Chapter 2 - The Room Richard Said Didn’t Exist
I called the cellar “the basement” when we first bought the house.
Richard corrected me immediately.
“There is no basement.”
That had been five years earlier.
The house had belonged to his grandmother, Eleanor Vance, who died before I ever met her. Richard said the metal doors near the rear patio covered an old utility crawlspace damaged by flooding.
He kept them chained because “the stairs weren’t safe.”
I never questioned it.
That was one of the things I hated most about myself afterward.
Not that I trusted my husband.
That I had become so accustomed to being corrected that I eventually stopped checking whether he was right.
Now there were three knocks beneath the door.
I put Lily behind me on the grass.
Richard reached for my arm.
“Don’t.”
I pulled away.
“You heard that.”
“Pipes.”
“Pipes don’t knock three times.”
“It’s an old house.”
Then the knocking came again.
Five times.
Richard moved toward the cellar.
Not to open it.
To push the pink shoe back beneath the metal edge.
I slapped his hand away.
“What are you doing?”
His eyes met mine.
“Maya, if you open that door, you will destroy this family.”
I almost laughed.
“You just shoved your wife into a birthday cake in front of our daughter, and you think the padlock is what destroys us?”
His face hardened.
“You don’t understand.”
“Then explain.”
He looked at Lily.
That tiny glance made my stomach tighten.
“What does this have to do with her?”
“Nothing.”
Too fast.
Again.
I picked up the shoe.
Inside the tongue, someone had written a name in black marker.
E.V.
I showed Richard.
His lips parted.
“Who is E.V.?”
He said nothing.
I thought about the Vance family.
Richard.
His late father, Edward.
His mother, Helen.
His younger brother, David.
No child whose name began with E.
Then I remembered a photograph.
A framed family portrait had once hung in Richard’s mother’s hallway.
Richard as a teenager.
David beside him.
Their parents behind them.
And at the far edge—
a little girl.
Maybe six.
I had asked who she was.
Helen removed the photograph from the wall the next time we visited.
She told me I had imagined the child.
I hadn’t.
“Richard.”
He knew what I was remembering.
His expression collapsed.
“The girl in the picture.”
“Maya—”
“Who was she?”
He looked toward the chained door.
“My sister.”
My entire body went cold.
“You never told me you had a sister.”
“She died.”
“When?”
He swallowed.
“Twenty-two years ago.”
I looked at the pink shoe.
The size fit a child around six or seven.
Then I looked at the door again.
If Richard’s sister had been dead for twenty-two years, the shoe could have been old.
Except it wasn’t.
The sole was wet.
The backyard grass was dry.
And attached to one broken lace was a tiny fresh daisy.
Someone had put that shoe there recently.
Then a voice came from beneath the cellar door.
Very weak.
But unmistakable.
“Richard?”
May you like
My husband stopped breathing.
And I realized the person below us knew exactly who he was.
