Chapter 8
874 Words
There was a door in the hallway that Gabriel had never opened in front of her.
Autumn had noticed it early, in the first week of visiting the house, but she'd dismissed it, thinking it was just a closet. It even looked like a closet. It was set back a little from the main wall, painted the same shade as everything else, with no visible handle, just a flat push panel. She'd walked past it probably fifty times without thinking anything of it.
But on Christmas morning she thought about it.
Gabriel was in his study. She'd heard him pick up the phone in there, and from the short silence that followed she could tell it was a call he'd been expecting, something that required his full attention. She had maybe ten minutes, maybe less, so she moved into the hallway and looked at the door properly for the first time.
She pressed her palm against the panel. Nothing happened. She pushed harder, testing the edges. It was locked solid as if it wasn't even a door, like it was just a section of the wall. She pushed again and nothing moved.
She crouched and looked at the seam along the bottom edge, where the door met the floor. And then she saw it.
Weather stripping. The heavy and compressed kind that people put on exterior doors to keep the cold out. Or the kind people put on the door of a room they wanted to keep soundproof.
Autumn stared at it for three full seconds. Then she got up quickly, went back to the sitting room, and sat down with her book in her lap before she heard Gabriel's footsteps on the stairs.
"Sorry," he said, coming into the room. "Work stuff."
"Don't worry about it," she said.
He settled into his chair across from her. She turned a page and didn't let herself look at him.
Christmas Day passed the same way the day before had. He was charming and easy as he cooked an actual Christmas dinner that took most of the day. The house smelled good, the fire was going, and the snow was still coming down.
There were moments where she sat across the table from him and thought, very clearly and very calmly, that she was eating Christmas dinner with someone who had killed at least three people.
The gap between what he looked like and who he actually was gave her a headache.
"Tell me something you've never told anyone," he said over dessert.
She looked at him. He was watching her with that warm, interested expression that used to make her feel seen in the beginning.
"I used to steal library books in middle school," she said. "Not because I wanted to keep them, just to read them faster than the due date allowed. I always put them back."
He laughed and it actually sounded real. "That’s both very criminal and very you."
"Your turn," she said.
He was quiet for a moment, and then he said, "I don't sleep well. I don't think I've slept well in about twenty years." He said it simply, like it wasn’t a big deal. "There's a lot of noise up here." He tapped the side of his head.
She nodded like she understood, deciding not to say anything.
After dinner, he brought out a photo album which contained old pictures that were slightly faded and looked like they’d been taken years and years ago. Autumn saw pictures of his parents, both dead. A house she didn't recognize. A younger version of him standing in a backyard with bare trees behind him. Then a girl.
She had dark hair and pale skin. There was something about the way she carried herself as she looked at the camera with her head tilted slightly to one side.
Autumn's stomach dropped.
"Her name was Elise," Gabriel said. His voice was quieter now. "She died when we were young. I don't really talk about it."
"I'm sorry," Autumn said.
He closed the album and looked at her. For a long moment he just looked, and she let him because she knew better than to look away.
"You remind me of her sometimes," he said. "The good parts."
She made herself hold his gaze. "That's a nice thing to say."
He nodded, then set the album aside and poured the last of the wine.
Later, lying in the dark guest room, Autumn stared at the ceiling thinking about the girl in the photo. Her eyes, the way she tilted her head, and the dark hair. She'd looked at her own reflection enough times to know what she was seeing.
She now fully understood what she was to him. Not a person. Not even really herself. She was a replacement; a stand-in for something he'd lost a long time ago, like a feeling he was trying to get back.
He'd built a version of his dead sister in his head, and Autumn fit that version, probably because of the way she made him feel.
And when she stopped making him feel that way, when she said the wrong thing or looked the wrong way or wasn't what he needed her to be anymore, she’d be gone.
- Writer
