and the fury of the blizzard. She was now completely alone. Light spilled into the hallway from the living room fire but wasn’t strong enough to reach up the stairs. She glanced up the long, wooden staircase as it disappeared into blackness. Unless she was prepared to sleep on one of the dusty couches, she would have to get the nerve to venture upstairs and into the pitch-blackness. She felt like a child again, scared of descending into the shadow-filled basement, inventing all kinds of monsters and ghouls that were waiting down there to get her. Only now she was a grown woman of thirty-five, too scared to go upstairs because she knew the sight of abandonment was worse than any ghoul her mind could create.
Instead, Emily went back into the living room to soak up the last of the warmth from the fire. There were still a few books on the bookshelf —The Secret Garden, Five Children, It– classics her father had read to her. But what of the rest? Where had her father’s belongings gone? They had disappeared into that unknown place just like her father had.
As the embers began to die, darkness settled in around her, matching her somber mood. She could put off the fatigue no longer; the time had come to climb the steps.
Just as she left the living room, she heard a strange scratching noise coming from the front door. Her first thought was some kind of wild creature sniffing around for scraps, but the noise was too precise, too considered.
Heart pounding, she padded along the hall on silent feet and drew up to the front door, pressing her ear against it. Whatever she thought she’d heard, it was gone now. All she could hear was the screaming wind. But something compelled her to open the door.
She pulled it open and saw that placed on the doorstep were candles, a lantern, and matches. Daniel must have come back and left them for her.
She snatched them up, grudgingly accepting his offer of help, her pride stung. But at the same time she was beyond grateful that there was someone looking out for her. She might have given up her life and run away to this place, but she wasn’t completely alone here.
Emily lit the lantern and finally felt brave enough to go upstairs. As the soft lantern light led her up the staircase, she took in the sight of the picture frames on the wall, the images inside them faded with time, the cobwebs strung across them covered in dust. Most of the pictures were watercolors of the local area – sailing boats on the ocean, evergreens in the national park – but one was a family portrait. She stopped, staring at the picture, looking at the image of herself as a little girl. She had completely forgotten about this picture, had confined it to some part of her memory and locked it away for twenty years.
Swallowing her emotion, she continued to climb the steps. The old stairs creaked loudly beneath her and she noticed that some of the steps had cracked. They were scuffed from years of footsteps and a memory struck her of running up and down these steps in her red T-bar shoes.
Up in the hallway the lantern light illuminated the long corridor – the numerous dark-oak wood doors, the floor-to-ceiling window at the end that was now boarded up. Her old bedroom was the last on the right, opposite the bathroom. She couldn’t bear the thought of looking in either room. Too many memories would be contained in her bedroom, too many for her to unleash right now. And she didn’t much fancy finding out what kind of creepy crawlies had made the bathroom their home over the years.
Instead, Emily stumbled along the corridor, weaving past the antique ornament case she’d stubbed her toe on countless times, and into her parents’ room.
In the lantern light, Emily could see how dusty the bed was, how moth-bitten the bedding had become over the years. The memory of the beautiful four-poster bed that her parents had shared shattered in her mind as she was confronted with the reality. Twenty years of abandonment had ravaged the room. The curtains were grimy and crumpled, hanging limply beside the boarded up windows. The wall sconces were thick with dust and cobwebs, looking like whole generations of spider families had made them home. A layer of thick dust had settled over everything, including the dressing table beside the window, the little stool her mother had sat upon many years ago as she’d lathered her face with lavender-scented cream in the vanity mirror.
Emily could see it all, all the memories she had buried over the years. She couldn’t help the tears from coming. All the emotions she’d felt over the last few days caught up with her, intensified by thoughts of her father, of the sudden shock of how much she missed him.
Outside, the sound of the blizzard intensified. Emily set the lantern down on the bedside table, sending a cloud of dust into the air as she did so, and readied herself for bed. The warmth of the fire hadn’t reached this far up and the room was bitingly cold as she removed her clothes. In her suitcase she found her silky camisole and realized it wasn’t going to be much use to her here; she would be better off with unflattering long johns and thick bed socks.
Emily pulled back the dusty crimson and gold patchwork cover then slid into the bed. She stared up at the ceiling for a moment, reflecting on everything that had happened over the last few days. Lonely, cold, and feeling helpless, she blew out the flame of the lantern, plunging herself into darkness, and cried herself to sleep.
Chapter Four
Emily woke early the next morning feeling disorientated. There was such little light coming into the room from the boarded-up windows, it took her a moment to realize where she was. Her eyes slowly adjusted to the dimness, the room materialized around her, and she remembered – Sunset Harbor. Her father’s home.
A moment went by before she remembered that she was also jobless, homeless, and completely alone.
She dragged her weary body out of bed. The morning air was cold. Her appearance in the dusty vanity mirror alarmed her; her face was puffy from the tears she’d shed the night before, her skin drawn and pale. It suddenly occurred to her that she’d failed to eat sufficiently the previous day. The only thing she’d consumed the night before had been a cup of Daniel’s fire-brewed tea.
She hesitated momentarily beside the mirror, looking at her body reflected in the old, grimy glass while her mind played over the night before – of the warming fire, of her sitting by the hearth with Daniel drinking tea, Daniel mocking her inability to care for the house. She remembered the snow flecks in his hair when she’d first opened the door to him, and the way he’d retreated into the blizzard, disappearing into the inky black night as quickly as he’d come.
Her growling stomach dragged her out of her thoughts and back into the moment. She dressed quickly. The crumpled shirt she pulled on was far too thin for the cold air so she wrapped the dusty blanket from the bed around her shoulders. Then she left the bedroom and padded downstairs on bare feet.
Downstairs, all was silent. She peered through the frosted window in the front door and was astonished to see that although the storm had now stopped, snow was piled three feet high, turning the world outside into a smooth, still, endless whiteness. She had never seen that much snow in her life.
Emily could just make out the footprints of a bird as it had hopped around on the path outside, but other than that, nothing had been disturbed. It looked peaceful, but at the same time desolate, reminding Emily of her loneliness.
Realizing that venturing outside wasn’t an option, Emily decided to explore the house and see what, if anything, it might hold. The house had been so dark last night she hadn’t been able to look around too much, but now in the morning daylight the task was somewhat easier. She went into the kitchen first, driven instinctively by her grumbling stomach.
The kitchen was in more of a state than she’d realized when she’d wandered through here last night. The fridge – an original cream 1950s Prestcold her father had found during a yard sale one summer – wasn’t working. She tried to remember whether it ever had, or whether it had been another
