The Stroke of Winter(26)

Wyatt smiled. “I could call you tomorrow.”

“Yes, you could.”

“Or later tonight.”

“That, too.”

“Okay, then,” he said and pulled open the door. He started to walk through it but turned back over his shoulder. “If anything happens—not that it’s going to—but if it does, call me. No matter what time it is. I don’t want you in here battling with a raccoon on your own.”

And then he was gone. Tess shut and locked the door behind him and watched through the window as he climbed into his truck. He started it and let it run for a moment before backing down the driveway and disappearing down the dark street.

She didn’t quite know what to make of the man. Whatever “this” was, he was certainly honest and up-front about it. What a concept, she thought. A man who doesn’t play games.

Tess turned to the empty kitchen, which seemed even more empty without the hustle and bustle of the day.

She poured herself a glass of wine and settled down in the armchair next to the fire, eyeing the back stairs. What a strange day. First, the realization that the room had been her grandfather’s studio. The confusion about why it had been left in such disarray. The little bathroom and the canvases. The stains everywhere. And then, those ghastly scratches. Like whatever was in there had been desperate to get out.

But there had been nothing in the room.

Tess turned it over and over in her mind and wondered if her curiosity about what those canvases contained would get the better of her that night.





CHAPTER ELEVEN



After watching a couple of episodes of a favorite old sitcom to take her mind off things, Tess turned out the lights in the living room and kitchen and started up to bed, Storm at her heels. Even though she had turned off all the lights downstairs, she flipped all of them on upstairs. Stairway, hallway, and every room she passed.

It might be silly and wasteful, she thought as she switched on the light in her bedroom, but if that’s what it takes for me to get to sleep tonight, that’s what I’m going to do.

She stood on the threshold of her bedroom and stared down the hall toward the room they had opened that day. The curiosity seemed to be eating at her from the inside out. But getting any more answers would have to wait until morning. She had no desire to venture in alone at night. That was silly, too, she knew.

After she had changed into her pajamas and brushed her teeth, Tess settled into bed, where Storm was already stretched out, occupying at least half of the mattress space. She smiled at the dog. “Please, make yourself at home,” she said.

She propped the pillows behind her and picked up the phone to call her parents. She wanted to talk to her dad about what, if anything, he knew about that back room. Had it ever been opened, that he knew of? She might not get anything from him, she thought she probably wouldn’t, but that, in a way, would give her some answers. If he knew nothing about it, had never been in the room since Serena had shut it up, that meant those really could be undiscovered paintings by Sebastian Bell. There was no way her dad would’ve let millions of dollars languish all those years.

But just as she was about to make the call, she glanced at the clock. It was an hour later at their condo in Florida. They were probably in bed.

Phone in hand, she very much wanted to talk with someone. Should she call Wyatt? Hearing his voice would be nice, but . . . it was too soon in whatever “this” was, she thought. He had just left a few hours earlier.

Instead, she dialed Eli.

“Hi, Mom,” he said. “What’s up?”

Just hearing her son’s voice brought a smile to her face. “I got a dog.”

“What?”

She turned the phone toward Storm, snapped a photo, and sent it to Eli.

“He looks great! But how did this happen? You’re not allowed to get any pets without consulting me. Or new cars. Or houseplants. I thought that was clear.”

Tess laughed. “He showed up at my back door during the blizzard. Jim—you remember, the guy next door who owns the store?—has the dog’s photo up on the bulletin board looking for his owner, but . . . I think he’s mine now.”

“Well, good,” Eli said. “I never liked the idea of you being in that creepy house all alone.”

This took Tess off guard. “Creepy? Why do you say that?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Eli said. “Maybe it’s the constant moaning of the undead during the night. The rattling of chains, although, sure, that’s totally cliché, but nobody told the ghosts. The odd disembodied head floating around from time to time.”

Tess laughed out loud. “You goofball. There’s no moaning. Or heads.”

Eli chuckled, too. “Yeah, I know. It’s just that the house is so old. Like, one hundred years, right? And it looks like the kind of house that would be haunted. Plus, there’s that door.”

“The door,” Tess said. “We opened it today!”

Eli went silent for a moment. “You opened it? How? And, who is ‘we’?”

“Jim recommended a guy from town, Wyatt, to come over and fix the heat,” Tess said.

“What was wrong with the heat?”

Tess realized she hadn’t been communicating with her son as well as she might have over the past few weeks. All at once, she remembered what it felt like when Eli was away at school and she was in the dark about what he was doing, with whom, and when.