Wiley to change clothes and throw on his tennis shoes. He stopped sharply at the top of the stairs as all the hair on his body suddenly rose. He’d nearly charged down the stairs without thinking, without counting! Panic threatened to crash over him. With his hand gripping the railing, he sucked in several deep breaths, pushing back the rising tide and getting control over his frantic emotions.
He carefully took the first step, then the next, counting under his breath. A cold sweat covered his body, but he made it to the bottom without anything bad happening. Fuck, he hated how this disrupted his life. He’d been so excited about going to the storage unit, going on an adventure with Baer and Clay even if nothing happened.
“This does not control me. I am still living the life I want to live,” Wiley said softly to himself. It was a mantra he and his therapist had worked out when he got frustrated.
After taking a couple of deep breaths more, he hunted for Queenie and found her lounging in a stream of sunlight in the billiard room. He kneeled next to her and carefully rubbed her. She must have been in a good mood, because she stretched under his hand, offering up more fluffy fur. Queenie, for all her grumpiness, went a long way to settling his anxiety.
“You be good to Ruby while I’m gone,” he chided as he scratched behind one ear.
She opened one eye to look at him before closing it and stretching out her paws. He wished he could hear her thoughts, but more than likely she was ignoring him.
Snorting, he stood and sought out Baer and Clay. The two Weavers were in the garage, next to Baer’s Jeep. They climbed in, Baer dropping behind the wheel. As usual, he steered like he was fighting other vehicles for room on a racetrack. Wiley sat in the back and just held on.
The whole drive, they talked about what could be in storage, guessing anything from antiques to clothes. Baer had the top off the Jeep, allowing the wind to dance over them as they traveled down the road. The sun was shining brightly overhead. It had been a quiet fall without the threat of a hurricane or even a violent thunderstorm in months.
After an hour, Clay directed Baer to turn off into a gravel parking lot for a storage company. A high chain link fence surrounded several rows of long buildings with bright red garage doors on the front. The small leasing office stood outside the fence with only a couple of cars parked in front of it.
“Do we have the code for the gate?” Baer asked.
Clay shifted in his seat, pulling a folded piece of paper from his pocket. “There are two sets written on this receipt. We can try these first. If they don’t work, I can go into the leasing office.”
Pulling up to the security box, Baer tapped in the first code Clay read off. Wiley held on to the back of Baer’s seat, biting his bottom lip until the little light flashed green and the gate started to roll open. Wiley whooped in celebration and flopped into his seat while Baer laughed.
He drove slowly inside. Clay pointed to a far building that had the numbers that apparently matched the storage unit on the receipt. Wiley’s heart was pounding in his chest. It was like uncovering buried pirate treasure or locating a lost Egyptian tomb. Probably with less gold and ancient curses, but still exciting.
About halfway down the aisle, Baer parked the Jeep in front of a big, red door. The unit looked big enough for Baer to pull into and still have room to spare. If this thing was full, they’d need to hire a moving truck to haul everything to the plantation.
For several seconds, no one moved. Wiley looked at Clay’s grim expression and then Baer’s sad one. It was then that it hit him. One of them could have last visited the storage unit thirty years ago. They could have planned to return, but it wasn’t to be. They’d both died. All the Weavers had died in their last fight.
And that same fight loomed in front of them still.
What would be different this time? Did the storage unit hold the key? Or just more sad memories from the past like the stuff Baer had told him about in the attic?
“Well, no time like the present,” Clay suddenly announced, seeming to break them all from