Page 43 of The Haunting of Paynes Hollow
Frowning, I go inside. Gail is still in her room with the door shut. I hate to bother her if she’s working, so I wash the plates and mugs Josie and I used, while listening for Gail to move around, indicating she’s taking a break. A half hour passes with silence from her room. I fix her a coffee and the last slice of pie, and rap on her door.
“Snack delivery service!”
When she doesn’t answer—and I can’t hear her typing—I start getting nervous. I knock again.
“Coming in to check on you,” I say. “Stop me if you don’t want that.”
I open the door to find her lying on her bed, eyes closed, headphones on. I start to back out, presuming she’s napping, but she opens her eyes.
“Snack?” I say, thrusting out the mug and plate.
She shakes her head as she silently removes the headphones.
“Have you seen the hatchet?” I ask.
A weird look crosses her face.
“Gail?” I move into the room. “You didn’t get bad news, did you? About the IVF? Shit, not about the inheritance, is it?”
She pats the edge of her bed for me to sit.
“Uh, this sounds bad,” I say, trying to keep my tone light. “If it’s about me using up all the hot water, I’m sorry. Like I said this morning, I need to remember how small that tank is. Five-minute showers.”
“I think I underestimated how hard this would be for you, Sam.”
“Uh…” I mentally struggle to switch gears.
“Being here. With all these memories.” She sits up straighter, crossing her legs. “It was wrong of me to expect you to do this.”
I frown. “Youdidn’texpect me to do this. You tried to stop me.”
“Maybe that was the problem. I made you feel as if you couldn’t handle it, and you needed to prove you could.”
Irritation flares. “That’s not it at all.”
She scoots over and takes my hands in hers. “Then why are we here, Sam? Why are we spending a month in a place where your world fell apart?”
I pull from her grip, and my voice hardens, even as I struggle against it. “Wedon’t need to be here, Gail. You chose to come, no matter how hard I argued. You don’t need to stay. Come visit me on weekends. I can do this.”
“But why areyoudoing it? It’s for me and your mother. So I can keep all my inheritance for the IVF and you can afford to buy your mother whatever treatment might help. You’re doing this for us. But what about you?”
“I’m fine.”
She meets my gaze. “No, you’re not, Sam. You’re pretending that you are, but you really aren’t.”
I try not to shift in discomfort. I think of my sleepwalking hallucination last night. I think of being spooked in the shed. I think of my flashback at the tree carving.
Still, none of that means I’mnotcoping. It’spartof coping. I’m remembering what happened here, and I’m dealing with it. Isn’t that what I’m supposed to be doing?
“I’m okay,” I say. “It’s tough, but I think I really do need to face this, and that’s what—”
“The shed was locked, Sam.” She blurts the words and then rubs her face. “I didn’t mean to say it like that.”
I pull back, hoping my voice doesn’t cool too much. “If you’ve just realized that it was latched—and possibly locked—when I saw someone in there, I know that. I realized it right away.”
“And you told Sheriff Smits that?”
“I wasn’t giving him any more reason to think I was imagining things, so no, I didn’t tell him. But I did tell Josie. I also told Ben, who pointed out a hole where the concrete is crumbling.”
