Lineage(48)

“Lance, are you okay?” He nodded and licked his lips as he looked at the Realtor vacantly.

“Sorry, I’m fine. Long drive,” Lance replied, finally gathering his wits. The Realtor gave him a sidelong glance and turned to walk farther into the house.

Carrie led him into a wide kitchen set into the right side of the home. Lance admired the black marble the prior owners had chosen for countertops and the contrasting light wood of the cabinets beneath. A hanging pot rack hovered over a large cutting block in the middle of the room, and Lance even spied a fairly new-model dishwasher tucked beneath one end of the counter.

“As you can see, they spared no expense in the kitchen. If I remember right, the owner used to be a chef at a culinary school in Boston.” Lance nodded and was about to follow Carrie out of the kitchen when he imagined the blond man seated at the counter, staring forlornly out of the window. There was a scrap of paper and a dulled pencil lying on the marble top. His left hand kept rolling the pencil back and forth, over and over.

Excitement buzzed in Lance’s stomach as he followed Carrie out into the wide expanse of the dining/living room. Details were starting to appear. It was always the first sign of a story taking shape. He would see something in his mind or imagine it happening in the world around him, and it was only when he noticed a detail within the imaginations that he realized there was something worth writing there.

“To me, this is the best part of the house. The atrium was added just before the previous owners bought it. It’s the best view of Lake Superior I’ve ever seen.” Lance stepped out into the glass room and couldn’t help but agree. The panoramic view floated before them, unobstructed by walls or doors. The contractor who had built the vestibule was talented and had the foresight not to install wide supports that would have cut up the observatory like a tic-tac-toe board.

“I could write here, I think,” Lance murmured, mostly to himself, but the Realtor perked up instantly.

“You’re a writer?” she said with what seemed to be polite interest, but after a moment Lance could almost see the gears turning and lights flipping on in the control rooms behind her eyes. “Oh my God! You’re Lance Metzger! Wow! I’ve read some of your books! I didn’t put two and two together until now. God I’m so dumb!” Carrie issued a high, annoying titter that made Lance’s teeth grate against one another, but he smiled nonetheless and nodded as Carrie’s face flushed in the light thrown by the afternoon sun. “So, you’re coming here to write a novel?” For the first time the Realtor seemed genuinely interested in Lance and what he had to say.

“Possibly, if everything works out. I do really like the place so far, but I’d love to see the rest of it.” He hoped that the gentle redirection wouldn’t hurt the woman’s feelings, and he was grateful when she smiled and continued walking through the living room.

“This is such a nice room—the bay windows looking out over the lake and the high ceilings. Just a really great room to mingle or have a little get-together in.” Carrie nodded while pulling her overly red lips into a grin that any clown would have envied. She turned and began to make her way across the living room, to the stairway that undoubtedly led up to the bedrooms on the second floor. Lance trailed after her, his eyes looking for another piece of the story to jump out at him when they landed on a darkly stained door set off to the north side of the room. The door looked odd to Lance, set in a recessed frame, uncharacteristic of the other remodeling the house had undergone. So flat and smooth. He strained to see a gap at any of the sides of the entrance. An oblong cast-iron door handle protruded from a steel plate, seamlessly fastened in the wood.

“What’s in there?” Lance asked, and Carrie paused, two stairs up from the main floor.

“Oh, that? That’s storage. I think the prior owner may have had some of his cooking equipment in there before moving. It’s locked. I have the key somewhere in my office, I believe.” Without hesitating, she turned and made her way farther up the wooden stairway to the second floor.

Instead of following, Lance walked toward the door and examined it further. It was even darker than he had initially thought and coated with an enormous amount of lacquer. The depth of the grain pattern in the wood was intricately layered and almost mesmerizing. His hand reached out to the doorknob. Could he feel cold coming off the iron, or was it his imagination? His fingers stretched out, a few inches from the black of the handle. Closer. There was definitely a chill coming off the knob. His hand circled to grasp it.