Bury Me(39)

“Lucky you. I was aiming for your face.”

I stand in the hallway with a smile on my face, watching her turn and race out the front door as fast as she can.

“Hello? Ravenna? Did you even hear me?”

Blinking my eyes into focus, I glance at the side of Trudy’s neck, but sadly the marks from my nails have healed.

“So how’s the new kitten? Does she still have really sharp claws?” I ask with a raise of my eyebrow.

Her hand unconsciously comes up to the side of her neck, dropping it quickly when she realizes I’m staring at that spot, sad that evidence of my anger is long gone.

“I thought you couldn’t remember anything?” she asks reproachfully.

“Not everything. Not yet. Just a few things, like how you tried to steal Nolan from me.”

I’d like to take a moment to appreciate the fire I see in her eyes and her attempt at having a backbone, but she’s too stupid of a human being for me to waste that on.

“Oh, give me a break,” she scoffs. “You spent two years wanting nothing to do with him just because he was a gardener and too far beneath your social standards. The minute I show interest in him, suddenly you’re dressing like a slut and throwing yourself at him.”

I move right up in front of her until she has no choice but to take a few steps back, moving herself out of the doorway and back onto the porch.

“Did you know Ike has been missing for a few weeks? And my mother just died. Haven’t seen my father around in a few days either,” I muse, tapping a finger against my chin. “Strange how people around here disappear or end up dead, don’t you think?”

Trudy’s face turns as white as a sheet and without another word, she runs as fast as possible down the stairs and over to the driveway, jumping into her father’s Buick Electra. She doesn’t even waste time turning the car around; she just guns it backward down the long, winding drive.

Swiping my hands together like I just took out the trash, I close the front door and resume my pacing. My eyes wander to the basement door and I stop when a conversation flutters through my mind.

“Come on, let’s go into the basement.”

“Are you crazy? It’s scary down there.”

“It’s not scary when you go with someone else. Come on, there’s something I want to show you.”

“I’ve been down there before. Believe me, there’s nothing I haven’t seen.”

“You haven’t seen the bones…”

My feet carry me to the door as I try to remember more of the conversation. Who was I talking to? It must have been Trudy. Maybe I should have been a little nicer to her for a few more minutes and gotten some answers out of her. I try the handle and just like before, it’s still locked. I growl in frustration and it only takes me a second to remember something.

“You are such an idiot, Ravenna,” I mumble, running back down the hallway and up the stairs.

Shooting a dirty look at my father’s closed office door as I move past it, I scoop up the bent hanger that I left on the floor right outside the spare bedroom where Nolan tossed it there the other day. Heading back downstairs to the basement door, I slide to a stop across the hardwood in my stocking feet. Squatting down, I shove the end of the hanger into the keyhole and jiggle it around just like I saw Nolan do. I poke and jab, turning the hanger this way and that, quickly growing frustrated that picking a skeleton-key lock isn’t as easy as Nolan made it look. I keep working but after a few minutes, my fingers start to cramp from holding the piece of wire and trying to force it in the right spot.

Blowing my hair out of my eyes, I move the hanger into my left hand, shaking out the right to give it a little break before going right back to work. I’m pushing so hard in every direction in the tiny hole that the hanger starts to bend and still the door remains locked.

I need to get in that basement. I have to go down there. I don’t need to make sense of the things my mother told me. I don’t need to get into my father’s office. All the answers are down there—I know they are.

“Don’t go down there. You’ll never come up if you go down there.”

I quickly jump up away from the door guiltily, the wire hanger falling from my hands and clattering on the floor.

My father leans against the banister of the stairs, still wearing the same dark blue suit pants and white button-down from the day the coroner came to take my mother’s body away. After a week of wearing and sleeping in the same clothes, they’re now wrinkled, stained, and disheveled. One end of his shirt has come un-tucked from his pants and it hangs down over his belt and his short dark hair stands on end all around his head like he’s been constantly tugging on clumps of it.