Twenty-Two
Sam stiffenedat the creak of footsteps on the attic stairs. He hadn’t wanted to come up here after his encounter with Millicent, but the quiet of the attic gave him a place to think while still feeling useful.
Erielle’s head popped into view from where he sat on one rotting box of books while looking through another rotting box of books.
“Are you okay?” she asked softly.
She’d had the same avalanche of information he’d had, so if anyone understood, she did.
“Not really,” he said on a dry laugh, tossing yet another book to the side. He realized he was going to have to rebox them all to carry them downstairs, but right now he didn’t much care.
“What did your mom say?” She walked over to another box, opened it, started flipping through the titles. “Never mind. You don’t have to tell me.”
“She didn’t say much, that’s the whole thing. She just acted like…okay, now you know this about me, but we are never going to talk about it.” He pulled the fabric sachet she’d made him in the workroom out of the front pocket of his jeans, bounced it in his palm. “I watched her make this. I watched her say words over it. She said it was like a prayer, like a protection, but if that’s true, she wouldn’t be hiding it from my dad, right?”
Erielle stopped flipping and stared at him. “You’re not going to tell him, are you?”
He grunted and turned back to his own box of books. “No. She seemed really scared that I would, though.” And that had made him think all kinds of things about his parents’ marriage, things that disheartened him more than what he’d seen since he’d been back. He hated how the traumatic brain injury had changed his father. He hated how his mother had to walk on eggshells. He wondered for the first time in his life if they even loved each other anymore, or if they stayed together out of habit. Obligation. He’d always been certain of their love as a kid, but now…
“You’ll never believe what Marie told me.”
A laugh gusted through his nose. “My ability to believe things has leveled up the last twenty-four hours.”
“She said my grandmother did those paintings.”
“Those paintings?” He knew of the one, but… “They’re signed by a man?”
“Marie said she didn’t know the specifics of why she painted under a man’s name. Well, maybe she did know, she just wasn’t telling me. But yes, my grandmother who could barely draw made those paintings.”
“Why? And what do you mean ‘paintings?’ There’s more?”
She widened her eyes as if exasperated with herself. “Yes! There were some in the workroom, and Marie told me there were others in the house. So on the way up, I looked in some of the other rooms, and yes, there’s one in each bedroom.”
He pushed to his feet, ready to get out of here. Ready to move. He dusted his hands on his jeans and started toward the stairs. “Let’s have a look.”
“What I don’t understand is,” Sam said as he straightened away from the painting they found in the back bedroom, the first one off the attic stairs, turning off the flashlight on his phone. He needed to start carrying a proper flashlight in this house. “If these are all protection spells, why is she still showing up?”
“I mean.” Erielle stepped away from the canvas that she’d been peering at alongside him. “We think they’re protection spells. We don’t know for sure, without the book.”
“I guess.” He frowned. “I could have sworn the ladies said they were protection spells.”
“I mean, maybe they are. I don’t know how Millicent is passing through it, then. Maybe she would be stronger without them?”
He nodded, skeptical. “Is there a painting in your room?”
“I almost threw it out,” she said, leading the way to the hall. “It’s hideous, and not like the others. I was planning to throw it out, but now I can’t, since my grandmother painted it.”
“This was your room when you were a kid, right?” he asked, feeling weird stepping into her personal space, even though, well, she’d been in his personal space last night. “Was the painting here then?”
“It was. I always hated it, but never let my grandmother know. I didn’t know she’d painted it, but she’d chosen it, and I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. My mother told her it was ugly, and I could see Gigi was upset by that, so I never wanted to tell her.”
The painting was over the air mattress, a heavy, gloppy still life of…water hyacinth, he thought. Its position meant he couldn’t get a look up close without stepping on the bed. But yeah, it was not a good still life. “I wonder why this one is so different. Like, maybe it was her first one?”
“Sure looks like it. Sorry, Gigi,” Erielle said to the house.
“Would be interesting to see if it has the symbols.”
Erielle sighed, slipped off her sneakers and socks, and stepped up on the air mattress. She wrestled the frame off its nail while he edged closer to steady it. Their fingers brushed as he took the weight, his grip firm. He carried it to the dresser and placed it down next to her open suitcase and stopped himself from asking when she was going to unpack. He knew she didn’t have anywhere else to go, so why was she hesitating to settle in here?
