Chapter 5 - The Upstairs Hall I Wasn't Supposed to Need
The dessert plates had come out and nobody was really eating them. That's how it always went at my brother's house on Christmas. My mom would put out the pie because it looked right, and people would take a sliver to be polite and then leave it to go soft around the edges while the coffee got cold.
Maya had stayed by the tree for a while after she talked to me. She wasn't playing. She sat on the rug with her legs tucked under that red velvet dress, turning one of the low ornaments around and around on its hook so it caught the light. Every time the branch moved she stopped her hand like she thought she'd done something wrong.
I kept watching Mark without meaning to stare. He was at the dining table still, laughing at something one of Sarah's cousins said. He sounded fine. Normal. He refilled his own wine and then Sarah's, and when Maya's shoe squeaked against the hardwood he glanced over. Just a glance. But she froze.
I told myself I was reading too much into a look.
By eight the house got loud in that loose way it gets when people have been together too long. The dishwasher was running. Someone had switched the game back on in the living room. Sarah was wrapping leftovers in foil. My mom was looking for her purse and then forgetting what she wanted it for.
I stood up from the couch and rubbed my hands on my jeans. "Bathroom's free upstairs?" I asked Sarah.
She nodded toward the stairs. "Mark's office bath is a mess. Use the hall one."
Mark didn't look up from his drink. "Downstairs one's backed up," he said. "Don't mess with the handle on the hall one. You gotta lift it."
"Got it," I said.
The stairs were carpeted and too warm. The air changed halfway up, cooler, quieter. Downstairs the noise flattened into a hum. Up here I could hear the old house settling, a tick in the wall where the heat ran.
I knew which door she meant. She hadn't given me a name for it, not really. By the tree she had leaned her head against my shoulder and whispered it half like a question. The room at the end where dad goes when he's mad. The one with the click.
The upstairs hall was narrow with family pictures in a straight line. Mark and Sarah's wedding. Maya as a baby in a white blanket. Maya at three on a pumpkin. The carpet runner was worn in the middle.
There were four doors. The main bedroom at the end, open, lamp on. The hall bathroom next to it with the light already on and the fan buzzing. Maya's room across from that, door half open, nightlight glowing pink inside, stuffed rabbit on the bed. And then the smaller door between Maya's room and the stairs. Closed.
That had to be it. It wasn't a bedroom. It was narrower, maybe a storage room or an old office. The doorknob was brass and dull. Above it, at adult height, there was a newer piece of hardware I hadn't expected — a sliding bolt, the kind you put on from the outside. The metal was brighter than the rest of the door. It wasn't locked now. The bolt was pulled back.
I didn't touch it at first. I just stood there in the hall and listened to the fan buzzing and my own breathing too loud in my ears.
The bathroom excuse would only buy me a couple minutes. I stepped closer.
Down low, on the right side of the frame, about as high as Maya's shoulder would be, there was a mark in the white paint. Not a scuff from furniture. It was a cluster of short, thin scratches, like fingernails had dug in and dragged. Someone small had grabbed that frame hard. The paint was chipped down to the wood in two lines. Around it there were smudges I couldn't read — hand oil, maybe, from a lot of touching in the same spot.
My stomach dropped. I crouched down without thinking, the way I'd crouched for her downstairs, and ran my thumb just beside the mark without touching it. At that height the hallway looked different. The bolt up above would have been completely out of her reach. She couldn't have opened it or closed it herself from in there. Someone else would have had to slide it.
It proved nothing. I told myself that hard. Kids scratch paint. Kids get scared of dark storage rooms. A bolt could be for anything — keeping a toddler out of paint cans or old files. But the newness of that metal bothered me. The rest of the house was worn soft. That bolt was sharp and clean.
I stood up and tried the knob lightly with two fingers. It turned. The door gave a half inch before I stopped it. Dark inside. Cool air. Smell of cardboard and old carpet and something sharp like cleaning spray. No light. No window that I could see. I eased it shut again until the latch clicked, quiet as I could.
That's when I heard him on the stairs.
"Cal?" Mark's voice came up from the landing. Friendly at first. Then it changed when I didn't answer right away. Sharper. "You up there?"
My heart hammered so loud I was sure he'd hear it. I stepped back from the small door and moved fast toward the bathroom, flipping the fan light switch in my mind — I needed to be coming out of there, not standing in the hall staring at a locked room.
I ducked into the hall bathroom and pulled the door almost closed behind me, then ran the faucet. The water came out too loud and hot. I stuck my hands under it even though I didn't need to.
Mark's steps reached the top of the stairs. He stopped. I could see his shadow pause in the crack of the bathroom door.
"You get lost?" he said. There was a laugh in it, but underneath it was tight. The way he'd sounded years ago when we were kids and he thought I'd been in his room.
I lifted the handle the way he'd told me and flushed, to buy the sound. "No. Just figuring out your plumbing."
A beat. Then his weight shifted. "That handle sticks," he said. His tone eased a notch, but not all the way. "Mom's looking for you. Wants a picture before people head out."
"Be right down," I said.
I watched his shadow through the crack. He didn't move right away. He stood there another three or four seconds, looking down the hall toward that closed door, or toward me — I couldn't tell. Then he turned and went back down. The stairs creaked under him.
I turned off the faucet with wet hands and stared at myself in the mirror. Same curly hair, same beard. My face looked pale under that hard bathroom light.
May you like
I thought about that bolt again. About how high it was. About those little scratches low on the frame where a five-year-old in a red velvet dress would grab if she didn't want to go in.
I dried my hands on the towel that said JOY and went downstairs to smile for the picture.
