Reliving Yesterday ✔

Chapter 32.

"Did she find something she shouldn't have?" I asked.

Parker rolled his shoulders and eyed me out of the corner of his eyes. He shook his head, slowly. He bit his lip and then opened his mouth to say something, but then decided against it. He picked up his mug and downed the entire thing at once. He raised himself from the stool and went over to the sink and washed it. His hand lingered on the mug once he had placed it on the draining board, like he was far away and the mug was what was anchoring him to right here and now. He turned suddenly.

"I need to go somewhere," he said as he rushed out of the kitchen.

I turned in my seat to watch him disappear.

"You can let yourself out when you're ready," he called to me.

And he was gone.

I sat in silence for a long time, hearing the grandfather clock in the hall ticking and slowly chimed, informing me that it was two-thirty in the afternoon. I looked all over the place without observing anything. It was only when my eyes zeroed in on the sink that was filled with dirty dishes that I realized that Parker hadn't really been playing house very well these last couple of days. He was usually very good at cleaning up after himself and was fairly neat for a guy, but this had kind of gotten out of hand.

So, I pushed myself to my feet and set about clearing the kitchen and straightening up the things in the living room. In about forty-five minutes I had finished with the ground floor; the kitchen was clean and the dishes were put away, the papers in the living room were straightened and the fragments of the broken vase had been cleared and thrown out. I checked to see if the door was actually locked and then I went upstairs to climb back into my room.

I stopped when I came to Parker's bedroom door. It was pretty messy in here, too. Telling myself that I was only trying to help, I began to pick clothes up off the floor. Things that smelled like they were the apparel of the dead went straight into the laundry basket and that was pretty much everything on the floor. I walked into his closet to see if he had enough clothes to wear for about three days and then I threw everything in the laundry basket into the washing machine and let it run. There was a teetering pile of folded shirts and t-shirts on the chair by his table, so I began to put them away. There was also a bunch of folded socks which I went to put in the dresser. I pulled all the socks from the back to the front and with it, came a few files.

I set the socks down on the chair again and picked up the files, my heart pounding in my chest. There was a logo that I recognized, but couldn't place on one of the files. I opened up the first one. It had Parker's birth certificate and a bunch of transcripts from school. The second file had about a hundred papers about some kind of land or property somewhere in town, which I couldn't really make out because of all the legal jargon. The third and last file had papers which looked like they were copies of different people's wills and as I skimmed through each of them, I realized that Parker's name was mentioned in them all. I didn't want to read them because I felt like I had invaded his privacy enough, so I placed the files in the order I found them at the back of the dresser drawer and piled the folded socks into it and shut it.

I went back and switched all the washed clothes into the dryer and then hurried out the window and in through my own. I slid my window down until it was ajar and I finally sat down to do some of my own work. I did some homework, read a little, while the sun slowly descended in the sky. It was about four-thirty in the evening, when I finally got up to stretch and go to the toilet. I had just walked out when a whirlwind tumbled into my room through my window, making me jump. I looked up to see Parker standing there, his face clouded over, like lightning had struck.

To say I was scared was an understatement. He took two steps towards me. "Where the hell did you find this?" he asked, holding up a document. His voice was even, but his tone was dominating. I squinted at the papers in his hand. My heart was racing in my ribcage. The papers didn't look familiar.