“I can’t wait a few months,” I snap. “I don’t have anything else. I already told my roommate I was moving out. All my stuff’s outside in my car. I literally . . . this is all I have! I thought it was all mine.”
“Then how do you suggest we proceed?”
“I don’t know.” I rub my eyes, a migraine beginning to bloom behind them. “I don’t know! I’m tired. It’s been a long day.” I glance at Ruth, hoping maybe she’ll have the crystal-clear solution, but I don’t see her anywhere. Her purse isn’t on the couch, either.
She’s given us the slip.
With her gone, now I’m alone in this cabin I sort of own but am clearly not welcome in, which sits on property I have to share with a darkly burning man who looks like that. The manor’s unlivable, and yet it appears I’m going to have to live in it.
My run of good luck has already run its course.
Chapter 4
OPTIONS ARE THIN ON the ground. Is there a motel around here? Actually, the answer to that doesn’t matter: I can’t afford to waste my savings on a months-long hotel stay, which is the duration of time I’m looking at while I somehow get the estate up to code. I might have to sleep in my car, but it wouldn’t be the first time.
I’ve walked right out of the cabin and am back in my car. This is . . . I resist even thinking the sentiment, because my mom’s voice filters into my conscience. Life’s not fair. Get used to it.
I attempt to harden myself. It’s too cold for wallowing.
Really cold, now that I’m sitting still and my nerves are fading. My phone’s home screen tells me it’s thirty-nine degrees, and I can’t keep the heat blasting or my car battery will die.
I let my forehead slap the steering wheel. All right, Maybell. You can wallow just a little. At this point I thought I’d be lounging on Violet’s living room couch, fire blazing, evening news on a low drone to take the edge off the silence, utilizing her supersized pantry of baking ingredients to whip up something sweet.
I don’t remember making the decision to get out of the car. I go poof and reappear on the steps of the manor, twisting the handle. The key Ruth gave me earlier today is unnecessary, because while the knob is locked, the door hangs loose on its frame and gives way at the lightest touch.
My phone’s flashlight function illuminates the foyer, grand curving staircase blocked with overstuffed trash bags, some of them ripped open. I expect to be greeted by a familiar wicker bench with a blue floral cushion. The eighties lampshades in Southwest pinks and sands—out of fashion even then, but to my ten-year-old self, the incontrovertible ideal. It was like living on the set of an early-nineties sitcom, but whatever size scale you’re thinking—think bigger. And with more secret doors.
There’s so much stuff packed in here that the sound of my footsteps absorbs instantly, no trace of an echo. Aunt Violet has ordered every As Seen on TV! product to hit one a.m. programming, whole walls of it, towers and battlements of it, weighing down so heavily that it curves the floorboards. My dumbfounded eyes wander over purchases that look like they’ve never been taken out of their boxes: waffle makers, miniature Christmas village sets, snow cone machines. A waist-high stack of children’s coloring books. Enough Hasbro inventory to play a different board game every day of the year. Wigs, tackle boxes, sequined cowgirl hats, aprons. Hundreds of books and DVDs. My jaw’s come unhinged, and my eyes burn for all the staring, and the dust, and something else that’s never going to leave me alone now.
Your fault, it whispers.
Two narrow paths fork off, left and right, ignoring the staircase altogether since it’s impossible to access. The paths are just barely wide enough to allow an elderly woman to squeeze through. I angle my phone upward to see how high it all goes, dust glimmering in the streaks of light hanging so thickly that I could almost trick myself into believing it’s snowing in here.
Thirty-nine degrees has dropped to subzero. Cold seeps all the way through my skin, into my temporal lobes, moving torpid old memories down the pipeline for forced replay. I can’t believe the same Violet Hannobar who wouldn’t let anyone walk through the house with their shoes on became the Violet who lived in this mess.
I make the questionable decision to keep going, because surely it can’t be like this everywhere. The kitchen was her favorite room in the house: upscale and shiny, decked out with all the best appliances and double ovens (“for double the desserts”). I maneuver over and under packaged cookware like I’m in a game of life-sized Jenga, batting away cobwebs, foot delicately crunching the small bones of something dead.
A dark shape flies at me from out of nowhere and I scream, ducking, dislodging the wall. An Easy-Bake Oven falls onto a birthday-paper-wrapped package that spins and lights up. A voice screams, “Bop it!” in the demon-possessed snarl that could only be produced by dying batteries, and I scream right back.
When the path widens at last, I’m in the living room.
Which means I’ve bypassed the kitchen completely. The shining apple of Aunt Violet’s eye, with fancy double ovens for double the desserts, has fallen victim to the hoard monster.
I find my shell-shocked reflection in the blank, grubby television set, and if I close my eyes, everything is as it was. I hear the soft whir of Uncle Victor’s oxygen machine in the next room. Violet and I are on the burgundy sofa—I’m insisting that I’m mature enough to watch Unsolved Mysteries, but Violet doesn’t like it. I tell her I’ve seen worse at my cousin’s house—he used to watch R-rated horror films while I slept (or tried to) in the armchair. Violet purses her lips. Looks like I’ll be giving Brandon a phone call, then.
I feel like a glamorous movie star in my tinted lip balm and glittery nail polish, smelling of Love’s Baby Soft perfume. Violet wears Elizabeth Taylor’s White Diamonds and curlers in her hair, flaming red with pale roots. Her earrings were gifted to her by Marlon Brando when she was younger, but don’t tell Uncle Victor that. Six fingers are adorned in heavy jewels that, she tells me, out the side of her mouth like she doesn’t want anybody to overhear, her siblings would gladly kill her to get their hands on.
I hiss out a long, unsteady breath. The little girl on the burgundy sofa has grown up, but being a grown-up isn’t at all the way she thought it’d be. She’s so lost now that it’s scary. The only one who’s ever looked out for her is gone.
The Violet in my mind’s eye winks conspiratorially at my childhood self, then dissolves. No one’s been looking out for her, either. At my feet, there’s a grimy blanket and a cup with a moldy toothbrush in it. A hot plate’s switched off but still plugged in, ceramic bowl on top, instant noodles glued to the rim. A dead rat’s tail peeks out from under a pillow.
My aunt’s house is eleven thousand square feet in total: elegant and sparkling, with a wine cellar, a butler’s pantry, and a surplus of unnecessary, beautiful extras. She has special rooms bigger than some people’s houses that were, in my time here, used only one day a year, doors kept closed for three hundred sixty-four days. Yet at the end of her life she was confined to a nest that roughly spans four by three feet.