just in case. I wasn’t sure how long that furniture had been there or what kind of condition it was in, and there was a good chance the mattresses needed to go out.
Today I drove around back, to the street entrance of the property. There was a one-car garage covered in vines, and a driveway that had once been paved but was now mostly rubble. I pulled the truck in, and shut off the engine, peering through the overgrown trees up at the old house, standing silent against a blaze of bright blue sky. A little shudder ran through me, but I wasn’t sure if it was excitement or foreboding.
“Here we go,” I said to myself, stepping out of the car and grabbing a couple of my bags.
I stopped to gaze through the dark windows of the little garage, but I couldn’t see a thing through the dirt-streaked glass, most of which was cracked and disintegrating. Whatever vehicle sat inside was undoubtedly in as bad of shape as the rest of the garage.
It only took an hour to get my room set up inside. I had taken one of the smaller bedrooms, figuring I’d let Addie have the master, not that it was really any better. En suite bathrooms had not been a thing when this house was built, and no matter where we each slept, we’d be sharing the single bathroom in the hall upstairs. I’d managed to get the power turned on with a call after we’d seen Anders Monday, so that was a start. But the place was dusty and creepy, and there wasn’t much I could do about that right away.
I was expecting Addison to arrive at any moment—she’d said Wednesday afternoon—and I thought I heard the door downstairs open a few times and then slam shut. Once I thought I’d even heard her walking around down there as I dusted the room I’d chosen for myself, but when I called down, no answer came.
That time, I’d bolted down the stairs, certain someone was in the house, but the place had been empty, the front door shut firmly. I refused to let the place creep me out, though. It was just a house. An old creaky house.
Finally, around four, I heard a car in the driveway outside, and peered out the back window to see the silver Toyota I knew Lottie drove pull up next to my truck.
Addison stepped out, her dark hair gleaming in the afternoon sun as she pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head and gazed up at the house. I wasn’t sure if she could see me in the window, so I waved, but she didn’t wave back.
I found myself hurrying down the stairs and out the back door, more excited than I should have been to have her here.
“Let me help you,” I said as I arrived to greet her.
“I don’t have much. I think I’ve got it.” Addison pulled two suitcases from the back of the car and then shut the trunk again.
“That’s it?” I asked. Part of me was a little disappointed she could come and go so easily—it might mean she wouldn’t find it hard to bolt at the first sign that this house was more than she wanted to take on.
“The house is furnished.” She shrugged. “I brought some clean sheets.”
I’d checked out the beds while I’d been poking around. The mattresses were destroyed by whatever had been living in the house since people had cleared out. “I don’t think you want to sleep on the mattresses up there.”
She frowned. “Why not?”
“Mice love mattresses when people aren’t around.”
Addison’s eyebrows shot up and her eyes filled with horror. “Mice?”
“‘Fraid so.”
She took a step back, like maybe that single word was going to make her change her mind about the whole plan.
“We’ll catch the mice,” I said, thinking of the traps I had at the store. “And don’t worry about the beds. I brought an air mattress and sleeping bag,” I told her. “I actually brought a second one for Dan that you can use tonight. He’s sleeping at his mom’s until tomorrow.”
Her eyes slid from the big foreboding house to me and back again as she thought about this, a little frown line appearing between her eyes. “I don’t really camp.”
“Figures.” The word slipped out before I thought about it—and her face darkened. I hadn’t meant anything really, I was just so used to being petty when it came to Tanners that my brain was still