Did he just say the last storm? How many of those do they have around here?
“When is it starting?” I ask.
“Two hours from now.”
“All right. Well, I’ll let you do what you came here to do. Oh, and if you could not tell my parents about us being here, I’d really appreciate it.” Haze dives his right hand into his pocket and slips the man a hundred-dollar bill.
Just like that.
No hesitation.
Who casually walks around with a hundred-dollar bill in their pockets?
Haze freaking Adams, apparently.
And why would he waste that kind of money so that his parents don’t know their own kid is in their house?
The man’s eyes widen, and he happily accepts his donation. “Of course. I’ll be an hour tops.”
He tells us he’ll be back to unstormproof the house tomorrow. We watch the man walk back to his car and open his trunk to get whatever he needs to do his job. Haze shuts the door and turns away, ignoring my partially opened mouth.
“We still got leftovers from the last one? Are you kidding me right now? You brought me to a town where dangerous rainstorms are a thing?” I follow him up the stairs.
“The last one was years ago. Back when we still liv—” He stops himself, probably thinking that he’s oversharing. “Back when I was a kid.”
Now, I know for sure that he must’ve grown up in Colton Gate. What I can’t be certain of is whether or not it was in this house or if this is just his parents’ summer house.
“What are you doing?” I try and catch up to him.
“You heard the man. We need to get ready for the storm.”
“What’s going to happen? Is this how we die?” I ask, and he chuckles.
“Nah, we haven’t been evacuated. This one’s a softie.”
He pulls on the string of the retractable ladder leading up to the attic and disappears in the black hole embedded into the ceiling. He uses his phone’s flashlight to find what he’s looking for and comes back with a box labeled Emergency.
“Well, that’s reassuring,” I say.
“It’s a bunch of candles, lighters, canned food, and like a few blankets. Big fucking deal,” he teases. “I gotta get some wood for the fireplace if we don’t want to freeze. Would you go around the house to make sure all the windows are closed?”
“Sure.” I nod and watch him stride down the stairs.
The front door is shut, and I hear the rattling sound of a hammer hitting a plank outside. The Adamses’ employee is starting the job.
I’ve become quite familiar with the house in the time I’ve been here, so I go through every room pretty quickly—even the thousand bathrooms—and find myself without a task after barely fifteen minutes.
Or at least, I think so until I spot the one door I haven’t opened yet.
It’s hidden and at the opposite end of the hall. Now that I think about it, this is the only room Haze didn’t show me during the tour. I just assumed it was a closet.
I decide to go check just to be sure. I walk to it and slowly turn the handle. The door opens with a loud creak and immediately a cold—no, a freezing—breeze runs down my spine. It’s clear that no one’s opened this door in a very, very long time, and something tells me this goes back to way before Haze’s family stopped using the lake house.
It’s a kid’s room. No doubt about it.
A tiny unmade bed is centered in the middle of the room. Everything looks so… untouched. It could almost make you believe that someone slept in here yesterday.
My eyes divert to the floor. A dollhouse and a bunch of toys are lying on the ground next to the bed. They look expensive. These are rich kids’ toys. I know them all too well from the numerous commercials I saw on TV when I was younger. We could never afford them. It feels like whoever used them just got up in the middle of playing, left the toys on the floor, and never came back.