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She then binge-watched three episodes of a new Netflix series and called it a night.
“Situation normal,” she murmured as she slipped into bed, and into sleep.
The clock chiming three didn’t wake her, nor did the creaks of doors, or the drifting music, or a woman’s heartbroken sobs.
PART TWOThe Manor
All houses wherein men have lived and died
are haunted houses.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Haunted Houses”
Chapter Eleven
She rolled through the next few days. Maybe she used tunnel vision more than once, but she rolled through. And with the start-up catering company having signed the contract, she had plenty to roll through.
On a Saturday morning, armed with her phone and a flashlight—just in case—she went through the servants’ passageway. The stairs creaked on the way down, but the light showed the way, so she stuck the flashlight in her back pocket.
She couldn’t imagine herself sitting alone in the media room. Not that it wasn’t nice, she observed as she wandered it. Cozy in its way, with big, comfortable chairs and a huge screen.
He’d even put in a little bar. Maybe he’d stocked it with drinks and snacks.
Had Collin sat there, alone in the big, empty house, going into the worlds on-screen? Had he laughed at comedies, felt his pulse quicken at a thriller?
Had he munched on popcorn and watched old favorites as she often did?
So odd, she thought, to have never known him, and see clearly they’d had things in common. A love and talent for art, a love of stories—books, movies. An appreciation for rambling old houses steeped in history and character.
Would the brothers, if they’d had the chance, have bonded? Would there have been shared holidays? Family jokes?
The longer she lived in the house, the more she thought yes. She’d never know for certain, but she felt yes. They’d have become family, even if they’d met as grown men.
She moved from the media room into the gym with its rack of free weights, a treadmill, and a recumbent bike. And yet another wall screen.
The man had seriously liked TV.
Hooks held exercise bands and yoga straps. He’d had a stability ball, medicine balls, even a pull-up bar. So he’d been serious about fitness, too.
Idly, she picked up two dumbbells, faced the mirror, and did some curls.
She could probably talk herself into using this space. She missed her membership at the gym—a gym she’d given up, as Brandon went to the same one.
She could stream workouts on the screen, get back into the habit.
“No time like now,” she decided, and spent the next thirty minutes reminding herself how much she hated squats.
Rubbing her ass because shefeltit, she toured a storage area, found holiday decorations. Halloween, Christmas, Fourth of July.
“You and my mother would’ve gotten along, too.”
She found another set of stairs leading down, peered into the dark.
“The basement basement,” she concluded. “I just don’t think so.”
It gave her the boiler room from Stephen King’sThe Shiningvibe.
And she shut the door.
