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I love you, please have fun this weekend. I’ll be checking up regularly so keep your phone close baby. -C
Yes, can you stop and get some vodka? I know it’s your favorite, but we ran out, and if you could get me something for this mocktail recipe that would be fire. See you in a bit, we need an all nighter! Should I ask Jonathan’s niece to join us so we can have adult fun after hours? I know I can’t drink but we can go dancing!!! -Nessie
Olivia bit off a giggle as she responded with a bunch of demon head emojis.
Hell yes sis! Going to stash my bookbag in the guest house and I’ll be headed your way in a bit.-Ollie
Olivia finished packing her bag and grabbed up her backpack, determined to make time to carve out space just for her schooling. Colin was right, she didn’t have much of a school and personal life balance and so she decided to take a page out of his book and designate a space just for her studies and architectural work.
Olivia looked out the window seeing the guest house was glowing, giving her an idea. She’d utilize one of the rooms there, so she could have a clear delineation of space. The only time she’d work on studies was in a work room.
Feeling like a huge weight had been lifted off her shoulders, she picked up her backpack and headed downstairs.
Letting herself into the guest house, she glanced around seeing all of Colin’s music equipment put away neatly, and the couch put back into place. There was a very nice bar and kitchen that led to a hallway. Heading down that way, she passed a bathroom and two bedrooms facing each other at the end of the hallway. Poking her head into one, she saw a very lush bedroom and smiled appreciatively, never having taken the time to explore the whole house.
She turned to the other bedroom door and tried to turn the knob; it was locked. She looked down and saw a touch pad for a code. Frowning, she glanced around at the other doors, not seeing any keypad to their entry.
The hairs on the back of her neck stood up as she put her bag down and whipped out her phone. Colin had previously given her every code to the house in an encrypted file that she kept on her just in case she needed to get in somewhere and couldn’t get in touch with him.
Olivia scrolled through the codes; front door, codes for every car, codes to the cellar in the basement, code to get into the master closet, code for the various safes in the home, etc. No guest bedroom code was present. She huffed, her curiosity peaked. She put her phone away and leaned down to try the code to get into their closet. Access denied.
Code for the safe. Access denied.
Code for the cellar. Access denied.
Code for the front gate. Access denied.
Irritated, she stood back and tapped a finger to her lips.
She tried his birthday. Access denied.
Olivia tried the code to his computer. Access denied. Then a warning sign. She’d almost utilized up the number allowed before the door locked for twenty-four hours. About to give up and shrugging her shoulders, she decided one last code couldn’t hurt, then she’d leave to go to her sisters.
She typed in her birthday off a guess.
Access granted.
Smiling in excitement as the lock disengaged, she swung the door open, suddenly surrounded by darkness in a windowless room. She felt around blindly for a light switch before finding it, her brow furrowed as the room suddenly illuminated in harsh LED lights. Her eyebrows raised and her lips parted on a harsh inhale.
Oh. My. God. What the entire fuck? Olivia’s brain struggled to process it all.
She took a hesitant step into the room before turning her head back to look down the hallway again, suddenly feeling frightened. She leapt forward and grabbed the lone wooden chair tucked under a desk that hosted a monitor and jammed it against the door, paranoid that it would close and she would be locked in.
Her eyes swept the expanse of the room, not knowing what to settle on first. There were a ton of newspaper clippings and articles on the wall behind the monitor, and on the opposite wall were huge canvas pictures of what Olivia could only guess was Colin’s family…though she thought he didn’t have one.
There was a much younger Colin standing with a man and a woman, the resemblance to his Latina mother striking, however he had his father’s bone structure. A picture of Colin as a child in a superman cape with his arm thrown around a dalmatian, laughing as the dog licked his cheek. A portrait of Colin’s parents posed together in a beach picture; Colin next to them as a toddler playing with a ball in the sand.
Then, in the very center of all the photographs, was Colin in a candid portrait of what looked to be him standing alone in front of a beautiful cherry wood casket in a massive church, standing close to a picture of his mother. It was his mother’s funeral. Olivia felt tears prick her eyes at his loss. He never spoke of his parents or his family to her. The look on his face was tortured. He was so young.
Barely an adult, if he even was one.
She pulled out her phone and typed a quick ‘I love you’ text to Colin before turning to the other wall, preparing to leave because she felt like she was snooping on something extremely private. But an article on the wall caught her eye.
It was a clipping that hosted a red headed family.
A mom, father, a teenage daughter, an adolescent boy and a baby girl. They were scrunched together in the photo smiling brightly in matching white tops and dark blue jeans. The adolescent boy and teenage girl had green eyes like hers.
She stepped closer. Her phone suddenly rang, but she was too enamored by the text on the newspaper clipping to answer it.
