Crooked House (5 page)

“You’re not?”

“No. I ought to be, but I’m not.”

He nodded
. “So, we’re okay?”

She glanced back at Angela, and the worry showed in her face
. “Yeah,” she finally said. “Yeah, we’re okay. I’m scared, Robert. But you and I are okay.”

He almost told her that he loved her, but she had already turned back toward the window
. He sighed. Robert felt like he was stewing in his own sweat, his clothes sticking to his back and his legs, but he refocused his attention on the road and they drove on into Texas without saying another word.

*

They got to Crook House at a little past ten. It was raining – pretty hard too – and between that and the darkness, Sarah and Angela didn’t really get to see how striking the house was.

But
in a flash of lightning they managed to catch a glimpse at just how huge the place really was, and Robert had heard a dutifully impressed “Whoa!” from the backseat that made him smile.

Even
Sarah had managed a little chuckle.

“Wait
till morning,” he said. He was feeling ridiculously proud of himself. “In the morning you’ll get a chance to see what I was telling you about, how it looks like two different houses cobbled together.”

Sarah
nodded. “Do you think the power’s out?”

He studied the face of the house
. Were they back in Florida his first thought would have been that those bastards from the electric company finally made good on their threat to shut off the power. But not here. Not after Thom’s assurances about Lightner footing the bills. So he scanned the house. The whole house was dark, and from where they’d parked, they couldn’t see any of the neighbors.

“I don’t know,” he
finally said. “I guess we go find out.” He looked at Sarah, then back at Angela. “Everybody ready to brave the rain?”

They threw open their doors and ran for the house
. In just the few quick seconds it took them to reach the front stoop they got drenched. Robert inserted the key in the lock but couldn’t get it to turn.

“Robert, come on,”
Sarah said.

“I’m trying.”

It still wouldn’t go.

“Daddy!”

“There it is,” he said.

He threw the door open and they poured inside.

“The lights are over here,” he said. His shoes slipped and squished on the marble tile as he groped along the dark wall for the switch. He tried it but the lights didn’t come on. “Damn, Sarah, you got your phone?”

“Yeah, hold on.”

She used the flashlight app on her iPhone to light up the entryway, and in the glow, Robert saw her glance at Angela and a smile pass between them.

“What do you think?” Robert said
. “Nice, huh?”

“Not bad,”
Sarah said. She couldn’t stop smiling now.

“I think it’s cool!” Angela said
. “Come on, let’s go look around.”

She was off before either of them could stop her, her own iPod out, th
e light bouncing as she ran toward the back of the house and disappeared around the corner that led to the breakfast room, conservatory and downstairs library.

I have a downstairs library, Robert thought, and chuckled
. Damn, this rocks.

But in the light from her phone Robert could see that
Sarah wasn’t smiling anymore. She was staring anxiously into the dark recesses of the house.

“Angela,” she called out
. “Sweetheart, let’s stick together.”

She walked in the direction Angela had gone and Robert followed after her.

They turned the corner and caught a glimpse of Angela’s light slipping through the doorway at the far end of the kitchen.

“Angela, wait,”
Sarah said.

But the girl was gone again
. Robert heard a hitch in Sarah’s breathing, and he realized she was getting scared. “It’s okay,” he started to say. But she broke into a trot, her flashlight casting a bluish pool of light in front of her, before he could get the rest of what he wanted to say out.

What he was going to tell her was that the hall gave on to the conservatory and the breakfast room, and farther on to
the library, where it stopped. There was nowhere to go from there but back the way she came. But Sarah wasn’t listening. She turned the corner out of the kitchen and stopped where the hall went off to the breakfast room on the left and the conservatory on the right.

Angela wasn’t in either room.

“Angela?” Sarah called out. “Sweetheart, answer me.”

“She’s probably over
– ”

A flashlight beam bobbed against the glass windows on the far side of the conservatory
. Sarah turned her own light in that direction. “Angela?”

There was nothing there
. Just dark glass and the sizzle of rain against it.

“Where is she?”
Sarah demanded.

“I, uh...” Robert stammered helplessly
. “The library’s over – ”

Again he was cut off, this time by the squeak and slap of Angela’s wet sneakers as she ran from somewhere behind them
. Then her tittering laughter echoing back to them through the darkness.

“Angela!
” Sarah pushed her way past him. “Get out of the way, Robert. Angela!”

Robert took a step after her and had to catch himself
. The floor felt like it was rolling. He put a hand out and steadied himself against a bank of cabinets. The sensation that he was about to pitch over faded, but he still had trouble focusing. It was like he was punch drunk. He touched his brow. His hair was still wet from the rain, but he knew it wasn’t rainwater he was feeling on his skin. His forehead felt clammy and damp. I’m sweating, he thought. It’s fifty degrees outside and I’m sweating.

“Angela!”

Sarah’s shrill and frightened call snapped him back into the moment, and he stumbled after her.

He met up with her in the entryway, the huge staircases curling up the walls on either side of
them. She looked genuinely frightened now.

“Where is she?”
Sarah said, turning her flashlight into his face.

He flinched away from the light, but didn’t answer
. He couldn’t quite get his mind to work. Why was she so upset?

Then he
heard footsteps running up the stairs, and more childish laughter.

“Angela,”
Sarah said.

She turned her flashlight up to the top of the stairs and Robert caught a glimpse of his daughter as she rounded the corner above them, headed for the east wing of the house.

Sarah ran after her and Robert followed as quickly as he could. They reached the top of the stairs and turned down the east wing. A flash of lightning lit the windows, and in its glow, Robert caught sight of Angela running at the far end of the long hall.

“Angela, please wait
!” Sarah called.

And then Angela did stop
. She stopped, lowered her hands to her side, turned to face an open doorway near the end of the hall, and walked inside.

Sarah
ran after her, and as Robert followed, he again had the feeling the floor was shifting under his feet. Though he was going at a trot to keep up with Sarah, he still felt like he was moving way too slowly, like he was pushing his way through water.

But at last he caught up with them
. Sarah was just inside the room, breathing hard. Angela was near the foot of an enormous bed, turning around in circles as she admired the room.

“I love this room!” she said
. “I want this room. Can I have it?”

“Angela,”
Sarah said. “God, you had me so worried.”

“Worried?” Angela frowned at her. “
Why?”

“Why didn’t you stop when I was calling to you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You didn’t hear me calling to you?”

Angela’s frown deepened, a gesture that caused her eyebrows to bunch together. She was, Robert realized, the spitting image of her mother when she did that. “Mom, I was right there with you.”

Sarah
didn’t respond. Instead, she turned to Robert, like she was looking for him to back her up that she had, in fact, been calling out. But when she saw Robert she evidently saw something that put Angela’s strange behavior out of her mind. She held the flashlight up to Robert’s face. “What’s wrong with you? You okay?”

Robert shook himself
. “Yeah,” he said. And he was feeling a little better. The floor had stopped moving on him.

“Stop scratching your arm like that,”
Sarah said. “You’ll tear up your skin that way.”

Robert looked down, confused
. His left arm was across his chest and he was scratching his right shoulder just under the sleeve of his T-shirt. He hadn’t even realized he was doing it.

“Hey, Mom, can I have this room
? Please.”

Sarah
turned back to her daughter. She seemed to study the huge cloth panels that affixed to the ceiling like a royal canopy. “Well, I don’t know. This is a boy’s room, isn’t it?”

“Mom, I love it.”

“It’s a big house, and it’s a long way from our bedroom. Don’t you want to look around at some of the other rooms?”

“It isn’t far from your room
. There are stairs right outside the door there, at the end of the hall. Remember the pictures we saw? Your room is right below us.”

“Well, I...What do you think, Robert?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess – ”

“Cool!” Angela said
. “Thanks, you guys. Hey, Dad, I’m hungry. Can we get a pizza?”

Robert smiled
. Kids, they had the attention span of a gnat.

To
Sarah he said: “That’s probably a good idea. All our kitchen stuff’s out in the car, and we can’t really cook anything with the power out.”

She nodded
. “Okay, I’ll try to find a pizza place. You bring our stuff in from the car, okay?”

He nodded.

She put a hand on his arm. “Hey, you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah,” he said as his hand again found the itch under his
shirtsleeve. “Yeah, I’m good.”

*

They ate the pizza right out of the box; the three of them seated on the floor in the downstairs library, laughing at the way the pizza delivery guy had gawked at the size of their new house. Outside, the rain had slacked off to a gentle patter on the windows. The power still hadn’t come on, but they had candles now – lemon verbena-scented ones, Sarah’s favorite – and the guttering yellow light went a long way toward brightening everybody’s mood. Listening to the girls talk, Robert started to drift. There was something so very pleasant about all this, the candlelight, and dinner on the floor, the rain outside.

“What do you think, Dad?”

Robert looked at Angela. She’d asked him something and he missed it. “I’m sorry, what?”

“The tree, where are we gonna put it
? I think we should put it in here.”

He looked at the empty corner of the library where she was pointing
. “Yeah,” he said. “I think – ” He stopped, looked at Sarah for confirmation, and shrugged. “ – yeah. That looks good to me. What do you think?”

Sarah
nodded. “Yeah. Robert, you’re scratching yourself again.”

He looked down at where his hand was busy scratching
. It was the other arm this time, though. Damn, that was weird, he thought. He didn’t even realize he was doing it.

“You think you’re allergic to something in here?” she asked.

“Maybe you’ve got the measles?” Angela said.

“I don’t have the measles,” Robert said, smiling at her
. “I doubt I’m allergic to anything, though. I’ve never had any allergies. I think I’m just tired.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it
. You drove all day.”

Earlier, before the pizza guy got there, they’d agreed to spend their first night in their new house in sleeping bags on the library floor
. It was Angela’s idea. Like a camp out, she said. So Robert unrolled his sleeping bag, pulled one of the pillows off the couch, and stretched out. “You guys mind if I hit the hay?” he asked. “You can stay up, I don’t care. I’m beat, though, and I’ve got that meeting with Thom in the morning.”

He put his head down, certain that he would fall asleep without any trouble at all, but he couldn’t keep his eyes closed
. He pulled the sleeping bag over his shoulder and tried to tune the girls out as they talked about what Angela’s new school was going to be like and how they wanted to do her room and a dozen other things, but he couldn’t get to sleep. Maybe there was something to him being allergic, he thought. It felt like he was itching all over.