“Maybe we can do like an office time share,” Michael suggested.
“Mmm,” Linda said, pursing her lips. “You know what. Let me go get us a cup of coffee each, and we can figure it out.”
“I’d love a cup,” Michael told her. “And, I don’t think the office time share would work in the long term, though.”
Linda was standing up, and she froze, turning to look at him with narrowed, suspicious eyes.
“What does that mean?” She asked.
“Go get the coffee, and we can chat,” Michael told her. “This is definitely a conversation to be had over coffee.”
“Okay,” Linda said and walked out of the office.
Michael watched her close the door before sighing, and his eyes traveled around the office. The two leather armchairs by the window. The wall of family photographs. The big oak desk he'd done his homework on. The row of locked cabinets along the inner wall, which Linda had opened for him this morning, one by one, with the little brass keys from George's legendary ring.
His gaze drifted along that wall, past the cabinets, past the small bookcase, and stopped.
There was a heavy filing cabinet pushed flush against the inner wall, between the bookcase and the corner of the room. Michael had walked past it a hundred times this week without really seeing it. It was an old cabinet. Tall and brown, four deep drawers, the kind of thing that had probably been in this office longer than Michael had been alive.
But it was not flush against the wall the way the bookcase was.
It was an inch or two proud.
And the wall behind it, the part Michael could see through that small gap, was a slightly different color from the rest of the office. A few shades lighter, as though the paint behind the cabinet had been protected from years of sun while the rest of the room had faded around it.
Michael went very still.
He stood slowly and crossed the room.
He laid his hand flat against the side of the filing cabinet as his heart started to thud, as he knew what was behind it. It was something that no one had thought of since he was eight and Linda seven.
He braced one shoulder against the side of the cabinet and pushed until it moved with a low scraping sound. The cabinet slid an inch, then two, then six. Michael set both hands against it and walked it carefully out from the wall, into the open floor of the office, until it stood a good three feet from where it had lived for as long as he could remember.
Behind it, set into the wall, was a door in the same dark walnut as Uncle George's office door. Only the brass handle was dull with soft tarnish from fifty-two years of nobody touching it.
Michael's chest tightened as he stood staring at it.
He had not seen this door since he was eight years old. He had not even let himself remember it existed. The whole back half of this office wall had become, in his memory, simply a wall. He had walked past it for fifty-two years and never once thought about what was on the other side, because they all knew therewas nothing but pain in there. He stood lost in thought as he stared at the door, not yet daring to reach out and push the door handle, when the door to Uncle George’s office swung open.
"Michael, I brought tea instead of coffee as Molly said you’ve had one too many cups of it already…." Linda's voice trailed off into a small, sharp gasp. "Michael, what are you doing?"
Michael turned slowly.
His sister was standing in the doorway with two steaming mugs in her hands, frozen, her eyes locked on the cabinet that no longer hid the wall, and the door behind it that no longer existed for them.
The color had drained from her face.
“Linda…" Michael said quietly.
"Michael." Linda's voice came out very small. "What on earth are you doing?"
Michael looked at his sister before turning back to the door. "I'm solving our office problem and finally facing old ghosts."
LINDA
Linda came back into Uncle George's office with a mug of tea in each hand and the firm intention of finally getting Michael to explain himself.
Then she saw the door.
