“Well I haven’t heard a thing.”
A thump, like something falling, rattled the ceiling.
“Except that.” Oliver ran up the stairs, box in hand.
When he reached the foyer, he stopped, Lorna bumping into him from behind. The door to the dining room stood open. Lorna looked at him, waiting for him to do something. Of course he needed to make the move. That’s what he did. That’s who he was. The guy who made the decisions. At least, that was who he used to be. He could fall back into that role if they needed him to. He cleared his throat and approached the door.
“Hollis?”
No answer.
Lorna nudged him. “Go.”
“I’m going!”
But when he got to the door, there was nothing to see. He ushered Lorna over.
“We did hear something, didn’t we?” she asked.
Oliver left the empty box on the nearest table and walked to the windows.
“Did someone come through the window?” she asked.
He tugged at the sashes. “These are shut up tight.”
“Maybe the kitchen?”
They both looked across the room. Was his mind playing tricks or had the door just moved, like it had fallen back into place after being pushed? He blinked. The door was still. At least now. Oliver approached the kitchen. Nothing. No movement of shadow between the door and the floor.
“Hollis, is that you?” he called. Again, no answer.
He felt someone watching him and turned, but it was only Lorna, keeping near the door to the foyer. She nodded, urging him on.
Oliver curled his hand into a fist and pushed in the kitchen door.
Maeve
Maeve dragged her hand over the bumps in the wallpaper as she and Ellie walked deeper down the hallway that housed their guest rooms. The same pattern repeated everywhere, on each floor, like they weren’t really moving at all. Like she and Ellie kept returning to the same place. She thought of her nephew’s gerbil and the little plastic tubes attached to its cage. Hours it would run, keeping her up at night, never moving an inch from the place it started.
“Do you really think we’ll find anything up here?” Maeve asked, glancing over her shoulder at the staircase they had just left behind. The higher they climbed within the house, the more disconnected she felt, like the air was somehow thinner up here. Or maybe it was the result of being stuck with Ellie.
Ellie opened a door, took a perfunctory glance, and shut it again. “It’s better than sitting around waiting for something to happen.”
“What do you think will happen?” Maeve asked.
“I don’t know. Hollis? Are you in there?”
They stood in front of his open door. His room had the same old furniture as Maeve’s, the same grandmotherly bedspread. Maeve tried to spot anything special about it, anything that could give away where he had gone. Ellie giggled.
“Remember how our floor always smelled of fried chicken?” Ellie asked. “He ate it almost every night. It was like living in a Chicken Cottage.”
“Why is that funny?”
Ellie frowned as if she realized she’d been laughing at a funeral.
“I suppose it’s not. I was just . . . just remembering.”
“Yeah well, I’m not in a mood to reminisce.” Maeve stepped into the room to get away from her, but no matter how far apart she got, it was like she was tied to Ellie with an invisible string. She felt the tug as she searched through Hollis’s bag. Clothes neatly folded: shirts, socks, trousers, trainers. A paperback novel, its bookmark a folded newspaper clipping. Something about a kidnapping.
“Maybe we’re overreacting,” Ellie said. “Maybe Hollis did go for a walk.”
“Like you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Lorna told me you went out this morning.”
“When did she tell you that?”
“When we were downstairs. God, do you get this defensive with David?”
Maeve returned to the hall, feeling Ellie’s eyes on her, the giggles gone.
“How do you know my husband’s name?”
“Because you told us about him.” With every step she took, Ellie took two, like a trailing yo-yo, until Ellie was close enough to grab her arm. Maeve yanked it free.
“It’s just I can’t remember saying anything about David since you’ve been here.”
“Well, you did. There’s nothing up here. Let’s go.” The lights in the hall were giving her a headache. Maeve wished she could unscrew each bulb and crush it against the floor.
“You may not think so, but I pay attention to every word I say.”
“Because you’re totally obsessive-compulsive that way.” Maeve pinched the bridge of her nose, hoping to keep the migraine at bay. “We came up here to look for Hollis. We can’t find him. Let’s go downstairs. Who cares about your stupid balding husband anyway?”
“How did you know he was balding?”
Maeve bit her tongue. “Isn’t that what happens to all old men?”
Ellie folded her arms like a disappointed schoolmarm. “Is it really so hard to tell the truth?”
“When has either of us ever told the truth?”
In that moment, Maeve found herself back at Caldwell Street arguing in the front room, instinctively avoiding Callum’s gaze. Even though Callum wasn’t here, the old anxiety crept up her throat like a spider in its web. When she saw Ellie tugging at the cuffs of her shirt, biting her upper lip, she could tell she felt it, too.
“Fine,” Maeve said. “I saw it on Facebook. Happy?”
“But we’re not friends on Facebook.”
“I looked you up. Can we leave it now?”
Ellie, now with the upper hand, stopped chewing on her lip. “I guess Jilly was right about my privacy settings. Jilly’s my daughter, but I suppose you know that, too.”
Maeve chose not to reply. If only she could pull her quotations from her pocket. Read her reassurances. But that would have embarrassed her further, so she fiddled with the nearest doorknob instead.
“I’m sorry I ignored your friend request,” Ellie said.
“No, you’re not.”
“Wait. You sent that a few years ago, didn’t you? But David didn’t start going bald until last summer.”
Maeve walked to the door that marked the end of the hall, trying to put distance between them. Perhaps from farther away, Ellie would see her less clearly.
“I look you up sometimes. And Lorna. And Hollis. Oliver now and then. It’s not a crime.”
“I suppose not, but I certainly don’t see the point.”
“Because I have nothing better to do! There. Happy now, princess?”
“Don’t call me that.” Ellie furrowed her brow.
“Why not? That’s what we always called you. And it’s what you are. Isn’t it? Princess Ellie with her perfect life? You sell your soaps and lotions and live in a massive house that’s a registered historic landmark. Then there’s Lorna who gets to work at the University of Edinburgh, where I could never have got accepted even if I tried, and Hollis is an actual police detective, and Oliver was on Dragons’ Den, even though he didn’t get an investor, and do you know what I am? Nothing. Unemployed. On the dole. You have a mansion in Richmond? I live in my brother’s spare room. To make me feel better, he pays me to watch his kids like a live-in nanny. It’s everything you’ve ever wanted for me, isn’t it?”