Chapter 5 - His Steps Did Not Stop at Her Words
I stayed with my back against the cold shelving and listened to the ceiling.
Grandma had her hand on my shoulder. Her breathing was thin and fast under the fluorescent light, and the bins behind us ticked as they cooled. Upstairs, the floor creaked. I could hear Dad's boots first, heavy from the front door, and then Melanie's flats moving quick to cut him off before he got to the stairs.
I couldn't see them. I could only hear shapes of them through the vents and the thin gap under the storage room door.
"What are you doing home?" Melanie said. Her voice had changed. It wasn't cold like it had been to me. It was smooth and warm, like she used when his truck pulled in.
"I got an early flight," Dad said. "Where's Claire?"
There was a pause. I squeezed Grandma's sleeve. I wanted to yell again, but Grandma shook her head just a little and put her finger near her lips, not to shush me mean, just to wait.
"She acted like a problem tonight," Melanie said. "She needed a time out."
My stomach dropped hearing it back. That was what she had said to me in the doorway. Too late. You want to act like a problem? Then get out of my sight. Only now she made it sound normal, like I had talked back at the dinner table and been sent to my room.
Dad didn't answer right away. His duffel bag thumped against the wall upstairs, like he'd set it down. "Why are you out of breath?" he asked.
"She ran down here," Melanie said. "I followed her."
Another pause stretched. The fluorescent light buzzed over us. I counted my breaths the way Grandma taught me when my chest got tight. One in. One out.
Then Dad's voice came lower and harder. "Why is your mother locked in there with her?"
I leaned forward. My knees hurt against the concrete. Grandma's hand tightened on me.
"She wanted to stay," Melanie said.
That was the lie. Just that one short sentence, flat and quick. Grandma didn't want to stay. She had said no, please. She had said Melanie, don't do this. She had stepped in front of me when Melanie blocked the doorway and left us inside with the shelves and the red crate.
Grandma closed her eyes when she heard it. She didn't argue out loud because Melanie couldn't hear us, but her mouth moved like she was praying.
Upstairs, something changed. Dad's boots shifted. I knew that sound. He always dragged his right foot a little when he was tired from driving, and now he wasn't tired anymore.
"Which room?" he asked.
"Mark, don't," Melanie said, and her smooth voice cracked at the edge. "You're going to reward her if you go down there right now. Let her calm down. Let them both calm down."
"Which room?" he asked again.
Melanie didn't answer. I heard her flats step sideways, like she was still trying to stand between him and the basement hallway. I pictured the warm dim foyer with the front door and the staircase, and him with his tan canvas bag still by his boots, looking past her toward the dark steps going down.
"You locked them in," Dad said. It wasn't a question now.
"I handled it," Melanie said.
His boots started moving. They were louder on the wood, then duller as he hit the top of the basement stairs. Each step rang through the ceiling above us and down the concrete walls.
Grandma stood up straighter. She pulled me a little behind her, not because she thought Dad would hurt us, but because that was what she did. She protected.
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I heard Melanie following him, her voice rising behind his steps. "Mark. Mark, listen to me."
He didn't stop. The sound kept coming closer, down and down toward our hallway, toward the locked storage room door with the cool light spilling out from under it.
