Solid Walls

Chapter Four

It was a Sunday. Willa had been living in the room full-time for a few weeks at that point.

Talia's voice came through the speaker of Chloe's phone with almost perfect clarity, though every once in a while she sounded far away, as though speaking from down a long hallway.

She'd been coming downstairs less and less often, going outside even more rarely—only really leaving the room when she had to go to school. We didn't like it, but we figured she just wanted some solitude to focus on her studies, so we didn't press her.

Chloe sat at the small table in the motel room, taking notes as she listened back through their interview with Talia and Amos from a few hours ago. She bit into her second slice of meat-lovers pizza and underlined something in her legal pad. Nell lay on one of the beds across the room typing on her laptop, her slice of cheese pizza half-eaten on the plate by her feet.

The motel was a grimy one-story building straight out of the 1970s, but it was the only accommodation they could find right off the highway. Before booking the room, they'd called the college and confirmed their time off for the next two days, also prepared to stay through the weekend if the case continued to look interesting. They'd discussed plans and theories while waiting for the pizza delivery, but now they were settled into their pajamas, each absorbed in her own method of preparing for the following day.

Why did she move up there in the first place, if you don't mind my asking? Chloe's tinny recorded voice came from the phone.

Well, I've never been sure of her exact reasons. Talia again. You know how mysterious young girls can be. But she must have first started bringing up the idea, when was it, Amos? About a year ago? Her twelfth birthday? She said she was tired of her old room here on the first floor, with the lace curtains and teddy bear wallpaper that hadn't been changed since she was small. I think she got it into her head that I wouldn't let her redecorate, but that wasn't true of course. I would have missed the adorable space I designed for her as a baby, sure, but I would have been thrilled to have a project for us to do together. We could've had so much fun creating mood boards and picking paint and figuring out fabric swatches...

"So a whole other motive to switch rooms," Nell muttered as she typed.

I think it was more than that, though. Amos's voice now. I mean yes, she wanted to assert her independence, and she liked solitude for her studies, but...I got the sense that she didn't really want to go upstairs. She just felt like she had to somehow. Like she was...compelled. I tried to talk her out of it—I always steered the kids away from the second floor, awful old place—but she was insistent...

Chloe paused the recording to jot down a long stream of notes.

"I want to go to the hardware store tomorrow for a longer tape measure," Nell said absently, still typing. "Something about the house's dimensions felt wrong to me. I can drop you off in the morning for your talk with Talia and meet you back there later."

"Mmm, sounds good," Chloe said. "Oh, shoot, there's Sebastian." She picked up her vibrating phone. "Hey, honey. Yep, we made it, sorry I forgot to text...yeah, it wasn't quite what we were expecting, but it seems pretty promising. Might not be back home till Monday or so...yeah, Nell says hi, too. Right, Nell?" Nell didn't look up from her laptop. Chloe reached down for a shoe and threw it across the room at her. "Right, Nell?"

"Hi, Sebastian," Nell said loudly, still not looking up.

"Yeah, we're just getting ready for tomorrow. Hang on one sec."

Nell threw the shoe back at Chloe as she got up to take the call outside. Chloe dodged it and stuck out her tongue before stepping into the warm evening. Nell could hear the murmurs through the door as she returned her attention to her screen.