The House in the Pines(47)

She tells herself she’ll knock quietly so as not to wake Frank’s father if he happens to be asleep. If no one answers, she’ll turn around and drive home.

The house is bigger and more impressive than she expected. She had taken Frank’s worn-out clothes and part-time library job as evidence that he, and by extension his father, weren’t well-off. But now she sees that they live in a stately colonial with tall windows and a steeply gabled roof. Frank’s car is parked out front, and all the downstairs lights are on.

Maya parks at the edge of the driveway and tucks her flip phone into her back pocket before getting out of the car. Now that she’s here, she can’t believe she’s doing this. Even though they are fighting, she wishes Aubrey were with her.

Tall grasses brush her calves as she walks across the lawn. No one’s mowed here in a long time. She hears crickets. The wind in the leaves. The moon is full but mostly hidden, and the air has a heavy feel. She takes a deep breath before knocking.

The footsteps are immediate. They hurry to the door, then pause. Please be Frank, please be Frank.

Frank’s dad, an older, squatter, paler version of Frank, opens the door. Gray hair and a pronounced gut, but the same small chin. The same thin lips. His eyes narrow as he tries, and fails, to place her. “Who are you?”

“Hi, I’m Maya. I was wondering if—”

“Why are you here?” He speaks quietly but with urgency.

“I’m looking for Frank.”

Bewilderment from his dad. “Frank? You’re here for Frank?”

“Yes, but . . . if this is a bad time . . .” She can’t tell what’s wrong with him. He’s edgy and strange but doesn’t look sick.

“He’s not here. I’ll tell him you stopped by.”

But Frank’s car, she thinks. It’s right there in the driveway. “Can I ask where he went?”

He waves his hand dismissively toward the woods. “Oh, somewhere out back.”

Somewhere out back? “He’s at his cabin?”

This question seems to catch him off guard. Then his surprise gives way to a smile that is chillingly like his son’s but without the warmth, and it’s like the difference between laughing with someone and laughing at them. “Yeah,” he says. “I suppose that’s where he is.”

“How do I get there?” She tries to sound confident, but Frank’s dad makes her nervous.

“To the cabin? You’d have to walk there, and it’s dark out.”

“I know,” she says. But even mostly covered, the full moon is bright and there’s a small flashlight on her mom’s key chain.

“The road starts just back there,” he says, a strange mirth to his voice that she doesn’t like. He points around the side of the house. “Follow it until you come to a stream, then cross over. You’ll find my son on the other side. It’s not far, but you really should have a light. Do you?”

She holds up the key chain light.

“That won’t be enough. Wait here.”

While he’s gone, she peers through the partly open door into the cluttered foyer. A small writing desk crouches at the base of wide, dark stairs, its top littered with unopened mail. Stacks of newspapers and what look like magazines or trade journals line the wall. She has a bad feeling. She knows she should leave but feels compelled by something darker than curiosity, some other impulse she doesn’t try to name.

A light blinks on—a strong white beam—directly in her eyes. It blinds her, and she stumbles back, hands flying up to cover her face.

“Sorry,” Frank’s father says, standing right in front of her now. “Just making sure it works.”

The light clicks off, but its afterimage is all she can see. He presses the heavy flashlight into her hand. She’s disoriented as he follows her back outside and points her to the abandoned road out back. An old logging road, reclaimed by forest but still holding its shape. The smell of rain is in the air, rich, earthy. No one’s driven on this road in a long time, its old asphalt carpeted in dead leaves and growing things. Saplings, ferns, moss. She’s grateful for the flashlight as the trees thicken around her. She runs the light ahead of her as she walks. A rabbit darts across her path and she flinches. There are other dangers out here beside getting lost, and yet it’s like she is helpless to turn around.

She tries to anticipate how Frank will react to her showing up unannounced. Why is he so secretive about the place?

You don’t get it, do you?

Maya walks faster. She hears the stream before she sees it, a light trickle just ahead, and it reminds her of Frank’s story about how it was that sound that led him back to the road when he was lost. The sound of its water as he described it to her was so clear that she feels something like recognition as she begins moving toward the bridge.

A cloud covers the moon. The flashlight flickers in her hand.



* * *



— The door closes at her back.

“Wow,” she says.

Frank has just let her inside and although she had known what to expect, nothing could have prepared her for this. The amount of work and love he must have put into the place. The level of skill. It’s hard to believe this is the first cabin Frank has built. Tilting her head back, she looks up and recalls how he had used the term cathedral ceiling, and she hadn’t known what he meant, but now she understands how a ceiling can make a place feel holy. The height, the soaring beams, everything made of pine and rose gold by the fire. Between its light and the many votive candles glittering on windowsills and countertops and the moonlight streaming through the windows, Maya can see everything, and it is beautiful.