Never Lie (4)

Ethan tugs at the collar of his puffy jacket while I hug myself for warmth. “Well, I don’t know what to do. She’s obviously not here.”

I let out a frustrated sigh. “Great. So what are we supposed to do?”

“Hang on…” His eyes drop to the mat below our feet—the word “welcome” is written in elaborate script, partially obscured by the snow. “Maybe there’s a spare key around here somewhere.”

There isn’t one under the welcome mat—that would be far too obvious—but a more thorough search turns up a key concealed beneath a potted plant near the door. The key is ice cold and slightly damp in my palm.

“So…” I raise my eyebrows at Ethan. “Should we go inside without her? Do you think that’s okay?”

“We better. Who knows how long she’s going to be, and it’s freezing out here.” He throws an arm protectively around my shoulders. “I don’t want you to catch pneumonia.”

He’s right. With no cell phone signal and with the car getting increasingly buried in the snow, we need shelter. At least in the house, we’ll be safe.

I fit the key in the lock and hear the lock turn. I place my hand on the doorknob, which is freezing cold under my palm. I attempt to twist the knob, but the door doesn’t budge. Damn. I look down at the key, still wedged in the lock. “Do you think there’s a deadbolt?”

“Let me try.”

I step back to let Ethan have a go at it. He jiggles the key a bit, then he tries the knob. Nothing. He steps back for a moment, then grips the doorknob again and throws his entire weight against the heavy wooden door. With a loud creaking sound, the door pops open.

“You did it!” My hero. Swoon.

The house is pitch black inside. Ethan flicks a switch on the wall, and my stomach sinks when nothing happens. But then the overhead lights flicker for a moment before coming to life. The power is on, thank God. The lighting is dim—several of the bulbs have probably blown out—but it’s enough to illuminate the expansive living space.

And my jaw drops.

First of all, the living room is huge, and it seems even larger with the open floor plan. After living in a Manhattan apartment for the last several years, almost every house seems enormous to us. But this one is museum-level enormous. It’s airport-level enormous. And as large as the square footage is, it seems so much larger because of the high ceilings.

“Jesus,” Ethan breathes. “This place is incredible. It’s like a cathedral.”

“Yes.”

“And the asking price is so low. This house looks like it should be worth four times as much as that.”

Even as I nod my head in agreement with him, I get another wave of that sick feeling. Something terrible has happened in this house.

“There could be mold,” he says thoughtfully. “Or the foundation is crap. We should have the place inspected by someone really good before we sign anything.”

I don’t respond to that. I don’t tell him I’m secretly hoping this place is infested with mold or crumbling at the base or some other reason that I can say no to living here without sounding like some crazy woman who won’t buy a house her husband loves because she has a bad feeling about it.

And there’s something else strange about this house.

It’s completely furnished. The living room has a sectional sofa, a loveseat, a coffee table, and bookcases filled to the brim with books. I walk over to the beautiful brown leather sectional sofa and run my finger along one of the cushions. The leather feels stiff, like nobody has used the cushions in ages, and my finger comes away black. Dust—years’ worth of it.

Some of the houses we’ve seen have been furnished because the owners were still living there, but those houses looked lived in. This house doesn’t. There are multiple layers of dust on every piece of furniture in the living room. Yet this furniture isn’t the kind that somebody would leave behind when they moved. That leather couch probably cost somewhere in the order of five figures. And who leaves behind every single one of their books?

The floor looks dusty too, like nobody has walked on it in a long time. When I lift my eyes, I notice thick cobwebs in every corner of the living room. I can almost imagine the spiders crawling through those webs, waiting to sink their fangs into me.

It’s also more evidence that Judy has not been here. There’s no way Judy would leave a house this dusty. And cobwebs? Not a chance. It’s against her religion.

I turn to Ethan, about to point this out, but he’s distracted by something. A gigantic portrait of a woman hanging over the mantle. He is staring up at it, a strangely dark look on his face.

“Hey,” I say. “What’s wrong?”

His pale eyelashes flutter. He seems surprised that I’m suddenly standing next to him, as if he had forgotten I was here. “Oh. Uh, nothing. I just… who do you think that is?”

I follow his gaze up to the portrait. It’s gigantic—larger than life. And the woman featured in the portrait is striking. There’s no other word for her—she’s the sort of woman who, if you saw her on the street, you would stop and do a double take. She looks to be in her mid-thirties, with pin-straight hair that falls just below her shoulders. At first, I would have called her hair auburn, but when I tilt my head to the side, it morphs into a brilliant shade of red. Her skin is pale and flawless, but I suppose anyone can have beautiful skin in a painting. But one of her most striking features is her vivid green eyes. So many people have green eyes flecked with brown or blue, but hers are such an intense shade of green that they seem like they could leap off the canvas.