Chapter 12 - She Told Us to Run
The air behind the doors was warmer than the hallway and it smelled wrong. Dust and old pennies and something sweet gone bad. My eyes watered.
Milo held the flashlight low so it wouldn't hit her face straight on. She blinked anyway. Her hair was stuck to her cheek. It was the same color as mine, only darker at the roots, and one piece of it was caught in the crack in the wall where the wallpaper had torn through from the other side.
She looked at me first. Not at Milo. At my shirt.
"That's yours," she whispered. Her voice cracked. "The little blue stars. I folded that this morning. Didn't I?"
I couldn't talk. I grabbed the hem of it and held it out like proof.
She breathed out and started crying without making much noise. Then she turned her head a little toward Milo. "I know that breathing," she said. "You used to stand outside the bathroom door just to hear me. Milo."
He went completely still. "Mom?" he said.
She nodded. Her name came out slow, like she had to remember how it sounded outside her own head. "I'm Caroline."
Behind us in the hallway, the floor creaked. Just one board. Milo swung the light toward the doors and then killed it. We sat in the dark and listened. Nothing else moved, but my heart was beating so loud I was sure she could hear it.
"She's checking," Caroline whispered. "She always checks."
Milo leaned close. "Are you hurt? Can you walk?"
She tried to lift her hand and couldn't get it past her waist. There was a dark stain down her side I didn't want to look at. "I fell," she said. "On the back steps. Evelyn said stay down, she'd get help. Then the doors were shut and then they wouldn't open again."
I remembered Evelyn in her maroon dress facing Milo in the hall, her face so still. My hand was still on the wood trim in my memory.
"She's your sister?" Milo asked.
Caroline swallowed. "My little sister. She'd been staying with us after — after your dad left. She said this house should've been hers. Mom left it to me. She said no one would believe me if I said she did it. She said she'd take better care of you two."
Milo's jaw clicked. "She lied."
"I could hear you through the wall," Caroline said to me. "Crying. I tried to knock back. I scratched at the paper till my fingers bled." She looked at the tear. "You found me."
Another creak, closer this time. Milo put his hand over my mouth without thinking, then took it away fast like he was sorry. He mouthed one, two, three while we waited. The sound stopped near the double doors.
Caroline grabbed his wrist. Her grip was weak but fast. "Listen to me," she breathed. "You have to lock these doors again behind you. If she sees them open she'll know."
"No," I whispered. "Don't close us out."
"Not you," she said. "Him. Milo, you go out the kitchen window like you did last summer. Cut through to the Hendersons' porch and tell them to call the sheriff. Say your mom is locked inside the wall. Say the address."
Milo shook his head. "I'm not leaving you."
"You have to," she said. "She won't hurt Nora if I'm the one she's worried about. She needs her to look — normal. Please."
He looked at me, then at her, then at the thin line of hallway light under the doors. I could see him doing the math the way he did when Evelyn gave us chores that didn't make sense. Stay or go. If he stayed, no one came. If he went, I'd be alone with her.
"I'm not going," I said. My voice sounded too loud in that small space. "I'm staying with Mom."
Caroline touched my cheek with the back of her fingers. They were cold. "Good girl," she whispered. "You hold my hand and don't let go. You hear me?"
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Milo picked up the brass key from where he'd left it on the floor. His hand was shaking. The footsteps in the hallway started again, moving away this time toward the front stairs.
He looked at the doors. Locked or unlocked, we were already caught if Evelyn came back.
