Chapter 41

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Chapter 41

A cold breeze blew through the trees of my father's property as I waited for my sister at the park entrance. I leaned against my car and listened to music as I waited for her and Chris to get there. I didn't want to go into the house for fear that my grandfather would see me and find something for me to do from his never-ending list of tasks.

Usually, when he came up to New Jersey, it was to collect rent from his many tenants. My grandfather had a penchant for coffee, but real estate was his secret lover. Nothing made him happier than finding a building that nobody wanted and making it "a place worth living."

Recently he didn't have the energy to go and ask for rent money from the more difficult tenants, so he would send me instead. I told him he should just get a real estate manager. He told me he would rather roller over and die.

"If you don't have the balls to ask for the money yourself, then you didn't deserve it," he would say before sending me off.

I liked days like this when autumn swept in and stirred the treetops and made everything feel "crispy," as Lia would say.

"Doesn't the air smell nice during this time of year? Like so crispy," she asked me earlier this week as she opened her window to let the cool night air seep into her room.

"Yeah. Well, the humidity is gone, so things smell...less...New York."

"It's so nice. I love autumn. It's like the perfect amount of cold. After that, it becomes too much, you know?"

"Well, I'm sure Ella and Louis would agree with you."

My sister was late. Which was typical. They arrived in Chris' Tesla and brought bags of take-out burritos.

"You want one?" She asked, offering me a bag.

"No. I'm not hungry. I wouldn't eat too much," I warned, "A few years ago, dad paid to lay out a few roadblocks on the path towards the house. We're going to have to climb over some of them."

My dad did after growing tired of the banks having to re-assess the property's value every time a high school kid decided to vandalize. His lawyer also warned him it was a liability if any of them got hurt on the property. Even if they were trespassing.

"Yeah, I remember; I wore my hiking boots," Maria said, looking down at her shoes.

The walk towards the barn mainly was in silence, at least on my part. I led the hike, and I could hear Maria and Chris whispering to each other behind me.

"Good thing we're going now," Maria said, her voice louder to include me in this part of their conversation, "in a few days, it's going to get really cold."

"Then, in a few weeks, it will be covered in snow," she added, under her breath. I could hear her struggling as we climbed over a few strategically fallen trees.

Cold might be a good thing. The cold could potentially stave anyone off the property. The barn's windows were gone after a few kids busted them open, and the temperature probably dropped to freezing at night.

"Let's hope that means no one is there," Chris said, almost as if he read my thoughts.

"I don't think they're squatting there," Maria said, picking up her pace. Chris and I were walking with pretty long strides, and she had to quicken her's to keep up. "I don't think anyone would even be there. I just want to know who that house belonged to."

"Mar, Where did you even get that picture?" I asked while stepping over some fallen trees. When I was younger, my dad and I would roll them over to see what bugs had made their home underneath and look for geckos during summer.

"Dad's things," she mumbled.

I wondered why she was lying.

"Maybe it's a picture of your dad?" Chris said, his voice a little strained as we walked up a hill.

"My dad was never blonde," I answered.

"Well, maybe one of his brothers. Your uncle Ted has light hair, doesn't he?"

María gave me a look that said maybe he has a point.

I shook my head; this all seemed so off, "My dad's family didn't grow up in Jersey. That lady doesn't look like anyone I know either."

"She could be your grandmother's age. I mean, that picture is from the seventies or the eighties? The time frame fits."

"They seem so... average. I doubt it. You don't know our grandmother. I don't think she's ever worn a pair of jeans."

"He has a point," Maria said, "she would probably rather roll over and die than wear a pair of pants, let alone jeans."

"Maybe she had a momentary lapse of judgment," Chris insisted. I had the impression he was trying to milk the fact Maria was impressed with one of his ideas for all it was worth.

"I've seen pictures of her young. It just doesn't look like her."

"It's a blurry picture," he insisted in a tone that almost called me petulant.

I paused and held up my arm to stop his hike; Maria was falling behind anyway, "If someone showed you a blurry picture and asked you if it was your grandmother, you wouldn't be able to tell?"

"Not really; I barely see my grandmother, and with the close friendship she's developed with her plastic surgeon, she looks like a new person every Christmas."

"Well, I see mine every day," I tried to hide the resentment I had for my grandparents from my voice, but I think even someone as unobservant as Chris would have been able to catch it.

His eyes cast down towards his shoes.

"Okay, man, just trying to help," he muttered, taking my bitterness as a product of his insistence rather than indignation towards my family.

I sighed, feeling guilty for acting like a dick. "I'm sorry, I appreciate it, Chris, just rather you were not involved. It was really irresponsible of my sister to drag you into this."

"I can hear you," Maria said, trying to keep up behind us.

"Good, at least your hearing works; I wish we could say the same about your judgment."

Turned back and caught her shooting me a glare. I almost had to bite my cheek not to laugh. Everything was just so ridiculous. I wondered if I was going insane like the protagonist in an early Stephen King novel.

When we reached the barn, it looked worse than I remembered. It looked run-down, almost as if a war had passed through it. Ravaged and stripped of anything that might have had any worth. The windows looked like the victims of a bombing, gutted with their entrails strewn over the floor.

According to my father, this was all the work of the high school students who used to frequent a few years back. He told me that even before them, drug addicts would use this place in the mid-90s to cook heroin and pass their highs.

When I was a kid and frequented the local soccer club, I heard rumors that at one point, this was an insane asylum, and people had been murdered here. My dad told me those were straight-up lies. He had all of the records, and none of them listed the barn as a medical building. He said the high-school kids probably made that up to spook themselves during their visits and explain the scattered syringes that littered the floor.

"I'm nervous, aren't you nervous?" Maria asked, stopping next to me.

"Honestly, I feel like this is just going to be a dead-end, so no. I am curious as to what is in here. Like, dad, I kind of want to get rid of this place. It's a waste of money."

She frowned, not liking my lack of interest.

The barn doors were large, and after a firm push from Chris and myself, they swung open dramatically, blowing a cloud of dust that disappeared out the broken windows.

The place smelled like decay. As is if it had been swallowed and now belonged to the woods that surrounded it. A mixture of wet woods, wild animals, and dried urine.

It was a mess. Broken windows, empty bottles, and cans. There was what seemed to be a drug set up on a crusty plastic table.

In the middle of the room, a large beam lay on the floor. It had mold growing on it and graffiti painted on its sides. 

"Don't touch anything," I said as we walked to the front entrance.

"Wasn't going to, pops," answered Maria.

I rolled my eyes at her, "So I think dad told me the bottom floor was a typical barn and the second floor was the actual home."

The bottom floor looked pretty bare. There were indentations on the walls and dried glue that made it seem as if cabinets were placed there at one point. Other than that, it was a dirt floor that now housed many different types of weeds and remnants of the visitors that would frequent the location. Beer cans and bottles, syringes, singed spoons.

"So then we should go upstairs?" asked Maria pointing to the staircase on the far side of the room.

Chris has been pretty silent since we got there, and when I looked at him, I noticed he had been covering his nose and mouth with the t-shirt underneath his sweater.

"I guess, yeah," I said, "I'll go first."

The stairs almost swayed as we walked up. All of our steps were hesitant. I went first then when I was halfway Maria followed and so on. Upstairs there was a long banister and in the center a door. When I tried the handle, it was locked.

"I think I saw a metal rod downstairs. Maybe we could pry it open?" Chris suggested. I nodded, and he went back downstairs.

When he came back, it took both of us pulling at the door to finally get it to open up. It made a loud smack as it hit the back wall.

The upstairs was a mess but nowhere near as wrecked as downstairs. I guess the kids and the junkies were put off at the effort of prying open a locked door. It was mostly bare. A small kitchen greeted up when we first walked in. It was bare and simple with a dirty porcelain sink. Next to the kitchen was a door that I figured led to a bathroom. Next to the kitchen was a small table, and next to that, there was a faded stain on the floor in the shape of a couch. I wondered if it had been pilfered or if the owners had taken it when they left.

There were some beds towards the back. A double and two day beds, and next to them was a set of drawers. That was pretty much it. I didn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed.

"Well, this is it," I said.

"Doesn't look very interesting," Chris said.

I walked around the room, and Maria softly tapped the floor boars with the toe of her boot. She squatted down and knocked on it.

"I think some these are loose," she said and lifted one up, wiggling her eyebrows at me as she did.

"What is it with you and floorboards?" I asked.

She shrugged, lifting up more of them, "hmm," she said and pulled out an old shoebox.

"Nice," Chris said, squatting down next to her.

She held it out to me, and I opened it up, "letters," I said.

"Dad's?"

I opened one up. It was written to a Lima using a typewriter and signed '-Alfa.'

"No. Not dad's. Maybe from some high school kids," I said, handing it back to her.

I almost felt bad with how disappointed she looked. 

"I really just feel like there's something here. Something we're missing or something we need to see," Maria said, "this place just seems too...kept."

I sighed and then took a step back. What would the harm be? I supposed. I felt a lot better, now that my suspicions that this was a complete bust were satisfied. My fear that she would walk into danger was pacified.

"Well, if you really think this has to do with our family, we can give them a taste of their own medicine."

"Meaning?"

"We bug the place," I suggested.

"Right, because we have the equipment to do that?" She asked.

"I mean, it wouldn't be hard to find. It's not as complicated as you're probably thinking," I said. 

"Really?"

"Yeah, we can probably set something up in a few hours."

"We'll come back next weekend," she said, nodding her head, happy I was doing what she wanted to do.

"Maybe we should look at those drawers," Chris suggested pointing towards that back of the room. He made his way towards the back, and I noticed the floorboards sank under his weight. As if years of humidity had made them pliant.

"Walk along the edge," I suggested before noticing Maria had already followed behind him.

I heard a sort of ripping noise and saw Chris's eyes open wide in fear.

"Fuck!" I yelled and grabbed onto Maria's arm. She tripped over the hole her weight created and fell on top of me, her weight and the unevenness of the floor causing me to fall back into the sink that lined the wall.

"Fuck, thank you, Robbie," she said, standing up.

"The floor is weak. I think the fallen beam downstairs was for support. This house is probably really unstable."

I felt a sharp pain in my arm and looked down.

"Oh no," Maria said, grabbing my hand.

The sink had been missing a chunk, and when we fell back, it sliced through the skin on my arm. There was a large dark stain on my forearm that seeped through my brown sweater.

"Geez, man, that doesn't look good," he said, wincing.

"Does it hurt?" Maria asked as I peeled my sleeve up to get a better look.

"No, it tickles," I said, deadpanned.

"We need to get that looked at," she said, ignoring my sarcasm.

"Grandmother is home. She's going to have questions," I said, thinking out loud.

"No. I'll call Ana. I'll bring her up from the back. We know she can be discrete. You always just wear sweaters anyway," she said.

Ana was a doctor and an old family friend. She did house visits whenever we needed her and had an intense loyalty to my parents. She wasn't a big fan of my grandparents.

A few years back, Maria would get horrible cramps with her period. My grandparents refused to sign off on her papers to get birth control medication to "preserve her purity." Ana would sneak her the pills.

I nodded, and Maria pulled out her phone and started making the call.

"Tell her that I might need stitches," I said.

"Okay, I'll tell her to come in through the back entrance; Chris will wait for her at the gate to let her in?" she asked, looking at Chris.

He nodded, "yeah, of course."

We walked back to the house in silence. The pain in my arm robbed me of any thoughts I might have had on the hike back.

We reached the cars faster, gravity helping us on our hike down the mountain.

"Do you want me to ride with you?" Maria asked.

"No. Go with Chris; They saw you leave with him; it will seem weird if you come home with me. It's a three-minute drive; I'll be fine."

When we arrived home, the house seemed pretty silent. I was about to be grateful for the rare silence when I heard Viviana's voice down the hall.

"Robbie is that you?" she asked.

I clenched my jaw and caught Maria rolling her eyes.

"Are they going to be joining us for dinner?" she asked, her hand wrapping around my arm.

The pain was almost blinding. I could see Chris' eyes widen. I let out a measured breath through my nose.

"Yes, but need to look over some school things with Chris," I said, pulling her arm off me.

She looked at me, then at Chris, and the whispered, "is that Cee? His name starts with the letter C."

I rolled my eyes, "bye, we have a lot to do."

She pouted, but I bounded up the stairs before she could say anything else.

"Wash it," Maria said as soon as we were in her room.

Ana came following Maria's instructions to a tee, "That's a nasty cut, Robbie," She said, inspecting my arm.

"How did it happen?"

Maria and I looked at each other, "I was fixing my boat, tripped on some rope."

"And why the secrecy?" She asked.

"My grandmother is really against me fixing it up. She said it's a distraction. I don't want her hassling me."

"She can be so overbearing. She was like this with your father. He used to have to be so sneaky with her. It's going to need some stitches. Im going to wash it out to be sure and then close it up."

"Thanks, Ana."

"I'm going to give you some antibiotics just in case. Take the whole bottle."

"Duly noted," I said through gritted teeth as she poured a solution on my wound.

Thirteen stitches and a dose of painkillers later, Maria, Chris, and I sat at the dinner table with Viviana, her mother, and my grandparents. We silently drank soup that Darla had made earlier in the day.

So Robbie, the invitations for the fall gala have come out. Have you and Viviana made plans already?" My grandmother asked. She knew very well we had not; she had the list of attendees. Lana updated it daily, and my grandmother would get an email with each update.

"There's a fall gala?" Viviana asked, perking up in her seat, "my friends told me about it; they're all going."

I clenched my jaw.

My grandmother looked at me curiously. This was one of her tests.

"I wanted to wait to make sure with grandfather if I would be in town before asking," I said quickly.

María gave me a look that said, nice save

"Im sure he can make an exception. It is your last year at Trinity, and you've worked so hard, no reason you cannot enjoy it with your girlfriend," she said, giving me a smile.

I saw Chris mouth 'girlfriend?' At Maria, she made a discrete motion with her hand for him to drop it.

Viviana broke into a grin and grabbed my arm with both hands "Oh, Robbie, please! I want to wear one of my new dresses," I gritted my teeth when the sharp pain struck up my arm, then, letting a slow breath, I gave her a tight smile.

"Well, then it's settled you'll both attend next Saturday. I'll send in your RSVP."

Maria gave me a wide-eyed look and then quickly looked down at her food. Chris just looked confused.

When we walked toward the parlor for after-dinner drinks, Viviana would not stop yammering about what she was going to wear. I felt the migraine start to creep back in.

I looked around the room for an excuse to escape. Between the deadlines school imposed, my grandfather just, Viviana's shrill voice, and now the pain that somehow had shot up to my shoulder, I needed a moment to quiet my thoughts. I felt almost dizzy, as if I were being suffocated, like if I didn't get out now, I would faint.

"I need to call some clients," I said, standing up, "that way grandfather won't get upset."

I felt my grandmother's eyes follow me as I stood up, but at this point, I didn't care. I sort of ran up the stairs to my room, locked the door, and walked into my closet. I know it was ridiculous to feel as if Viviana could get through my locked door, but at this point, I felt as if she could seep into everything.

I slid down the back wall and rested my head against built-in drawers rubbing my eyes as if I could somehow push into my face and rub the sharp pain pounding into my brain.

I had a sudden flare of anxiety; I could feel my hands starting to shake. I took my phone out of my pocket.

"Hey," Lia said when she picked up.

"Hey."

"What's up?" She asked, and I could hear her moving around. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine how she would look at this moment.

"Nothing, just wanted to call, see how you were doing."

"Aren't you having dinner with your family? Is everything okay?" She asked.

"How are the twins?" I asked in return. I didn't want to talk about my family.

"Tired. They walked a lot today. We went downtown, and I took them to the big Toys R Us."

"Nice. Did they like it?"

"Yeah, they didn't want to leave. I'm waiting for Leo to finish his shower so he can read

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