She didn’t stop there. She’d walk home from school and take a wrong turn or wander off in another direction and the entire neighborhood was looking for her while she sat on a bench pretending she didn’t understand what all the hoopla was about.
“You can’t just wander off. Don’t do that again,” I’d say to her.
“Don’t do what again?”
“Wandering off. You scare us when you do that.”
“But I’m just taking another route.”
“It’s embarrassing to alert the school and neighbors and the police and then we find you and sometimes I think you do this on purpose.” I joked then, “Penelope, you are my only child, I don’t have a spare. If I lose you, I have nothing.”
I followed her once. Penelope was seventeen, and I happened to drive by her school and saw her get into a car. She had missed curfew again and we had taken the house keys because otherwise she’d come and go as she pleased and we needed her to know that we were keeping track of her. I trailed the car. The driver was too old to be a student, though I couldn’t be sure. I eventually lost them in traffic but was worried when she didn’t return home that day. I said to Edward, “Maybe we should lock her away in a box underground to keep her from harm,” but it sounded macabre and I regretted it right away. That night I stayed up dreading the moment she’d stroll down the street like a wayward girl with the entire Preston Hallow neighborhood looking on.
She materialized out of thin air in the early morning hours. I watched her through the window as she approached the front door. She stood idly and then turned on her heels as if the front door was some sort of orientation point. It was an eerie sight to behold, my seventeen-year-old daughter taking strides through the yard at four o’clock in the morning like a mad soldier marching to the tune of a maniacal drum, stopping and changing directions at random. I wanted to go outside and assure her that everything was all right, but she stopped suddenly and proceeded east across the lawn, then back toward the house, then trudged with stiffness and determination until I realized she was counting her steps. She bent down and retrieved something from the lawn. She entered through the service entrance door. I stood in the sunroom that night, in the dark, pressed against the wall attempting to keep my breath steady.
The next day I searched the lawn and not until I came upon what I mistook for a crooked sprinkler head did I see it: a black film roll container buried in the soil. To the naked eye the round top looked like a sprinkler head, but inside she had hidden the key to the house.
It’s been years but maybe it’s still there?
Edward’s neglect has contributed to my finding the key in the no-longer-plush grass. Underneath the oak the soil is prominent and the tree roots are visible, snaking about, stealing water from the grass, sparse patches are covered in stolon-like strands stretching from dirt patch to dirt patch, struggling to fill in the gaps. I take my steps deliberately, locate the spot, and the crooked canister materializes within the soil. It takes me only seconds and I tug at the container and it breaks free. The top comes off easily, the key is in pristine condition.
I walk to the front of the house and turn right, down the walkway back toward the service entrance. I gauge the distance to the army of maples on the edge of the property, just in case. It will take me about twenty seconds to get there and that’s where I’ll hide if the alarm goes off. All I have to do is be quick and it will seem like a fluke of the security system.
It dawns on me that I haven’t felt my hip act up since I left Shadow Garden, I haven’t so much as wasted a thought on it. All those walks, all those runs have paid off. It almost seems as if I’ve been preparing for this moment.
The key slips into the lock without hesitation. Feeling my heart all through my fingertips, pounding along metronome-like in a timely beat, I enter Hawthorne Court.
19
DONNA
I suck in the air and there’s something unsettling about it. The scent is giving me images of a house locked up during a long absence, a buildup of time, yet it has a familiarity that is taking me back to a life that no longer exists. The kitchen under-cabinet lighting throwing shadows into the butler’s pantry and Viking stove is familiar. As if queued, the specs run through my head: induction, forty-eight inch, stainless steel, griddle, porcelain-coated cast-iron burner grates, royal-blue finish.
With bold confidence, I enter the kitchen. I run my fingers across stainless-steel appliances and Italian marble counters and follow the house’s natural flow, to the left, into the step-down living room with barrel ceilings and hardwood floors. On first instinct I want to rush to Penelope’s room but I resist. I must start in the basement and work my way up strategically.
The basement construction had been a point of contention when we renovated the house.
“It’ll cost more to excavate than our first home. Donna, you can’t be serious,” Edward said after I asked about an engineering survey. “This is more difficult than you realize,” he added after I insisted on sitting down with the contractor to discuss it. “The ground swells up, then it shrinks. There are too many forces at play. You can build an entire guesthouse for the price of a basement.”
I didn’t budge. “Edward, you are not thinking clearly,” I countered. “What about a shelter? There are tornadoes around here, where would we go?”
“It’s cheaper to build up than down. You want another floor? Pick one or the other.”
In the end we compromised; there was a small basement and the third floor was a split-level. To think how long and fervent that argument was, how trivial it seems now. I’ll never think of the expense as a waste of money. In all those years I’ve never regretted going the extra mile when it came to Hawthorne Court. I still believe the basement came in handy, even if I don’t live here anymore.
All Edward ever did was complain what things cost instead of soaking in the house and letting it make you happy and full, like a stray kitten after a saucer of thick cream. I feel anger rise but I need to keep my wits about myself and so I do what I have become accustomed to: I tell myself that the best part of memory is being able to forget and I push Edward momentarily out of my mind.
The door to the basement is ajar and that alone strikes me as odd; as a rule we left the door locked. I remember the first step down appearing suddenly, the stairs altogether steep, the drop-off abrupt and I had always been wary about a fall. I take short floating steps, but still they sound loud in the dark and quiet house. I tiptoe onto the first landing and pull the door shut behind me. My steps no longer travel, my breathing is now cushioned, and my breaths bounce off the walls instead of echoing through the house. The air is stagnant and there is a claustrophobic layer with space so limited, walls so close to my left and right. I descend on shallow treads, even the smallest wrong movement will send me tumbling down.