The blobby white ghosts were sheets, and they appeared to be covering up unused furniture. Nervously, I stepped inside the room. I didn’t have to lift the sheets to know what was under them – tables and chairs scattered around the massive room.
It was huge, like a studio apartment, but not the fancy kind you imagine you’ll find in places like New York. The wooden plank flooring was scarred with age, the bumpy painted walls streaked with mildew and mold.
I turned the light off and wedged the door back shut.
Maybe he doesn’t really live here. Or … he could be the owner of the restaurant, who knows?
The room across the hall was also unlocked. It, too, was used for storage. Mostly cooking supplies and a large greasy deep fryer set in the corner.
Finally, I ascended the next set of stairs. Expecting another landing with empty apartments, I was shocked to find myself stepping straight into a large open space. I held my light out in front of me at the top of the staircase, looking around in awe. The entire top floor was a huge apartment with exposed brick and ductwork.
Finally, there’s room to move around.
But then I remembered … I don’t belong here, and how do I know no one’s home?
“Hello?” My voice sounded like someone else’s, a meek little mouse.
Unlike the crowded rooms used for storage downstairs, this one had only a few modest furnishings. Cracked leather sofa in the center of the room. Coffee table stacked with books.
There were no doors separating the rooms, one section flowing straight into the next like a wide-mouthed stream. I tiptoed through the sitting area and entered a large bedroom space. A tall bed with a gold frame faced two windows. I crept over to one of them and pulled up the blinds. From here, I could see the street in front of the restaurant, the dead man’s Camaro still parked at the curb.
“Who the hell are you?” I asked, turning my back to the windows and staring at the neatly made bed. There was a nightstand, two chunky wood dressers, and a pair of scruffy house shoes lined up perfectly.
Tentatively, I started opening and closing drawers. As expected, the clothes inside were neatly folded, white t-shirts rolled into perfect rows. Even his underwear – also plain white – was folded.
I left the bedroom, strolling back to the sitting area. The books were standard classics – not surprising, I guess. I looked around the beautiful, chic brick walls. No pictures whatsoever and only one painting.
And what it depicted sent chills down my spine.
There were two women in it – well, at first, I thought they were women – heads and necks like human women, but with the torsos and talons of a bird. The bird-woman on the right looked happy and bright, but the other … her hair and wings were dark, her eyes ringed with blackness, her mouth opened as though she were moaning in pain.
I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want this on their wall.
But then again, there was something intriguing about it – the light and the dark, the happiness and the sorrow. The two sides of ourselves we can never escape.
I had to pull my face away from it as I advanced towards the kitchen. But those bird-women … I could feel their eyes burrowing into the back of my head as I scanned the kitchen counter and sifted through several neat, organized drawers.
Nothing. Not a damn thing to tell me who he is, or why the hell he was in my apartment.
In a small alcove off the kitchen, I located the bathroom. It was the first and only room that seemed to have a door of its own.
It was in here that I found my first clue.
Like the rest of the apartment, the bathroom was neat and pristine. But the bundle of pill bottles under the sink told a different story. Robin Regal was a sick man. He was taking medicine to treat cancer and a laundry list of pain and anxiety medications …
But the name on the bottle didn’t say Robin Regal.
With trembling fingers, I held one of them up closer to the dim lightbulb over the sink.
I knew this name. And it was one I hadn’t heard in a very long time.
Chapter 9
1993 – Andrea
Philomena Nordstrom.
Even her name made me think of money.
The new girl – well, if you consider joining Riverbank Junior High two years ago new.
In a school of fewer than 600 students, Philomena was destined to be the only “new girl” for years to come.
And it didn’t hurt that she was also pretty … and rich. A new cable company had moved to our small town of Lafayette, and with it came the Nordstrom family. Philomena’s father owned the company; Philomena, the lovely, black-haired beauty, was his only daughter. Her mother was a stay-at-home mom who looked barely ten years older than her knockout of a daughter.
I was her polar opposite: hair the color of dirty dishwater, skin bumpy like oatmeal, family unknown. Poor as dirt.
I’d heard people talk about “old souls”. I’d like to think I have one of those … In reality, I was older than my fourteen years because I’d lost my parents at age ten and been raised by my less-than-kind uncle ever since. His job at the toothpaste factory paid very little, and most nights I struggled to find something in the cupboards to feed myself.
He was gone a lot, either working or drinking – and I saw that as a bonus most of the time. But the dank one-bedroom trailer we lived in – me on the couch, him in the room – was lonely sometimes.
But it’s not lonely today.
Philomena Nordstrom was here. I liked that part, but what I didn’t like were the others: Mandy Billingsworth and Tamara Thompson, Philomena’s closest sidekicks. They weren’t sold on the idea of partying in my uncle’s dumpy trailer, but Philomena didn’t seem to mind it.
“Do you like this color, Andrea?” We were seated on my bed, knees touching, my hand face down on her upper thigh. Her legs were tan and glossy, and up close, she was even prettier, to be honest.
“Yes, it’s perfect.”
Tamara and Mandy giggled from where they sat on the carpet. Probably laughing at me, but I didn’t care. I refused to even look over at them, eyes trained on the slick coats of polish, dark purple like a fresh, pretty bruise.
They were drinking and smoking pot. I knew that sooner or later I’d have to join them or else risk looking like the loser I really was. But Philomena wasn’t drinking either, I’d noticed. She held my hand gently on her thigh, gliding the brush over my nails, using practiced strokes like a trained artist.
“You two are cute together,” Tamara grunted with laughter, then stuck her tongue out and wiggled it at us both.
“Ignore them. They’re small-brained,” Philomena said, gently rolling my pinky so she could get the hard-to-reach edges with her brush.
I looked up at her, and for a moment we locked gazes. Her smile was wide and full of mischief.
“What time is it? I want mine done next,” Mandy whined from the carpet.
“It’s almost ten o’clock,” I said, a thick knot forming in the back of my throat. I stole another glance at Philomena, but she was concentrating intensely on my left thumbnail.
If she only knew that when midnight arrived, her friends were going to kill her.
Chapter 10
BEFORE
It felt good having Delaney back under my roof. She was still under the weather a bit, but that wasn’t the reason she was locked inside her room.