“Take a left here,” Danielle said, the unfolded map they’d purchased at the last gas station obscuring every part of her. Jared made the left, and the rain kicked up a notch like it knew they were approaching unwanted territory. Danielle started noisily putting the map away again. “Shouldn’t be too much longer until we see the sign.”
“Still think this is a bad idea,” Jared muttered drily.
“So you’ve said at least twenty times since we hit the state line.” Living down in Atlanta, Georgia, that had meant a nearly-sixteen-hour drive. They’d alternated at the wheel and disagreed over music choices the entire way. Luckily, they weren’t the type of siblings to kill each other over extended periods of time being stuck in the same space, though they got close.
Jared said, “I was trying to give you plenty of chances to realize and let me turn around.”
Twisting in her seat, Danielle shoved the mostly-folded map into the backseat of Jared’s old station wagon. Her hair obscured every part of her face, but Jared knew she was rolling her eyes along the way. “I think you’re just upset we haven’t seen a fast food joint since we left that last gas station. It’s not a big town, you shouldn’t get your hopes up that they’ve had one stay in business,” she said. “Everyone was so loyal to the diner, they probably boycotted any that might have tried to set up shop by default.”
“I’m not about to let myself starve for the sake of an old house.”
“Staying true to your stomach, as always,” said Danielle sweetly, then, when Jared continued to glower out the windshield, reached out and patted his shoulder. “It’s only a few weeks, Jare. Just to make sure we don’t want to keep the place for ourselves before deciding what to do with it.”
Jared shot her a look. “For what reason would we want to keep the creepy old house Uncle Ben died in?”
“I don’t know, it’s pretty charming. Right by the seafront. It’s probably got great property value for tourists.” She paused, her voice dropping. “Besides, we used to have such good memories of that place.”
Jared pursed his lips as the memories trickled back with the mention. Summers spent on a beach with coarse sand, homemade popsicles flavored with whatever fruit Uncle Ben had haggled from the lady at the farmer’s market that Tuesday, dark nights surrounded in fog so thick not even the light of the bonfire they made each night could penetrate. Fireworks for miles on the clear nights that led up to Independence Day. Danielle and he would spend many of those nights spread out on the sand outside Uncle Ben’s house and watch them light up the night sky, obscuring stars that were somehow relatively unhindered by light pollution. Days of clamoring into Uncle Ben’s open-windowed Land Rover and speeding through the empty streets and deserted shores that surrounded the town of Covedale on three sides. Sunburned noses and sand-scrubbed skin.
He had wonderful memories of those summers, up to where they ended abruptly the summer he was going to turn fourteen. That summer he and Danielle had been told by their parents that they were no longer going to visit Covedale for their summer vacation, and that had been that. Protests had gone unheard, begging had gotten them nowhere. They had been told their uncle wanted nothing to do with them anymore, and they’d taken it hard. They never went back to Covedale, and they never heard from their Uncle Ben again.
Until two weeks ago, when Danielle had received a phone call from their mother, informing her and Jared that Uncle Ben had died and left them the entire estate in his will.
“Do you think it’s changed?” Danielle asked quietly, breaking Jared out of his head. Jared swallowed the emotions the memories had drudged up.
“It’s been over ten years since we’ve visited there, Dan,” he muttered, knuckles white against the flaking black of the steering wheel. “Something has had to change.”
-
The town had the audacity to, in fact, not change a bit since the last time Danielle and Jared had been there a decade before.
Danielle watched familiar buildings pass them by as Jared drove them down the stretch of the town’s main street, the rain and fog creating a gloomy cover for the storefronts that had the same stenciled lettering they’d had ten years ago. The bookstore, the barbershop, the RiteAid and the ice cream parlor. The cinema that only ever had two movies playing a day. The rental store Danielle had frequented an embarrassing amount of times the summer she was fifteen, because a cute older guy was working there while visiting relatives like she was and she had too much time on her hands. He was nineteen and never showed her any interest, but that hadn’t stopped her from popping by the shop at least once a day and walking past it as many times as she could when she was in town for anything else. Then he’d left town at the end of that summer without a word of goodbye sent her way, and she’d been heartbroken for an entire two weeks.
That had been her last summer in Covedale, and she’d never known if he’d come back.
“Eating my words right now,” Jared grumbled from where he was slumped over the wheel, elbows close to his sides, looking out-of-place. Tall as a young teen already, he’d done nothing but continue to grow into his late teens and finally stop somewhere around the twenty-one mark. The ceiling of the car sometimes brushed his head if he wasn’t careful, but he defiantly refused to lower his seat as far down as It would go.
He dared Danielle a glance when she did nothing but snort a reply, checking to make sure she was actually okay. She reached out and squeezed his shoulder, and he returned his eyes to the road, a silent understanding passing between them.
Neither of them had wanted to come back, and Danielle knew that. But Uncle Ben had left the house to them and, though they didn’t know the reason why when their parents were both still alive and in good health, they were going to follow through with his wishes and at least see the house before putting it up on the market for rent or sale—whichever came first. The idea of staying to live in the house occurred only once to Danielle as she was gearing herself up to inform Jared that they were making the trek to New York to see the place, and she’d quickly dashed the idea away with a pang of distaste. It might be family property, but there was no reason to stay, and they could use the money besides. Covedale was a popular small-town seaside vacation site, after all, and both Danielle and Jared were still paying off college loans. Staying wasn’t in their best interests.
The rain started to let up as they turned on the familiar road that wove its way to the beach, the pavement eventually giving way to a well-traveled dirt road that branched off every so often to other beachside residences, and slowed to a trickle that was indiscernible from the moisture in the sea air as they pulled up to the very reason they were there at all. Danielle looked at Jared once as he shut off the engine, then opened her door and allowed herself to be assaulted by the wall of humid, warm air.
“God, I forgot how wet this place is,” Jared complained as he climbed out after her. She didn’t answer, instead digging in her bag for the envelope that held the keys. Jared loped his way around the car to meet her, then stood there and watched her struggle to pull the envelope free.
“Not a zoo, Jared,” she chastised. He gave her a grin that told her he didn’t care and held his hand out for the envelope that had finally come loose. She ignored the hand and flipped the lip open to fish the key out herself, flashing it in his face triumphantly.
“Ready for this?” she asked as she wound her way around him and towards the imposing structure. She already knew the answer, but she figured asking him might ease the tension she could see building in his shoulders. He’d never been anything remotely clairvoyant, but something about Covedale always got him trusting his senses—something he’d never dare do back home. Danielle, spurned by too many gut-feelings-read-wrong over the years, erred towards not believing him anyway.
All the same, she knew his answer before he opened his mouth.
“Nope,” he replied, twisting on his heel and easily outpacing her. He snatched the key from her fingers. Knowing he would the second he could, she didn’t bother protesting. “Something tells me we’ve got a shitstorm coming in fast, and I don’t want to face it. Are you sure we can’t just bail?”
“Bailing was never an option.”
“Bailing is always an option,” he muttered sourly, but Danielle ignored him.
If only she’d bothered to listen to him, she would later think as the sea water pulled her down, an otherworldly scream building in her ears. Maybe he’d still be alive if she had. Maybe they both would be.
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