The Space Between (35 page)

Staring at the dining room fireplace, I cocked my head to the side in an attempt to determine whether the sconce was crooked. It was off by no more than five degrees. Caring about those five degrees was my job but a big part of me wanted to yank the fixture right out of the wall and replace it with something new. And straight.

Preserving the past now felt like an exercise in futility. It was all going to collapse eventually, right? What was the point in cleaning it up, preserving it, putting it on life support for another decade? We were tricking ourselves into thinking we could save anything.

Gripping the fixture, I inched it to the right and heard a pronounced click in the next room. My eyes scanned the library for the sound’s origin, and I found one shelf in the built-in bookcase jutting out slightly. Just enough to be off.

I pressed the shelf backwards, and another click sounded in the hallway. Ghosts seemed the likely culprit after twenty minutes of running my fingers over every inch of the hallway and finding nothing.

A minimalistic modern house wouldn’t pull this kind of shit.

I walked toward the front door to retrieve my notebook, and the hand-carved casing around the coat closet caught my eye. I saw an inlaid rosette in the upper right-hand corner standing out a bit too far. Not quite right. A firm push sent the rosette back into its inlay, and a gust of air blew the closet door open from the inside.

The shock sent me stumbling backwards and I stared into the open half-door at the back of the darkened closet. A narrow path illuminated by my flashlight led straight through the heart of the house.

I knew every hidden door and alcove in the house. Built-in bookshelves in one room connected to another, closets opened into other closets, and window seats revealed staircases to the rooms below, plus zigzagging laundry chutes and dumbwaiter systems. This wasn’t one of them.

With a steadying breath, I was on my feet and headed for the front porch—I didn’t need to make friends with any wall-dwelling creatures—and determined the situation called for Patrick’s involvement.

17:08 Andy:
You need to get out to Wellesley RIGHT NOW.

17:09 Patrick:
Are you ok?

17:09 Andy:
yes but you need to get out here as soon as possible

17:10 Patrick:
on my way

My legs dangled over the edge of the stone porch while I updated my project notes and waited for Patrick to arrive. He tore up the driveway within nineteen minutes, and dashed up the stairs to stand at my side. Patrick looked around, and reached a hand out to stroke down my back before snapping it back and shoving it in his pocket.

“What happened? You’re okay?”

I beckoned him to follow me. “I’m fine but I found a secret tunnel in the middle of the house.” I explained how I discovered the door, and pointed into the closet. “It might be Narnia. I can’t be sure.”

“What the fuck did you do, Angus?” Patrick knelt in the closet and examined the small door. The space was not much more than two feet wide, but it appeared to open up as the passageway deepened. He glanced at me. “I don’t care how much you hate me right now. I’m not going into the secret room alone.”

I rolled my eyes and followed him inside, between the walls where decades of dust and cobwebs billowed around us. Patrick reached for my hand and I let him—it was a creepy hidden hallway after all.

We approached a brick junction formed by the living room and dining room fireplaces, and a narrow staircase spiraled between them. “This is the stuff of horror movies, right?” Patrick asked as we climbed the stairs.

“Every time.” I missed the warmth of our old routines. “Are we expecting to find something in here, or are we just looking for trouble?”

“Look around. There’s no better definition of trouble than this.” Ten fire-safe closets lined the second floor, and we stared at each other.

“What could be in there?” I asked.

“Fuck if I know.” Squeezing my hand, Patrick tugged the door open against its protesting hinges. We leaned into each other, bracing for the worst, but found it filled with neatly stacked boxes, all labeled
Abigael
in precise architect’s lettering. Patrick rocked back on his heels, inhaling sharply.

“Who is Abigael?”

“My mother.” He peered into a box, and retrieved a lace handkerchief. He turned it over in his hands several times, his fingers brushing over the delicate lace. “That crazy bastard.”

The next two contained more of his mother’s things—her wedding dress, jewelry, quilts, journals, photo albums, aprons, clothes—and it was clear Patrick hadn’t seen any of it in ages. Shock and pain etched his features with each discovery. Carefully wrapped crystal and china filled the next three. Another closet held an assortment of large framed pieces interspersed with hand-painted portraits of the house and Patrick’s family.

The final three closets housed boxes labeled for Patrick and each of his siblings. He sighed as his fingers brushed dust from the lids, the tense expression on his face telling me he knew what was hidden in each. Inside his box, he lifted a faded yellow photo album from the top, and a heartbreaking groan slipped from his lips as he opened it.

The first photo showed a stunning redhead proudly cradling a newborn baby, and her radiant smile jumped off the page. The baby’s bright eyes gazed up at his mother from his spot on the slope of her chest. “Shannon looks so much like your mother,” I said, shining a flashlight over his shoulder. “And you were a huge baby.”

Patrick shut the book suddenly and returned it to the box. “We need to get out of here.” Patrick collected a few items from the closets and secured the doors, and we retreated through the passageway and onto the porch. It was dark, and I couldn’t believe we spent hours exploring that tunnel.

“I guess we know why the room dimensions changed,” I coughed. I guzzled some water to wash away the thick coating of dust from my throat.

Patrick approached with his hand reaching for my hair. Warily, I stepped out of his grasp but he continued toward me.

“Andy, stop. There’s a cobweb.” He stilled me with a rough hand to my shoulder, and I stared at his royal blue polo shirt. “Didn’t know how to get out of his hole,” he muttered, his fingers sifting through my hair. “I get that he couldn’t deal with it. Fine. But did he really need to build a cave and hide everything there? He couldn’t have bought a fucking storage unit like normal people? This is officially psychotic.”

His questions weren’t meant for me, and I remained quiet. His hands stayed in my hair, and though I suspected the cobwebs were adequately dispatched, I didn’t protest his touch.

“What kind of gamble was that?” Patrick continued. “What if we never found that door? What if we sold this place and never knew? That required years of work. That’s what this does to people, Andy. It’s insane, and destructive, but it’s what this does.”

Patrick’s eyes met mine, his hands forming tight fists in my hair. “There are things that we’ll never understand. People do illogical things that don’t fit into neat columns, and we’ll never know why.”

“He told us he destroyed everything but he spent years building a secret shrine. That’s what this does to people, Andy. Don’t you see?” His hands loosened their hold on my hair and settled on my shoulders, his thumbs brushing back and forth against the pulse in my throat.

I wanted to wrap my arms around Patrick and protect him from his pain and everything locked in those closets. He was so much more than the sum of his scars.

Patrick’s fingers tilted my head back, his eyes dropping to my lips. “Please, just…I don’t know how to do this without you.”

His lips touched mine, and that force drew my hands to his chest. His kisses started soft and cautious—asking permission. Patrick’s hands held me in place, and his kisses turned deeper, slowly growing more demanding—asking forgiveness.

I pulled back, shaking my head as I put distance between us. “I used to think I could be everything you needed. I don’t know if…I can’t do this, Patrick.” I grabbed my things and hurried off the porch. With one fleeting look before settling into my MINI Cooper, I met Patrick’s eyes. “I’m sorry.”

PATRICK

W
aiting for Erin
to arrive in Chatham was the most difficult part of withholding news of Andy’s discovery at Wellesley, but I had no intention of going through it twice. Erin was already excluded from too much. With everyone huddled around the patio fireplace, I paced back and forth with a box under my arm.

“Shannon, hurry the fuck up,” I snapped. She leaned against the bar, gesturing animatedly with her beer bottle as she spoke to the bartender. She was doing everything in her power to avoid Erin.

“Yes, Optimus, we know it’s your turn to talk.” She sat on the arm of Sam’s chair and waved her hand in the direction of the box. “Have you ventured into prop comedy now?”

“Shut up, Shannon,” I muttered. “Andy was at Wellesley, at the house today and—”

“Who’s Andy?” Erin asked.

“She’s an architect working under Patrick,” Matt supplied.

Riley broke into hysterical, gasping laughter. “You can say that again,” he choked.

He dropped his head to Erin’s shoulder while he rocked back and forth on the loveseat they shared, repeatedly snorting and slapping his thigh. I was ready to toss his ass in the ocean. Let the sharks deal with him and his inability to keep a goddamn thing to himself.

“Already time to cut you off, young man?” Sam asked. He drained his fourth gin and tonic and signaled for another. Right, because I needed to spend my night preventing him from passing out in a tide pool.

Lauren caught my eye and shrugged. The implication was clear, but that didn’t make it any easier.

“Let me take this for you.” Matt shifted Lauren to the other side of his lap. “Patrick’s got a thing for Andy.”

“You knew?” Shannon shrieked, wagging her finger at Matt before turning her attention to Lauren. “And you too? Patrick, you told me it was privileged! What the fuck? They’ve known?”

“Only for a few days,” Matt said.

“Who here didn’t know any of this until right now?” Sam asked. Erin and Nick raised their hands, and he laughed humorlessly. “Huh. Guess I know where I rank.”

They broke into small discussions of Andy and me, and when and what they knew. A bullhorn would have helped.

“Goddamn it, people, I have something to tell you!”

“Are you asking her to marry you?” Riley asked.

I liked that idea. A lot. I never shook the image of Andy in a wedding gown. When I was delirious with insomnia, I saw her walking toward me in that white lace.

“Oh my God, another wedding to plan!” Shannon squealed.

Lauren put her hand on Shannon’s arm. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

“Is she pregnant?” Riley asked.

I shook my head. I liked that idea, too. Not right now, not for a while, but maybe someday. A day when Andy wasn’t walking away from me. My gut churned at the memory of her taillights fading into the night.

I reached into the box and held up a blue book with ‘Riley Augustin’ scrolled across the cover. That shut everyone up. “Ready to hear what I have to say?”

“Where did you get that?” Riley stood, the happy flush draining from his face, his eyes hooded as he retrieved the photo album. “Tell me where you got this.”

“Wellesley. Andy found a hidden door in Angus’s hall closet. It took twenty-nine other levers to open, but she found a door and there’s an entire universe between the walls. It’s all there. All of it. Everything.”

Returning to the box, I distributed the items I grabbed yesterday. A pile of handkerchiefs to Matt. Mom’s jewelry box to Shannon, and her last journal to Erin. The Irish knit scarf that still smelled faintly of her perfume to Sam.

As my siblings reverently ran their hands over the goods I distributed, I stared into the empty box and realized I didn’t save anything for myself.

We passed around Riley’s baby book, admiring our stunningly dated haircuts and clothes while attempting to count the rolls of fat on Riley’s legs. Shannon’s feathered hair and white fringed leather jacket won the night. Sam wrapped Mom’s scarf around his neck and only grudgingly agreed to share it with the group. Mom’s journals made their way to Shannon and her jewelry to Erin, but even the discovery of the century wasn’t melting that ice.

“This doesn’t make him less of an asshole,” Sam said, the scarf wrapped tightly around his neck again. “This isn’t the time or place for an Angus-hate tirade, and we should be happy that we have something of Mom’s, but if anything, this a new level of assholedom, even for Angus. Really got the last laugh, didn’t he?”

“I’ll give you that,” Riley replied. “It’s right up there with hiding a body under the floorboards, and please tell me you didn’t find any bodies in the bowels of the house?”

“Look at you with the Poe references,” Erin laughed. “You’re like a real boy now.”

Riley rolled his eyes. “How have you not fallen into a volcano yet?”

“When you say between the walls, you mean…what?” Matt asked.

“I mean there are fire-safe cabinets between the walls of every room on the second floor, and a little staircase behind the fireplaces. That’s why the plans didn’t make sense.”

“Yep,” Matt replied. “I get that, but how’s that shit being supported? It’s not like he shifted load-bearing walls.”

“I dunno, Matt, but it isn’t coming down tonight,” I sighed. “It was dusty as hell but Andy and I didn’t notice any major structural issues.”

“Can we go back to all that?” Sam asked. “All of this is incredible and Andy deserves a raise for getting to the bottom of Angus’s last fuck you, but perhaps you could get the rest of us,” he gestured to Erin and Nick, “up to speed on your impending nuptials? I noticed you didn’t deny it.”

With a groan, I dropped to the stone bench alongside the fireplace. “Short version? We’ve been seeing each other since February. March if you don’t count the bathrooms. But I was a dickhead and she’s not talking to me, and she’s probably leaving at the end of her apprenticeship. And I’m in love with her.”