Solid Walls

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chloe's bobbing knee shook the car. Beside her, Nell sat rigid in the driver's seat, watching intently out the window. Chloe looked down at her phone for the fiftieth time since they'd pulled into the hardware store parking lot.

"Nothing?" Nell asked without glancing over.

"Nothing," Chloe muttered.

"We don't know there's anything wrong," Nell said.

Chloe didn't respond.

"The photo disappearing—it doesn't have to mean Willa..." Nell stopped and started again. "Another perfectly valid theory is that images of a living occupant eventually disappear because they're taken too far from the house. That photo was from Willa's album, so it's probably been in that room as long as she has. Maybe it simply reacted to its own displacement."

Chloe pretended not to take comfort in this insane theory of objects vanishing from existence on their own, a theory she would have scoffed at only yesterday but now clung to because the alternative was so much worse. She checked her phone again. Talia hadn't responded to texts and wasn't returning their calls. If they approached the house without an invitation, Rick would just throw them out again, maybe even call the police. So this was their best chance, sitting here hoping they wouldn't miss Sam show up for work this afternoon. They didn't know what time her shift started, or if they could even trust her offhand comment about working this weekend, but they had to try. Had to be sure Willa was still in the room, that—no matter how insane it sounded—that she hadn't somehow...

Nell suddenly sat up straighter. "That's them."

They watched the blue truck turn into the lot. The moment it parked, Nell and Chloe got out of their car and approached the passenger door.

"Sam, we need to talk to you," Nell said.

Sam O'Keefe whirled around, frozen in the act of pulling on her work vest. She opened her mouth, but before she could speak the door slammed on the other side of the truck.

"You have got to be kidding me!" Ed clutched his keys in a white-knuckled fist and glared at them. "You two have some nerve sticking around this town, you know that? Our dad'll call the cops if you keep harassing us, I swear he will."

"Please," Chloe said. "We know we're not welcome in your family's life, but we've learned more about the house since yesterday, and we were worried—please, please just tell us, is Willa okay? Has anything happened to her since we left?"

"'Has anything happened to her?'" Ed said. "My God, you people really don't let up, do you? Haven't you got enough dirt on this family to write about? Haven't you done enough damage?"

"Ed, stop it," Sam said. She walked closer to the pair, and for the first time Nell and Chloe realized how distressed she looked, as though she'd been crying through the night. "I'm so sorry about what happened yesterday," she said. "I hate when Dad treats people like that, without even trying to understand what they're doing. He shouldn't have...Talia shouldn't let him..."

She looked down at her shoes and rubbed her eyes. Ed seemed to soften. He drew closer to his sister and put his arm around her shoulders.

"Sam..." Nell said slowly. "What's wrong?"

"Oh, God, it is Willa, isn't it?" Chloe said. "Please tell us she's still in the room, Sam."

Sam looked puzzled by her intensity. "She is. I just left her, like, ten minutes ago."

Chloe breathed a sigh. The photo turned to dust no later than a half hour ago, long before Willa was last seen safe and alive. It must have vanished on its own after being taken away from the house. At least for the moment, Willa was all right.