Solid Walls

Chapter Twenty-One

They weren't the only ones summoned by the yells. When they reached the bottom of the staircase they found Amos leaning on his cane and looking apologetic. Outside, Ed was already sitting on the porch rail, smirking.

When he heard the screen door creak open, Rick stopped shouting at Talia, who knelt in her garden looking almost as red-faced as her husband. He marched across the yard past their shabby black car and his shining silver one.

The expression on Rick O'Keefe's face was identical to the one they'd seen through the car window yesterday, but now they could witness it with the full force of his physicality. He was broad-shouldered under his suit, built wide like his father and oldest daughter, with the pinched face and naturally muscular limbs of his son. Nell tried to find any trace of the waifish, big-eyed Willa, but it seemed Amos was right—Rick's youngest daughter must have taken all her features from her mother.

"You people aren't welcome on my property," Rick said when he reached the porch. He seemed to be at least trying to act cordially—to keep his voice down even if he couldn't keep the anger out of his eyes. "I don't blame you, necessarily. It looks like some people have been lying to you." He glared behind them at his father, who looked down. "But you're wasting your time. Believe me, we have no need for any of your services here."

"Mr. O'Keefe," Chloe said. "I can assure you, we're only trying to help your daughter."

Rick snorted. "Bullshit. I read all about the book you're writing. All you want is a story about freaks who believe in ghosts, isn't that right? Well if you think you're going to print a word about anyone in this family—much less a minor, who I hear my wife has been letting you people talk to alone—you've got another thing coming."

"We wouldn't need to use any real names, Mr. O'Keefe, really," Chloe said. "All the details can be changed. We're just trying to understand—"

"Let me put this in a way you might understand. If you so much as publish a description of a floorboard in this house? I swear I will sue you both for every nickel of your laughable salaries, and everything you own on top of that. Now, I'd appreciate it if you'd leave immediately."

"Mr. O'Keefe, please just listen—"

"That means now."

No one else said a word. Chloe looked desperately from Talia's pained face to Amos's averted eyes. Nell stared straight down the porch steps at Rick O'Keefe, who didn't flinch from her gaze. After a standoff that felt like an eternity but must have lasted only seconds, Nell touched Chloe's elbow and nodded toward the car. They passed Rick in silence and walked down the gravel drive. They had already started backing up the car when they heard another shout.

"Wait!" Sam emerged from the house, the screen door slamming behind her. She ran past her father, who looked as though he would have restrained her if she hadn't moved so fast.

She stopped breathless at their car and handed something through the window.

"Willa wants you to have this," she said. "It's from her album. She said to hold onto it because, um, because maybe it'll be important later."

Chloe looked at the faded photograph Sam pressed into her hand. It was of a small girl with dark, tangled hair and chocolate dripping all over her face, grinning at the camera. On the back, in Talia's loopy handwriting, was written Willa, age 4.

"Thank you, Sam," Chloe said. Sam nodded and went back to the house, passing her father again without looking at him.

Chloe stared at the photo as Nell turned the car around and started down the driveway.

"Why would she want us to have this?"

"Maybe it's to put in the book," Nell said. "Maybe this is her way of asking us to tell her story."

Chloe ran her still-shaking fingers along the photo's edge and wiped her eyes, willing herself not to cry. She pulled her purse out from under her seat and tucked the photo into its outside pocket for safekeeping. She watched through the mirror as the huge pink house shrank behind them. Rick O'Keefe still stood on the porch with his arms folded, waiting to watch their bumper make the final turn out of his family's business.

"Why did you promise?" Chloe asked quietly.

"What?"

"Willa asked if we would come back for her, and you promised we would. But how can we now? We can't put her in the book, we can't see her again or talk to her again, we won't ever be able to figure out what's really going on so we can get her better..."

Nell's jaw tightened. "Why didn't you let me go through that passage?"

"What? I—I don't know. It wouldn't have mattered anyway, right? The problem isn't in the walls. If I'd just had a little more time with Willa, I could have found the root of it, I know I could have."

"If you'd had more time with Willa, you might've ended up just like her."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"For the past two days since you first went upstairs, you've been exhausted and irritable. You've had no appetite. You were shaking when we opened that passage."

"I was just—"

"You've been up there with her for hours, Chloe. It's okay if you felt something. It's okay if you were freaked out by the recording on your phone, by the gravestones, by those bells between the walls..."

"I am not freaked out by some stupid bells!" Chloe almost shouted. "It's just been hard to hear about Willa's experiences, okay? About her delusions. It's hard to hear. It's not because, I mean, it's not because I—I..."

She sputtered to a stop and clutched the sides of her head, her breath coming out in shallow gulps. Nell immediately pulled over to the side of the narrow country road. She reached over and rubbed her friend's back, just as she had done all those years ago on the curb in front of Chloe's childhood home.

"It's okay," she said. "It's okay. In and out. In and out."

They sat there for five minutes, Chloe sucking air through her nose in long, measured breaths. At last she sat up and leaned her head against the seat cushion with her eyes closed.

"Why doesn't anything ever get to you, Nell?" she whispered.

Nell didn't answer. She pulled the car back into the road, and they drove in silence to the motel, where Chloe curled up on the bed and slept.