The Stroke of Winter(22)

During dinner, they chatted about Wharton in the winter, which businesses were open, which families typically stayed on. Tess asked about Grant and Hunter, both of whom Wyatt had known and worked with for many years. Grant was a father of three grown kids, she learned, all of whom lived out of state. Hunter was married to a teacher in the Salmon Bay schools.

As interesting as it was to learn more about her “crew,” Tess’s thoughts drifted back to the room upstairs, what they had found, and what they hadn’t. She was anxious to go back in there and get a better look.

“Do you think it would be a major hassle to get the electricity turned on in the back room?” she asked as they were finishing up their pasta.

He shook his head. “I noticed a breaker down in the basement,” he said. “Should be just a matter of flipping the switch. I’m sure Serena killed the power when she closed up the room, but I can’t imagine she would’ve done anything more permanent than that, like cut the lines.”

“Would you mind going downstairs with me now to find out?”

Wyatt pushed his chair back from the table, grabbed both of their plates and silverware, and set them in the sink. “Let’s do it,” he said.

Tess turned on the basement light, and they headed down the rickety stairs. Wyatt went right for the back wall, and Tess noticed the breaker box was there. She wasn’t sure she had ever seen it before. Good thing to know about, she thought, shaking her head at herself. She really should have learned everything there was to know about this house before starting to renovate it into an inn. She had a tendency to do that—jump into something without thinking about all the variables.

Wyatt opened up the box, and after a moment or two of studying it, he flipped a couple of switches.

“That should do the trick,” he said, looking over his shoulder at Tess. “Should we go up and check it out?”

A moment later, they were climbing the back stairs to the second floor. Sure enough, Tess could see light blazing into the hallway from under the closed door. She remembered trying the switch earlier in the day. She must’ve left it on.

“You put the door back on its hinges,” she said to him, smiling.

“We did,” Wyatt said. “It didn’t take any time at all. There’s no knob, so it just pushes open and closed, but I figured you’d want it in its place until we get to putting a knob back on.”

Tess pushed open the door. She was, at once, relieved to see that getting the electricity on in the room had been just a simple matter of flipping switches in the basement, but her stomach dropped as she took in the room’s disarray once again. She was chagrined that Wyatt was seeing it, too.

She opened up her arms. “Why would my grandmother have left it like this?” she asked, not expecting an answer.

Wyatt winced and shrugged. “To tell you the truth, I was wondering the same thing earlier today when we opened it up. I didn’t know your grandmother too terribly well, but it really doesn’t seem like something she’d do.”

Tess nodded. “I know. It doesn’t. I mean—to not even do so much as throw the wine bottles into the trash before shutting the room up for good? I just don’t get that.”

“Did you ever ask her about it? Why she closed off the room?”

“No,” Tess said, shaking her head. “Other than her explanation that it was too expensive to heat all winter, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense because, for the last several years she was alive, she went to Florida with my parents during the winters.”

Tess thought back to all the summers she had spent at the house. She’d never given the closed door much thought, other than feeling a bit weird about it as she passed by on her way down the hall. Why hadn’t she been the least bit curious?

“I can tell it’s bothering you.”

“Yeah,” Tess said. “It really is. I just don’t understand myself. Not even asking her about it. My dad never said anything about it, either. And the other thing . . .” Her words trailed off as she gazed around the room.

“The noises.”

“Hunter said there were no animals in here, but I’m telling you, I’ve been hearing scratching sounds at night. And Storm heard them, too. I wasn’t the only one.”

“I believe you,” Wyatt said. “It’s nuts. But Hunter is right. If an animal had been in here, we’d see evidence of it. Not to be indelicate about it, but there would be poop everywhere.”

“That’s right! And he checked the whole area, right? Even this little room?” She pointed to the small room in one corner and began to walk toward it.

“Yes, he checked everywhere,” Wyatt said. “I’m sure he was in there, too.”

The door was closed. She tried the knob, and sure enough, it clicked. But she hesitated before pushing it open. A sense of dread soaked into her skin, through her pores. It was as though the very air in the room were warning her away.

She glanced back over her shoulder at Wyatt. “I feel really . . .”

He nodded. “I know. So do I, weirdly. But you should just open it. You’re going to need to see what’s in there eventually. It might as well be now.”

When I’ve got someone here with me, Tess thought.

Tess pushed the door, slowly, gingerly, to reveal a bathroom, which seemed bigger on the inside than it looked from the outside. The room was dark—it had no windows—but she saw a claw-foot tub on one wall. A large sink and countertop across from it. Painting supplies were strewn all over the countertop. Pots of paints on the floor. Towels and brushes everywhere. Presumably painting rags. This must’ve been where Sebastian washed his brushes.