Solitude & Storms

Just Like Old Friends

Time stood still for a moment. Isabelle’s lips were tightly pursed as she mentally ran through all the mistakes she’d already made.

The argument at the door, calling him a butler, ransacking his fridge like some hungry badger. She held back a tiny whimper as his expression darkened even further as though he was thinking the exact same thing.

There was no other way. She had to either distract him or make up for it, otherwise he would definitely tell Aunt Rosa.

She threw her arms wide open and split her face into a giant grin. “Raphael!”

Flying across the space between, she threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly to her as though he'd just returned home from the front lines. “Look at you! You're all grown up!”

He was stiff as a plank in her arms, widened eyes staring over her head as he tried to process the ridiculousness of his current situation. His maid? Clinging to him as though they were old friends?

The bloody nerve?

Pulling back, she held him by the shoulders and gave him a good shake. “I'm so proud of you, little Raphael!”

The atrocious nickname gave him pause. Raphael's gaze quickly dropped to her face and bewilderment slowly turned into realization.

It couldn't be. His lips parted in mild shock. “Isabella?”

Her bright smile shriveled and she mildly glared at him. “You still haven't given up calling me that?! You learnt nothing from all the times I nearly pulled your hair out for calling me that.”

He said nothing, shock paralyzing his tongue. Rosa had gotten her niece as a replacement?! No bloody wonder! It all made sense now! Her crazy behaviour, her ridiculous assumption that he was a butler!

Who else if not the craziest girl he'd ever known? Isabelle Fourie.

He swallowed, unable to decipher his own reaction to her presence. Was he happy or displeased? Curious or outraged?

He couldn't tell. All he knew was that his every childhood memory with the girl involved him either getting his hair pulled or his cheeks plummeted with annoying kisses. He'd grown into a formidable man but, at the tender ages of four to twelve when she’d been around one to nine years old, he hadn't had a leg to stand on against crazy Isabelle.

She'd been coming to his house from the age of one since Rosa was always working and had brought her to work daily. Raphael had gotten used to her presence until she'd stopped coming to his house and then left for the States at ten years old. His reaction to her departure had been an odd mixture of feelings he couldn't comfortably identify. There had been a giant amount of relief, however, that he would not be her plaything any longer. When it came to him, the girl had acted like he was made of candy or wood, whichever had suited her daily mood.

First, he'd been the victim of her toddler curiosity, the destination of her chubby, wandering baby hands and wet kisses. Then, by the time she'd turned five, he'd discovered that she hated being called Isabella when her name was Isabelle. His childish, deliberate use of the wrong name had promptly turned him into her worst enemy. The fights had started then and Raphael had been glad because he’d felt much more comfortable getting his hair pulled by her due to his relentless teasing than he’d felt getting her warm hugs and flustering kisses.

She'd been very affectionate when they'd been children. It appeared that hadn't changed.

He shrugged her hands off his arms, stepping away. What had changed was that he was now her boss, albeit temporarily. If she thought she could skip in and become his best friend, she had another thing coming. He wasn't interested in becoming friends with Isabelle. Much less best friends.

She blinked at him and he found himself studying her face. She'd changed so much, she was all grown up. Was this really the same Isabelle? She looked so different.

“What’s wrong?” she questioned with bright, wide eyes. Isabelle could admit that she'd been trying to distract him, but once she'd hugged him, she'd actually felt genuine joy at seeing him again after so many years. He was completely unrecognizable! Looked nothing like his father.

“Oh, I know.” She had the audacity to blush. “You must be so happy to see me, you can't get the words out!”

Frowning, he crossed his arms over his chest. He had no time to waste with her. “Two hours, forty-seven minutes and thirteen seconds.”

She blinked. “What?”

“It’s two hours, forty-seven minutes and fifteen seconds after your official clock-in time. Rosa is never late.”

Her expression clouded over with confusion. “But I-"

“Make breakfast. Two portions. Healthy, low sugar. We'll discuss the particulars of your duties afterwards.”

With that, he turned on his heel and marched out of the kitchen. Mouth open in speechless annoyance, Isabelle huffed and crossed her arms. What on earth was that? Had he just treated her like some servant? He hadn't even greeted her after all these years.

It wasn't like he hadn't recognized her, he'd definitely said her name! Albeit in a version she hated being called.

She glared for a moment and then straightened her expression, a little smile tugging at the corner of her lips. Surely he wasn't trying to throw his weight around as her boss, was he? Trying to be domineering and scary? To her? How cute!

He was just little Raphael! Even if he’d never ever been smaller than her, she couldn't forget his screams of horror all those times he'd teased her into attacking him. And now he wanted to scare her?

Fat chance. She wasn’t scared at all.

Marching out of the kitchen, she spotted her bag in the foyer and picked it up, turning for the living room so she could make her way to her Aunt's living quarters on the other side of the house.

She'd wanted to feel bad for barging into the house and for her behaviour at the door but decided against it. It was his fault she'd needed to walk all this way, he hadn’t even bothered to apologize about it, so she would be suppressing her remorse. Thanks to him ignoring her calls, she'd had to walk and had nearly died from dehydration in the process.

Isabelle stopped when she reached the living room and quickly realized something.

With growing wonder, her gaze roamed the house, turning to the high ceilings and drifting over objects in her surroundings.

Maybe she'd been too delirious to notice it when she'd arrived, but…

Had the Sauvage mansion always looked so lifeless?

The décor hadn't changed that much from what she remembered, she recognized the deep, brown border of the fireplace and the crystal doors of the glass cabinets along the wall, but the aura of the house…

It wasn’t at all how she remembered. Where once sunlight had filtered through gauzy curtains, now the windows were tightly draped in thick, velvet fabric, plunging the space into a dull twilight. The walls across the living room, once adorned with paintings of pastoral landscapes and warm family portraits, now held sombre, intellectual pieces. Oil paintings of men with grave expressions, eyes following her as she passed.

She frowned, walking slowly further, taking in all she saw. Had the house always felt so heavy? It was suffocating, as though every room clung to some unspoken sorrow. It was all clean, of course, Aunt Rosa wouldn't let a speck of dust land on any surface in her vicinity, but the polished surfaces couldn’t hide how much their gleam had dulled over the years.

All the colours were darker, muted tones. Deep greens, rich browns, faded golds, and charcoal greys where she remembered happy pastels and pretty wallpapers. She entered the wide hallway and found it just a dark and gloomy as the living room, with tall shelves on one side, crammed with books where she remembered a shelf of Mrs Sauvage's priceless vacation souvenirs and some thriving pot plants.

At the thought of Raphael's mother, Isabelle stopped, something occurring to her.

Good God. Was this what grief did?

She stood still for a while, thinking it over. Of course. How could she have walked in here, forgetting all that had happened? Raphael had lost both his parents in one night when he was a teenager.

She'd been in the US and Aunt Rosa had given her the news with as few details as possible, treating the matter like it was taboo. Isabelle had not wanted to prod.

She'd felt sad for Raphael then and that sadness returned now. He'd had an older sister too, but she would never spend time with Raphael which was why he'd tolerated the annoying baby Isabelle at the time. He'd been lonely. And when his parents died, his sister, Andrea, had already been married off. Aunt Rosa had sobbed on the phone with Isabelle, heartbroken that Andrea hadn’t even come to her parents’ funeral. A grudge, apparently. One the girl had kept like a promise.

Sighing, Isabelle looked around her. She should have at least offered her condolences to Raphael. But what if it unearthed buried pain and bothered him more than comforted?

She couldn't know the effect any offered comfort would have. Still, she had to say something or at least make a gesture to show her sympathy.

With a determined nod, she took hold of her bag and continued on her path.

Something suddenly made her feet stop. A sound.

It was a low, scraping sound that seemed to be coming from behind her, sending chills down her spine.

Slowly, in the shadowy hallway, she turned around. For the first time, Isabelle noticed the doorway at the far end.

That certainly hadn't been there when she'd been a child, even with her hazy memory, she could recall that much.

The hallway behind her ended with an unimpressive brown wall but, adjacent to that dead-end, to her left was a doorway.

The soft, scraping sound came again. Like uneven nails against the wood. A cat? Had Raphael gotten a cat? If not… what was that?

Abandoning her bag, she took slow and careful steps to the doorway.

As she got closer, she saw the short staircase beyond the doorway. Just a few steps from the hallway where she stood, going up to a…

It was so shadowy up there she couldn’t tell. A door?

Her skin chilled. It was a door. There was a new door in the house and she could hear scratching coming from behind it. She swallowed hard, hesitant but curious.

Isabelle had spent much of her childhood here, and she was certain that the mystery door hadn’t existed before. Curiosity stirred within her as she took a step closer, straining her ears to hear any more suspicious sounds.

The door was different from the rest of the mansion’s heavy wooden frames. This one was newer, sleeker, and more industrial in design, made of polished wood that seemed out of place among the old marble and classical arches. Who had built it? And more importantly, why?

She stood there for a moment, staring. Then, just as she was about to turn away, another soft sound echoed from beyond the door. A faint, scraping noise followed by what sounded like… a cry?

Isabelle frowned, leaning closer as she tried to peer into the darkness at the door at the top of the stairs. Another sound came. A soft thud and then a scrape, almost like something being dragged. Her pulse quickened. There was something or someone behind that door.

Enough hesitating. She sneakily skipped onto the first step.

A strong clamp latched onto her wrist.

"Where are you going?"