Cackle(23)

“No,” she says. “I’ve never been. I don’t get out much, really. I lead a very simple life.”

“Yeah,” I say, gesturing to the room around us. “Simple life. Simple house.”

She rolls her eyes. “You judge me.”

“I don’t!”

“Someone else built this house. A man with too much money and too much ego. He lost it all and left it to rot. I merely saved something beautiful,” she says, “though I do have a fondness for beautiful things, especially ones in need of saving.”

She begins to fill the kettle. “So, Annie, you should stay here tonight. Imagine the muddy mess it will be out there. To navigate it in a storm or after dark—no. No, no. I’ll make up my favorite guest room.”

Is she asking me to sleep over?

There’s a hesitation, a small anxious creature inside me pulling on my veins, using my stomach as a trampoline. All I’ve done for the past week is lament being alone, and now I’ve made a new friend, who’s offering for me to spend the night in her mansion. Why am I not more excited? Why am I experiencing this strange trepidation?

“What is it?” she asks.

“Nothing,” I say. “It’s really nice of you to offer, but I don’t want to impose.”

“I invited you,” she says. “It’ll be fun. I’ll open a bottle of wine. We can eat cheese and bread and read or watch a film. Or I can make up the room and you can sleep. Or take a bath! I made some new soaps and candles.”

“Made?”

“Yes. Teas, soaps, candles, salves. Tonics. I grow things. I make things with what I grow,” she says. “I told you. Very simple.”

“What you think is simple and what is actually simple are two very different things.”

She pouts. “What do you say? Will you stay?”

“Sure. Yes,” I say, extinguishing my nerves, “if you’re sure you want me hanging around.”

She claps. “Do you like red or white wine for tonight? I’ll get us a bottle, and then we can go somewhere more fun. The ballroom? Music room? Do you play piano?”

“I don’t. And red or white. Doesn’t matter to me. I trust you. The wine from your store was delicious.”

“Oh, it’s not my store,” she says. “Well, not entirely.”

She gave me a bottle of wine and let me take it without paying. Was I wrong to assume she had permission to do that?

“I’ll be right back,” she says. She opens the door to the pantry and steps inside. There’s the unmistakable screech of rusty hinges, then fading footsteps.

Curious, I stand up and look inside the pantry. It’s big, and at the back, there’s a set of steel cellar hatch doors. They’re open, and between them is a dark void.

“Sophie?” I say. “Do you need a light?”

In the gummy darkness, I think I see movement.

“Sophie?” I call out.

There’s a quick succession of sounds. Fast stomps getting louder and louder, a rush of volume. It’s as if she’s running up the stairs, but no one’s there. I expect the top of her head to emerge from the dark of the cellar, but it doesn’t. Nothing does.

If she’s not making that sound, if she’s not approaching, who is? It’s sudden excruciating confusion. I ready myself to turn, in case I’ve somehow mistaken the direction of the stomping and it’s actually coming from behind me and something is fast approaching my back. But before I can move, a gust of air hits my face. It breaks like an egg, a cold yolk dripping.

The shock of it, the frigid bitterness, robs me of breath. I close my eyes.

“You all right, darling?” Sophie asks. When I open my eyes, she’s standing in front of me, right there in the pantry. She follows my eyes behind her.

“I . . . I didn’t see you,” I say. “I heard . . .”

“What is it?”

How can I explain? Say that I heard stomping and was attacked by a cool breeze? I’d sound crazy.

“Um. Never mind,” I say. “I thought I heard something.”

“It’s a creaky, drafty old house. It likes to complain,” she says, closing the cellar doors. “I chose a bottle of rosé. Whenever I can’t decide between red and white, I go pink.”

I touch my face. My cheeks are freezing, my lips stony.

“Shall I show you the ballroom?”

“Yeah, okay.” I can’t shake the cold. It’s a chill in my marrow.

But then Sophie puts her arm around me, rests her hand on my shoulder, and I feel an overwhelming sense of safety. She smells so good. I need to know how she smells so good. I inhale her. I don’t even care if she thinks it’s weird. I breathe her in.

Everything else melts away as she walks me out of the kitchen, through the mirror hallway, through the foyer. We go through a different wing, down another long hallway, but instead of mirrors, this one is lined with paintings. Mostly oil paintings, landscapes. A few seascapes. There’s the occasional tapestry.

“I feel like I’m in a museum,” I tell her.

“I do call this the gallery,” she says. “But no museum would hang my paintings.”

“You painted these?”

She nods, gazing at the paintings with her lips curled in. “I’m not very good.”