The floorboards creaked the second Jared set foot in the house, the sound echoing behind him as Danielle followed up the porch steps. A familiar sound, Jared had to crush the sudden rush of nostalgia that threatened to surge up his throat as it brought more summer memories of running along those same floorboards with it.
The air within had the same salty, wet smell it always did—brought in by the sea wind that surrounded the property—but there was an unfamiliar musty feel to it. Combined with the dust motes that swirled through the sunlight filtering into the dark house from the opened door, it made the entire space feel what it was—un-lived in. Old. Teeming with ghosts, or something just as cliche. It set Jared’s teeth on edge the second he stepped over the threshold. Though it had been two weeks since they’d been told of Ben’s death, it felt as if he hadn’t been there in years.
“Fucking spooky,” Jared muttered, eyes roaming the entryway that doubled as a living room. He walked over to one of the dust sheets that covered everything and ripped it off without pretense, sending more dust into the air and revealing an old, worn leather couch. “How many of these things do you think are haunted?” He dropped the sheet, sending even more dust flying. “Oh no. Are we going to have mattress ghosts? I don’t want mattress ghosts.”
Danielle, standing in the doorway, wrinkled her nose and outright ignored what Jared said. “Did you have to do that?” she complained instead. “Now it’s even worse. I’m going to be sneezing for days.”
“Hey, if you wanted to spend the next two weeks in a house covered in sheets, you should have told me before I started removing them.” Before Danielle could reply, he was already over by another and pulling it off to reveal a chipped wooden corner table with a large stone and silver globe sitting on top. The globe rattled dangerously with the movement, and Jared immediately dropped the sheet and lunged to make sure it wouldn’t fall. The dull sound echoed throughout the house, making it seem that much more empty.
“I’d like the house to stay relatively intact by the time we’re done with it,” Danielle commented drily, not having moved an inch except to cross her arms. “Maybe don’t put any holes in the floor? Think you can manage that?”
Jared threw her a glare, but said nothing. Once sure the globe was securely on the table again, he abandoned the rest of the dust sheets and moved on to the kitchen that was situated off to the side of the living room. He heard the sound of Danielle shutting the door echo behind him.
The kitchen had always been Jared’s favorite place of the house when he and Danielle had stayed there. Always stocked with endless juices and soda and ice pops, Jared had spent countless late nights sneaking down the stairs and into the kitchen to find Ben wide awake and waiting, blueberry ice pops in hand and a glimmer of mischief in his eye. Instead of yelling at Jared for creeping around at two or three in the morning, he always handed one of the ice pops over, held out his hand, and took Jared out to look at the waves. Danielle had come along once or twice, but most times it was only Jared and Ben, a series of moments that had been some of the best points in Jared’s life, even now at the age of twenty-four.
Jared froze, his hand ghosting over the wooden cabinets where he’d banged his head too many times to count, as a sharp pain bloomed somewhere in the cavern behind his heart.
Ben’s sudden rejection of them had never made any sense to Jared. There had been no indication, no sign that something had been wrong. They’d left that summer with the same promises they’d always given, to be back and take on the town together the second school let out, their parents finally free of them for those too-short months. And now, years later, Jared wondered what they could have possibly done to make Ben so upset that he never wanted to hear from them again.
But Ben was dead, and Jared would never have an answer. It bothered him more than he wanted it to.
Urged on by a sudden spike of childish anger, Jared reached for the fridge door and wrenched it open, only to find the insides empty, and any illusion the kitchen held abruptly shattered. He’d never seen it empty before. The sight of it jarred him back to himself.
This wasn’t the same home he remembered. Not anymore.
“We’re gonna have to hit the grocery store at some point, Dan!” Jared called over his shoulder, his voice crackling over a word or two. He cleared his throat. “They cleaned the place out!”
“They probably weren’t expecting us to want to stay,” Danielle replied, poking her head around the corner. “I can grab essentials tomorrow to tide us over until market day. Do you want to eat at the diner tonight?”
Jared threw the door shut again and sighed. “Not particularly.”
“No one’s going to remember us, Jare. It’s been ten years. You’ve grown three feet.”
“Yeah, and you haven’t grown an inch and still look about fourteen. They’ll recognize you and I’ll get recognized by association.”
Danielle made a noise of offense, but she knew he wasn’t wrong. And she didn’t want to be recognized anymore than he did. It was inevitable that it would happen eventually, of course, but they’d put it off for as long as they could.
“You have a better idea, then?” Danielle challenged. She’d pulled herself all the way into the archway between the kitchen and living room at this point, and she stood firm with her hip cocked and her arms crossed.
Jared only waited a moment before dropping, “We could grab some gas station hot dogs and continue to pretend we’re not in town yet.”
“Absolutely not,” Danielle said without missing a beat. “I did not sign up for midnight food poisoning, thank you very much. Everyone knows you don’t eat the gas station hot dogs here.”
Jared winced an agreement, but he was snickering. If ten years hadn’t changed anything on the outside, then chances are the tiny gas station mart that sold little more than very basic essentials and very old hot dogs hadn’t changed, either. And Danielle was right—locals knew not to touch the hot dogs unless you were asking for a night of regret and maybe a tapeworm to boot.
“Take inventory of the rest of the house,” Danielle ordered, already turning away, “and then we’re getting take away from the diner. You can pick it up.”
Jared bit back on a teasing retort, but he was laughing inside. And maybe on the outside, a little, too.
Danielle vanished back into the shadows, and Jared returned to rummaging around the kitchen that was obviously abandoned, if each opened drawer and turned-over bread cover was any indication. Whoever had cleaned it out, they hadn’t even bothered to leave the silverware. Had that been in the will? Neither Danielle nor Jared had attended the reading, their parents going in their stead, so neither were actually aware of what exactly constituted as “the estate”, or so had been apparently left to them. Did that include silverware?
“Do forks count as the estate, Dan?” Jared called out again.
“What?” Danielle’s voice echoed from the back—most likely the small library Ben had kept in the room behind the staircase. That had always been Danielle’s favorite haunt, when she bothered to stay in the house.
“Forks!”
“Forks?”
“Are they part of the estate?”
“How the hell would I know? I’m a journalist.”
Fair point. Jared said as much.
“Why are you asking about forks and the estate?” Danielle continued.
“Because we don’t have any.”
Silence met his report. He didn’t hear the muffled sound of Danielle’s feet on the various mismatched carpets that sprawled along the age-warped floorboards until he could see her turning the corner, looking at him like he was incompetent. Ah, older siblings.
“What do you mean we don’t have any?” she asked sharply, already reaching him and thundering past. Her head may have only reached his shoulder, but she still created a considerable breeze in her wake. “They didn’t leave us any goddamn forks?”
“Or spoons,” Jared continued helpfully as Danielle started throwing open each drawer, only to discover exactly what Jared had just before. “Or knives, which was probably a good decision on their part.”
Danielle whirled around, a giant wooden spoon clutched in her grip. Jared remembered that spoon. It had dandelions carved along a handle as long as his uncle’s forearm, and Ben had always used it to mash the fruit in a big pot for their ice pops. It was too large and impractical for much of anything else.
“I stand corrected,” Jared said, reaching for the spoon. Danielle handed it over, seething. “We have one spoon. Only your mouth is big enough to use it, though. I’ll have to use my hands.”
Danielle snapped the spoon back and whapped him on the shoulder with it. He winced away, laughing.
“Where the hell are we going to get silverware?” she hissed. “What is wrong with this family! They couldn’t even leave us a set of utensils!”
“They’re not an endangered species, Dan,” Jared said through his laughter, reaching out to take the spoon back again. “I’m sure we can find some somewhere. We’ll use plastic until then.”
“That is bad for the environment!” she barked, throwing her hands up, but she was already walking from the room, so Jared was saved from her furthered ranting. She returned to the library in the back, and Jared continued his hunt around the house to see what had been left behind.
Most of the house seemed untouched save for the dust covers and the emptied kitchen—the bedrooms looked much the same they had the last time Danielle and Jared had been around, with the two guest rooms that only ever saw Ben’s niece and nephew still situated exactly as they always had been with a bed, a desk, and a bookshelf full of either comics and old Dungeons and Dragons manuals (Jared) or whatever was hot on the market for teens magazine- and novel-wise (Danielle, who had always been a bigger reader than Jared). Even Jared’s old paperweight, a huge chunk of amber with a bug trapped inside, still sat on his desk like no one had touched it since Jared had last placed it there. There was a layer of dust on it, Jared noticed when he picked it up, and he blew the layer away before setting it down again, feeling suddenly like he was interrupting something he shouldn’t have, despite it being his old room. Not willing to dwell on the strange feeling, he moved on.
Danielle found him in the room some time later, after the sun had already set and the lights had been turned on, seated on his bed with all his favorite comic books splayed around him, spilling old baseball cards he only ever used as bookmarks for his favorite panels. She crossed her arms and leaned against the doorframe, looking far too much like their mother for Jared to be comfortable with.
“Can you not do that?” he complained. “You’re making me feel twelve again.”
Danielle snorted a laugh, knowing exactly what he was getting at without having to ask, and didn’t move an inch. “I’m gonna call in the food. You ready to go pick it up?”
Jared sighed and set the comic he’d been flipping through aside, ignoring the card that slipped out and fluttered to the floor. Danielle watched it go, then looked up at him with her eyebrows raised, but he ignored that, too. “And we’re sure we don’t want to risk gas station hot dogs just for a few more moments of anonymity.”
“I mean, if you want to do that, go for it. But I’m not putting myself at risk like that.”
Jared grumbled something about taking one for the team, but allowed her to order him his favorite, homestyle lasagna, all the same. And then, when the clock ticked over into eleven, Jared set out for the food.
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