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I pull my hand away from her wrist. “I try.”
The words are hollow.
“That’s all we can hope for, don’t you think?”
Something loosens in me just the tiniest bit at that. “Since when did you get so wise?” I ask.
“You call this wise?” She smiles, then slips the key in the lock and pulls open the door.
* * *
The inside of the east wing of the Rolling Hills Resort smells like dust, dampness, and rot.
Worse than that, it’s dark. Of course it would be, with no lighting overhead, and a long corridor with only closed doors.
I reach into my camera bag and pull out the little headlamp I keep tucked in the inner pocket. “Here,” I say, handing it to Cora. “You wear it.”
“Are you sure?”
Our voices are both low, even though I know no one is around. It just feels like a place where you can’t… or shouldn’t talk at a normal volume.
I take her hand and press the light into her palm. “I’m good.”
We make a plan to head up the back stairwell next to us to go to the top floor. Then we’ll work our way down. According to the news articles I’d looked up before pitching the story, Eleanor was in a room on the ground floor—according to one of the articles, it was Room 114.
“So how much do you know about the ghost of Eleanor Cleary?” I ask Cora as I open the door to the stairwell. It shrieks on its rusted hinges and Cora reaches for my hand, grasping it tight.
Her hand is so small in mine. So soft.
“Not much,” Cora says.
I try to focus on her words, and not the feel of her hand cradled in mine.
“Just that she died here, and haunts this part of the hotel, looking for her lover. When we were kids they said that’s why they boarded up this wing.”
I remember hearing that too. “Cassandra said that it was more of a financial decision.”
“You talked to Shannon’s daughter?”
“I had coffee with her. She lives in New York, so I got her number from Jude and called her up.”
“Is that where you live?”
I haven’t really told Cora anything about where I’ve been these past years. “I have an apartment in Brooklyn. Not that I’m there much.”
I consider telling her the truth, that I’ve had this kind of rootless feeling for the past couple of years. That I’ve felt for the first time like I might want to stay in one spot. But I don’t. I tell her how I spend most of my time overseas, and come home to my apartment in New York to catch up on life stuff. Go to the dentist. Renew my passport.
Think about maybe someday coming home to Quince Valley, even if I never do.
Until now.
Cora pushes open the door, and we emerge into a dark hallway. There’s a dripping sound in here, somewhere far down the darkened corridor. The roof is probably leaking. I don’t scare easily, but a chill falls over me. “Okay. Creepy.”
Cora laughs. The darkness swallows the sound.
The rooms, as it turns out, are like a time capsule from when they were closed off. It’s incredible—the mold-covered bedspreads, the dated, warped furniture. Over the next couple of hours, we step into nearly every other room. I take hundreds, probably thousands of photos, working our way down and talking the whole time.
In the darkest sections of the hallway, Cora reaches for my hand once again. By the time we hit the ground floor, I start reaching for hers anytime we’re standing close to each other and I don’t have my camera in my hands. It feels good. Easy.
