From what Harrison had heard from people who’d lived in Hideaway longer, the house used to be a lighthouse. Hideaway didn’t need or have a lighthouse these days, and the house had been converted into a family home. The old structure was barely visible under new additions to the building.
He parked in front. The drive had once been gravel, but most of that had been swept away by wind and rain, leaving a surface of dirt and potholes.
A strange sense of foreboding settled in his stomach. Up close, the old house looked even more ramshackle than it did from down in town. At some point in the past, the windows had been shuttered tight against the elements. More recently, most of those shutters had come loose, either hanging from their hinges or disappeared entirely. Harrison could see at least one broken window.
The house had once been painted a bright straw yellow, but after years of neglect almost all of the paint had peeled off, revealing weather-stained wooden siding. Some of the boards were sagging. Harrison’s heart sank.
Lainie swore softly as she got out of the truck. “The place looks like it’s ready to crumble off the edge of the cliff,” she said. She turned to Harrison. “Any idea if your friend the electrician serviced up here recently?”
“I don’t think so,” Harrison said, his heart sinking further. “I’ll get a flashlight.”
When he caught up with Lainie, flashlight in hand, she already had her keys out. She picked out the large, old-fashioned one and turned it in the lock. The mechanism grated, but it opened.
“Here we go.” Lainie’s voice was so soft Harrison could barely hear it.
She stepped inside, and Harrison heard the click-click of a light switch. “Power’s off,” she said, and turned on a flashlight app on her phone. Harrison followed her in with his own flashlight.
They were standing in a large front hall. The two beams of light illuminated clouds of dust that whirled up every time he or Lainie took a step. Inch-thick dust covered the wooden floorboards, and a layer almost as thick seemed to have settled on the walls and windowsills.
Lainie sneezed, and covered her mouth. “Well, that’s one creditor the lawyer can dispute, at least,” she muttered. “There’s no way in hell this place has seen a housekeeper in the last decade.”
They explored further, passing by a sweeping wooden staircase that disappeared up into the gloom. A white concrete wall curved up one side of the stairs, looming like the ghost of some other, older structure. As he stared, Harrison realized that
was exactly what it was: the outside of the old lighthouse, now standing in the center of the Eaves family home.
The empty, broken-down Eaves family home.
Harrison glanced at Lainie. What had this place been like when she was young? And what had happened that it had been left to fall to pieces like this?
He bit his tongue on his questions, and followed her into what looked like a sitting room.
If those windows were open, the room would be flooded with light in the mornings, Harrison thought. Instead, it was pitch black outside the thin beams of their flashlights.
“I’ll see if I can open any of those windows,” he said, and made his way over to them. The floor creaked under him, and he jumped back at one point when the floorboards sagged worryingly under his weight.
He carefully tested the window. The sash had almost rotted through. If he tried to open it, it would only fall shut again—unless the frame had rotted as well, in which case the whole thing might come tumbling down.
He turned to explain to Lainie, and saw her staring back the way they had come. Not at the door they’d come through, but the fireplace beside it.
Her posture changed. She’d looked uncertain when they reached the house, but now, she strode forward angrily, her flashlight pointed above the fireplace.
“That—that should have been in the storage unit!” she cried out.
Her flashlight illuminated a large oil painting. The dust on it was so thick, Harrison could hardly make out what it was. As he walked closer, aiming his own light at it, the image became clear.
It was a portrait of a couple in their early thirties. Harrison saw their resemblance to Lainie immediately: the woman had her blonde hair, pulled back in a sort of fancy roll at the back of her head, and the man had Lainie’s piercing dark eyes. The woman was seated, the man standing behind her with his hand on her shoulder. He was wearing a military uniform; she was all in white, with colorful jewels sparkling at her neck and on her fingers.
“Are they your grandparents?” he asked.
“Yes,” replied Lainie shortly. “And those are the famous Eaves jewels. The ones no one seems to have set eyes on since… ugh. Why didn’t the movers take it away when they stripped the house? They were meant to take everything.”
She strode forward, and tried to hook her fingers under the frame. It didn’t move. Lainie stepped back, frowning.
“It’s attached to the wall. Damn it! This stupid, stupid house!”
She opened her mouth to say more, wheezed, and broke into a coughing fit. Harrison rushed to her, putting his hand around her shoulders.
“I’m fine. I’m fine,” she muttered, but she leaned into his embrace, her shoulders shaking. She fumbled for her purse and her light blinked out as she rummaged through it and found a packet of tissues.