Because this room is everything I imagined. Like almost in every detail. Two overstuffed loveseats with a quaint French-country floral pattern face each other. An oval, wooden coffee table stands between them with a full tea service set up on a vintage silver tray. Beyond the seating area is a small dining nook with a distressed white table and chair set, and just off to the side is a galley kitchen with a vintage stove and farm sink in white enamel.
I turn and look at the tall, skinny windows lining the front and actually gasp when I see real distressed wooden shutters—mounted on the inside—that will close off the outside world.
Pia pokes her head up from my pocket. “This is weird.”
“Weird? There’s nothing weird about this. It’s adorable. It’s everything. I freaking love it.”
“That’s my point.” She squirms her way out of my pocket, then flies off and lands on the kitchen counter. “If this is the caretaker’s cottage, and the current caretaker is a man your age, then why does it look like this?”
I shrug. “He’s got good taste?”
Pia’s response is the bird equivalent of a snort. Then she morphs into a moth, but just as quickly, she flickers back into a sparrow. She doesn’t flicker much anymore, but when I was young, she spent more time as a moth than she did as a sparrow. Usually when I was up to no good and she was trying to make herself as small as possible so as not to be noticed. Which is dumb. No one can see her. But whatever. The point is, this flickering feels judge-y.
Everything about this room is perfect so I decide to ignore Pia and just enjoy my moment. The kitchen cupboards are all painted white and have glass fronts, so I have a clear view of the most adorable painted dishes I’ve ever seen. There are decorative tiles on the wall behind the stove. Whimsical Pennsylvania Dutch designs in bright colors. And the rug and hand towels even match. It’s all very comfy. And so far, the life I’ve been living hasn’t had much comfy in it. Who in their right mind says no to comfy?
I walk over to the spiral staircase, place one hand on the wrought iron, and climb, trying to get a peek at what’s above me. But it’s dark up here, and I have to slide my hand along the plaster walls for almost a minute before I find the switch.
Again, the light is a warm glowing amber coming from two small sconces on either side of the bed. And the bed…
“Holy shit, Pia. You gotta come up and see this bed!” It’s not overly large, maybe a double. But it has weight. It has presence. There is a canopy with lavender velvet curtains pulled back, making the bed look almost like a tent. The bedding is white. And when I drag my fingertips over the duvet, it’s soft, well-worn cotton. The pillow cases are detailed in white eyelet lace and have a delicate lavender flower pattern on them.
Pia flies up and lands on my shoulder.
“It is perfect,” Pia admits. “For you, anyway. But don’t you think it’s a little too perfect? That other caretaker is obviously not living in this den of feminine frills. So why is it here? And why isn’t it covered in dust if he’s the only caretaker?”
They are good questions. I will admit that. But I don’t have an answer. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking this place is not what it seems.”
I’m just about to open my mouth and ask what she means by that when we hear someone cussing outside. “What the hell?”
Pia flies over to the window and slips through the closed curtains. “You better come look at this.”
I cross the room, throw the curtain aside, and stare down at a small walkway paved with red brick. The caretaker is down below, carrying a wooden crate that seems to be filled with clothes and books. “He never did tell me his name,” I whisper absently, watching him balance the crate on his hip as he messes with that ring on his finger. He throws the ring down and it rolls along the bricks, the silver catching a glint of light as it stops near the edge of the path.
He laughs. No. That was a cackle. Then reaches for the door of the wooden gate and slips through, disappearing from view.
“Over here.” Pia flies over to another window on the other wall.
I pull the curtains aside and look down. “What…? Who is that?”
“That’s him.”
“Him who?” The man down below is old. Like hunchback old. He’s wearing a tattered-brown coat that drags on the damp gravel of a parking lot.
“The caretaker,” Pia says.
I snort. “That’s not the caretaker. He’s my age and this man is… ancient.”
“He was your age. And then he passed through that gate and turned into this old man.”
I scoff and crane my head to the side, trying to see around the corner where the young man must surely be.
“It’s him,” Pia insists. “I watched him turn into that old geezer right before my eyes.”
“That’s ridiculous.” My attention is back on the old man. He’s shoving his crate of clothes and books into the front seat of an old yellow-green El Camino.
He looks up at the window and laughs, then slips inside to the driver’s seat, starts the engine, backs out of the parking lot with a spray of stones, and takes off down a dirt lane that winds around a lake.
I just watch his glowing orange-red taillights until they disappear into the woods. “What the hell was that?”
“That was him.”
“That wasn’t him, Pia. You’ve lost your mind.”
“Then where is he?”
“I don’t know. Outside, I guess.”
“Let’s go look.” She flies down the stairs, but I don’t follow. Instead I flip the light on in the bathroom and resume my tour.
It’s super small, but that’s OK. There’s an old tub with a shower, a small vanity, and a very nice antique mirror. I finger the towels hanging off a rack absently, kind of admitting that this is a little weird.
Pia is right. The cottage looks very much lived in, but there are no personal items—no hairbrushes, toothbrushes, no clothes on the floor or anything like that. But someone has to live here. It’s all too… taken care of. And it cannot be the young caretaker giving me the tour.
Unless French countryside is just his style? But honestly, I don’t think that’s it.
“You better come down here and look,” Pia chirps.
I flip the lights off and go back down the stairs. The cottage door is still open, so I walk through it, assuming she’s already outside.
This cottage is a little bit downhill from the main cathedral. So even though I can see the top of the building and the glow of the gas lights, there are no actual lights down here. Just the leftover shimmer of amber filtering through the cottage windows.
“Pia?” I call into the encroaching darkness.
“Over here.”
I slip around the corner to a little walkway, and then look up to find the window Pia and I were looking out just a couple minutes ago. Yep, this is the place.
“Where is he?” I look around, but there’s absolutely no one here but us.
“He went through the gate. I told you. That old man was the young caretaker.”
I just roll my eyes at her, walk down the path, grab the handle of the wooden gate, and pull on it so I can look in the parking lot.