorrow night. My bladder feels as though it might explode, and my throat constricts with dryness. I can’t be locked in here.

Turning to see if there’s a cup or something to pee in, I see the open window and the roof just beyond and remember the fire escape. It’s on the other side of the cottage, but I can crawl across the roof and drop down onto it.

I give the door one more try, just to be sure, then throw on some pants and a sweat shirt. Opening my bedroom window wide, I unhook the screen and pull it free from the frame. There’s just enough space to squeeze through. Out on the roof, I stay low and crawl across the rough black shingles, which are already hot from the morning sun.

I used to sneak up here when I was a kid. I loved being able to look out on the lake and see the tops of islands. As an adult, all I can think about is not falling or peeing my pants.

I make it to the other side of the roof where the fire escape is. It’s a narrow metal staircase that runs down the side of the cottage. You can access it from a door in the upstairs hallway. My father put it in when he bought the cottage, since the entire structure is made of wood.

I shift onto my bum and shimmy along the roof until I’m able to drop down onto the first step. The fire escape door is miraculously unlocked. I never thought to check it when I first arrived or anytime after, just assuming it was locked as it always had been—lucky for me, it isn’t.

Back inside the upstairs hallway of the cottage, I go straight to my bedroom door. The main skeleton key for all the doors is sitting in the lock. I turn it and the door swings open, the hinges creaking as though laughing at me.

Walking back to the bathroom to finally relieve my bladder, I try to remember if the key was in the lock when I got here. If it was, maybe when I shut the door before bed last night, it twisted in the keyhole and locked. It’s a weak explanation, I know, but it’s the only one I can come up with, so I’ll take it. And maybe go easy on the wine, I tell myself.

Taking my morning coffee out to the verandah, I plop down on the glider. It’s another stunning day. The sun is out; the lake is calm and as clear as glass, light bouncing off it in ethereal rays. I plant my bare feet on the smooth wooden floorboards and gently rock myself back and forth. The squeak of the rusty metal is hypnotic, lulling me into a dreamlike trance as I stare out at the peaceful landscape.

The locked door rises into my consciousness without me calling for it, but this time it feels like a memory, not something that happened only last night. I can see my hand on the doorknob, but it’s a young hand; can feel the panic and confusion of being locked in my room and retreating back to my bed. It happened before.

We left Avril Island for good the morning after my door was mysteriously locked, which meant the unexplained occurrence got swallowed up by that and the events leading up to it. By the time we were leaving Avril Island, I’d forgotten all about the locked door.

A couple of days before we left Avril Island, I’d seen my mother and West out on the front lawn arguing. I’d never seen them argue before, so I watched with fascination from the kitchen window.

It ended when he chucked the hammer he was holding onto the ground and stormed off. When my mother came inside, I asked her if West had just quit, but she didn’t answer. She swept past me and went straight to her room. When she still hadn’t come down by dinner, May went upstairs to check on her.

“She didn’t say much,” May explained. “It’s just one of her episodes. I’ll make us hot dogs for dinner and take her one later.” We didn’t give it much more thought. We ate dinner together, went for a swim, and then put ourselves to bed, and still my mother had not emerged from her room or eaten the food we’d left on her bedside table.

My childhood was peppered with “episodes.” May and I were included in a lot of them, mostly when we were guilty of some crime that had hurt my mother so much that she had to take to her bed. My father always gave us the same lecture: How can you treat your mother this way when she does so much for you? You need to do better. You need to be better daughters. The crime itself was never really revealed; we just knew we were the offenders and had to make up for it. So, we apologized with big, blanket apologies that covered every possible offense. We praised her, doted on her, and eventually she came round again and was back to her normal self.

The other episodes were about my father. There would be yelling. Sometimes we heard things being thrown, shattering against the wall like porcelain fireworks. Sometimes there was the packing of bags and threats of leaving, always by my mother.

The fights never made it past the fortress of our home. My father always found a way to placate her, talk her down. It took hours, but by the next day or even later that day, they both acted as though nothing had happened. We were all supposed to forget the horrible things that were said, the destruction that had occurred, and carry on like a happy family.

This particular time my mother got herself out of bed the day after her “episode.” She still seemed frail, which wasn’t unusual, but she also seemed nervous, which was. She said she had to go into town for a few hours but wanted us to stay on the island. I didn’t put too much stock in it. I was just relieved that she was leaving for a little while and we’d be out of reach of whatever it was she was going through in that moment.

My mother came back around dinnertime. She seemed better, less fragile, but still distracted. We went about our normal evening routine. My mother drank wine and read a book. May took photos of the sunset while I played solitaire and made gimp bracelets for my friends at the sailing club. We had our night swim and retreated to May’s room to talk.

Lying in May’s bed, I started to relax and trust in the normal that seemed to be settling over the cottage. My mother had put on a record and I could hear her moving around downstairs. Her episode appeared to be over; it had been short-lived and neither May nor I had been a casualty of it, which was a rare and wonderful thing.

When we heard the hum of an engine approaching the dock, May was the first to leap out of bed and run to the window in my parents’ room that had a view of the lake.

“It’s Dad,” she said, when she got back to her room.

“But it’s Wednesday. He never comes on Wednesday.” She ignored my annoyingly obvious declaration and sunk down beside me on the bed. The simple change in family routine was like an alarm suddenly going off, ringing through the summer night to alert us to the fact that things were not right.