Page 79 of Arranged Obsession
Except for this stupid door.
I finally give up and open YouTube. It takes me a few minutes to find a good video, and I watch it straight through twice until I’m sure what to do.
“This probably won’t work,” I mutter to myself as I dig some tools out of the basement. Lucky for me, he’s got what I need. “I mean, there’s no way it’ll work.”
I shove a pry bar under the trim and smash it with a hammer until the wood pops loose. I remove the side covering the strike plate and bolt mechanism, making it really easy to access. Then it’s just a matter of shoving a credit card between the latch until it loosens just enough to slide it back.
The door opens with a loudthunk.
“Holy shit!” I leap back and laugh hysterically. No part of me thought that would actually work. Except now I’ve got a long piece of door trim lying on the floor and a door creaking in toward me.
I’m elated by my success. I’m not exactly the handiest girl in the world, so it’s a minor miracle that I figured this out.
My joy slowly fades as I stare inside.
It’s about the size of the other bedrooms. The lights are out, but I can see shelves. Lots and lots of shelves. They fill the whole space like a miniature library. I step forward, hands shaking, and I know what I’m going to find. I don’t want to see it, really, really don’t want to, but I flip on the light anyway.
My old coffee spoon is at the top of the shelf on the left. I recognize the star pattern on the handle. I thought I’d lost that years ago. It’s lying next to a bunch of hair ties, dozens of them, some with long brunette hairs. I step into the room, feeling sick. There’s a little pearl button from my old winter coat. Several sugar packets with the natural cane sugar from the fancy coffee shop I love. A bookmark with little cat ears. I got that from a second-hand store when I was twelve and I was pretty disappointed when my ghost took it three years back.
Flower petals. Nail files. Gum wrappers. Three movie ticket stubs and a library receipt. Dozens of earrings and missing socks. The bastard. A price tag and a pencil eraser and a leaf. A bottle cap, three zippers, a shopping list in my handwriting. An old Polaroid selfie I thought went missing. I’m smiling in it like I’m the happiest girl in the world.
Shoelaces. A used tea bag.
I stare at hundreds of little treasures.
Some I don’t recognize, but I know they’re mine. Small things from my life, taken from my suite, things I probably never even realized were gone. How many times did he visit me in the middle of the night? Are each of these from a single visit or are they from more?
I move through the room, touching shelf after shelf. I feel sick, sweaty, and deflated. It’s one thing to suspect he’s my ghost, but entirely another to see the evidence.
He’s been collecting all this stuff foryears. Some of these items go way back to the beginning.
That pen, for example. It was my favorite until it disappeared. That might’ve been the first thing he took.
I stand in the very back of the room. There’s one last shelf. It’s more like a niche, recessed into the wall. There are candles stolen from my closet, but they’ve clearly been lit. More of my items are arranged around a single old diamond ring like it’s the focal point of a shrine.
A bitter sob escapes my lips. I can’t even help it. I reach out and pick the ring up, staring at it. My heart’s racing so hard I think I might pass out.
I can’t believe this is here.
Anger swells in me. Anger and fear. I’m so busy freaking out that I don’t hear it when he steps into the doorway. It’s not until he says my name that I look over and find him watching me with a curious expression on his face.
Like he’s not upset, only interested.
“Why?” I manage to say, my voice twisted by my sobs.
“You know why.”
“No, I don’t.” I shove the ring at him. “Whythis?”
His eyebrows raise. “That’s what you’re upset about?”
“It was my grandmother’s,” I snarl at him. “I looked for it forweeksafter it went missing. Don’t act like you didn’t know! Look at this place!” I’m shouting at him, gesturing all around us, waving the ring in his face. “You knew how much this mattered to me!”
“Bianca,” he starts saying softly, but I cut him off, furious.
“You knew and you kept it. You made a little shrine from it because you’re so fucking crazy you can’t possibly imagine someone might find this important. I wanted this back! I was so upset when it went missing!”
“This isn’t about the ring.”
