Girl in the Walls by A. J. Gnuse

Author:A. J. Gnuse
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ecco
Published: 2021-03-12T00:00:00+00:00

Once Done, Decided

IN THE DARK, ELISE FOUND SHE COULDN’T HELP BUT GRIN, HER cheeks full and squeezed tight. The parents would be gone, for a night. Not as happy as she’d known anniversaries to be, but it still reminded her of her own parents, the times she remembered her mom standing barefoot in her dress in front of her bedroom’s full-length mirror. Elise, on the bed, helping untangle her earrings. As a reward, receiving a spritz of the lavender perfume on the wrists. Elise’s dad’s razor buzzing in the bathroom. They’d go out—his jacket folded over his arm, her high heels clicking across the foyer—like some actor and actress in an old movie. Elise would be left home with the sitter, which, to be fair, made for its own fun, as almost as soon as the gray-haired woman came she fell asleep in a living room armchair. One year, Elise had taken advantage and eaten the remainder of the Mardi Gras Moon Pies she’d gathered from the parades the week before, four or five of the cakes in one triumphant binge. She read out on the front porch after dark, and when the sugar finally left her veins, she grew tired, and on her way to bed, buried her sitter’s sleeping body with pillows.

An anniversary, even one for the Mason parents, was good. For them, and for her—fewer people home, more space. Eddie and Marshall stuffed away in their bedrooms as night rolled in, and the whole empty house around them? If she was careful, she might even have Brody over. Convince him to be quiet enough, and she might be able to play a game of checkers in the back porch. The boys’ bedrooms were so far away from the stairs, they wouldn’t hear.

Well, more likely, maybe not checkers, with the rumble of its pieces in the box, and clicking of the pieces on the board. Too risky. Instead, maybe they could read beside one another, down in the library. Or outside, on the front porch. Or, well, maybe since Brody wasn’t such a good reader, maybe she could just tell him what was happening in her book. Quietly.

“So, next weekend?” Mrs. Laura had told her husband, before she finished touching up the trim and crumpled up the loose strips of painter’s tape on the floor into a ball. “Saturday. We put it all away. We leave it here. Recharge, I guess. The boys can keep an eye on themselves, and we’re back first thing in the morning?”

“It’s a date.”

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