Eleven

ELEVEN

Nothing is on Cirillo's agenda until this evening. The four of us plan a post-lunch walk down to the water, but five minutes outside sets us retreating.

I've been trying to ignore the bugs. If it'd been raining, I'd have been disappointed but not annoyed. The bugs are different. They get steadily louder until even my noise-canceling headphones can't drown out that incessant buzzing. When I look out any window, the cloud of them seems to envelop the house.

Why here? Why are they right here ? There's a whole shoreline to invade, and they pick this spot?

I'm irritated, and my irritation is covering the fact that I'm trying hard not to freak out as if it's some sort of bad omen. The migration is a natural event, and if they seem to be hovering near the house, it's something in the trees or the garden, or even the sun-warmed bricks.

When it comes time for cocktail hour, I almost bow out. I'm unsettled and the last thing I want is to sit around drinking and goofing off as if nothing is wrong. But if we're going to do tonight's séance properly, I need to relax. Drinking and goofing off is just what the doctor—Dr. Cirillo, at least—orders.

It's Jin's night, and his booze of choice is gin.

"How could I resist," he says when I groan. "Jin's Gin. It's right there."

That makes Shania laugh. "Good one."

"Which isn't why he picked it," I say. "Gin is trendy right now. God only knows why."

Jin mock-glares at me. "Are you suggesting I'm a trend chaser? Maybe I'm a trend setter. "

"You keep telling yourself that. Just tell me you brought normal snacks and not some fancy charcuterie board.…"

He plunks the board on the table, his look daring me to comment. I sigh. Deeply.

The board is delicious, of course. Even the gin is fine. Yes, it's small-batch locally distilled blah-blah, but at least he puts it into cocktails instead of making us drink it straight. We have French 75s and Greyhounds, and by the time the doorbell rings, I'm chill, laughing with the others, completely forgetting who would be at the door.

It'll be Mrs. Kilmer with dinner and tomorrow's lunch. And, I hope, news of her son. I tell the others I'll get it, and I'm out the door and about to shut it behind me—on account of the bugs—when Dr. Cirillo catches it and joins me on the porch.

I'm about to inquire after Brodie when Mrs. Kilmer says, "Why don't I take this cooler into the kitchen? I can get everything set up."

Didn't we have this conversation yesterday?

"I'm sorry," I say, hoping I do sound apologetic. "We're still conducting our research, and we can't have anyone inside."

"My orders," Cirillo says. "I am the lead researcher, and I must have a clean environment."

"It's… actually about my son," she says, stumbling over the words. "He's still missing, and I thought he might be here."

Cirillo's brows furrow. "We'd hardly be inviting him in when we just said we can't have anyone on the premises."

"Not that you've invited him in," she says quickly. "Just that maybe… he came in."

"Into the house?" I say.

"The doors have been locked." Cirillo eyes her. "I'm finding this odd, Mrs. Kilmer, so I'm going to be blunt and ask for answers. Your son has been missing since last night, and you think he broke into this house?"

"He isn't missing. He's a grown man who can come and go as he pleases. I don't think he broke in. He does yard work here. He might have forgotten a tool and came to fetch it."

"Why would his tool be in the house?" Cirillo says. "And why would he enter when there are clearly guests? This is making no sense, Mrs. Kilmer."

"Some of the tools are in the basement. He could have slipped in to retrieve them and didn't want to bother anyone. If I can just check the basement…"

Cirillo stares at her. "You think he's in the basement? Right now?"

"He might have fallen down the steps."

"The basement door is locked," I say.

Cirillo says, "And it is still locked, as of an hour ago when I mistook it for the bathroom. Are you telling me that your son—as groundskeeper—has a key to the basement and also to the house?"

"Of course not."

"Yet he keeps tools in the locked basement and might have entered—through the locked front door without a key—to retrieve them?"

She straightens, her tone chilling. "I only wanted to check. My son hasn't come home, and I am concerned."

"How would letting you into the house help? Do you have a key to the basement?"

"No, but—"

"Do you think we're lying about it being locked? Fine. I will escort you in to check the basement door. That is a violation of research procedures, but I do not want you thinking we might have…" Cirillo throws up his hands. "Found the door open and locked it with your son down there?"

"Someone could have closed it behind him," she says. "They saw it ajar and pulled it shut, and now he's trapped down there."

"Unable to call for help?"

"He'd be too embarrassed to do that. He could lose his job. He'd be trying to find another way out."

"Fine. Come in, and check the basement door and we will ask the other two participants whether they touched it."

"Thank you."

The basement door is still locked, and no one has touched it. Of course, we can't go down there to look for Brodie because… it's locked. Jin still takes pity on the woman and shouts through the door asking whether Brodie's there, if he needs help.

There's no answer.

"What about a window?" Jin asks. "Maybe we can get in that way?"

"There aren't any as far as I know," I say, "but we can check."

Jin and I do that, braving the bugs to circle the exterior of the house and confirm there are no basement windows.

"Who has the key?" Jin asks Mrs. Kilmer when we come back in.

"The owner," she says.

"We'll contact them and ask—"

She rocks forward, alarm flashing across her face. "Please don't. It's fine."

"Does Brodie have the key?" I ask.

It takes her a moment to answer, which has Jin and me exchanging a puzzled look. She finally says she isn't sure. Then she quickly takes her leave and hurries off.

"Does any of this make sense?" Shania says when Mrs. Kilmer is gone.

"Not to me," I mutter. "She thinks he may have gone into the basement for tools. In the middle of the night? Without a key to the front door? When there are guests here, and she's not even sure he has a key to the basement? Either she's desperate and grasping at straws, or there's a big part of this story she's not telling us."

"I'm going for option B," Jin says. "She's not telling us something."

"Agreed," Cirillo says grimly.

I look at that door. "Okay, this is going to sound weird."

"Weirder than ‘I think my son is trapped in your basement'?" Jin says.

"I heard noises down here last night."

Jin snaps his fingers. "Right. You mentioned that." He turns to the door. "You think he might really be down there?"

"What did you hear?" Shania asks.

"Thumps," I say. "I thought it was a shutter banging, but there aren't any. I tracked the sound to the locked room over there. But what if it was really coming from the basement?"

"That wouldn't explain why the door is still locked," Cirillo says.

"I saw the door last night," Jin says. "It was shut. So any theory that Brodie left it ajar and we accidentally locked him down there is nonsense."

"What about the dumbwaiter shaft?" Shania asks.

We head there, and I open it.

"Too narrow," Jin says. "Even Shania would barely fit in there."

I nod. "If Brodie somehow ended up in the basement, he'd have answered when Jin called. By now, he would have given up on finding another way out."

"Unless what you heard was him falling," Jin says. "What if the key works from both sides? He goes in, shuts and locks it, and then falls down the stairs, where he's knocked unconscious."

"I really want to get that door open," Shania says. "Does anyone know how to pick a lock?"

"The solution is simpler than that," Cirillo says. "We contact the owner and ask for the key."

"Which Mrs. Kilmer didn't want," I say. "Probably because the owner would fire Brodie if they even thought he might sneak in while guests are here."

"I'll handle it," Cirillo says. "I'll tell them we heard noises and fear some animal is trapped down there. I saw the contact number on the fridge."

I considered insisting that I'll contact the owner, but Cirillo is already marching off, and I leave him to it. Jin, Shania, and I grab a board game—Clue—and set up in the breakfast nook.

We're still getting the board ready when Cirillo appears, phone in hand. "The owner is out of town until the weekend, and she is the only one with a key. She has assured me there is no way for an animal to get into the basement. No windows or other access points, as Nicola and Jin confirmed with their walkabout."

"In other words," I say, "she thinks we're jumping at strange noises and, if there is another key, with the cleaner or such, she's not bothering them to come and investigate."

"No, I really do think there's just one key. She said that with the main-floor washer and dryer, there's nothing down there except extra chairs and outdoor equipment for summer, which she brings out as needed."

"No yard tools?"

"Not from what I can tell."

"Curiouser and curiouser," I murmur.

After a moment of silence, Jin waves at the game board. "You in, Doc?"

Cirillo gives a tired smile. "As long as the answer isn't ‘the gardener in the basement with pruning shears,' yes."

I want to go outside and watch the sunset. It's even more brilliant than last night's, and as everyone putters about, preparing for the first séance, I'm at the back door, working up the courage to brave the bugs.

They're just bugs.

Harmless insects desperately trying to get laid before their brief life cycle comes to an end.

I should feel sorry for them, maybe even cheer on their buzzing and swarming dances.

You go, bugs. Dance your little hearts out. Catch her attention and win the chance to pass on your genes before you become bird food.

Win the chance to be a daddy.

A chance Anton never got.

Part of me wants to snap "Where did that come from" and get back to my lighthearted rumination on the life cycle of bugs.

But we're all just bugs, aren't we? A life cycle much shorter than we'd like, and only a fraction of it—at least for women—open to baby making. The barest sliver of time in our lives before that ship has sailed.

Anton and I had talked about kids. He'd even gotten tested to be sure he didn't have the CF gene. He didn't, which would have meant any child of ours couldn't have cystic fibrosis. Still, adoption or surrogacy seemed the better option if we wanted to add that to our list.

Did we want to add it? Would it be fair, knowing I almost certainly wouldn't see our child graduate from high school? Would likely not even see them graduate from elementary school?

Had we gone through with it, I would now be raising a child alone when my own health began failing. Our child could very well have been orphaned by the age of ten.

"It wasn't supposed to be you that died, Anton," I say under my breath. "It was never supposed to be you."

A whisper at my ear, and I swear I feel a touch on my shoulder, almost like a squeeze. I turn sharply. No one's there.

My heart hammers, and I struggle to catch my breath. Then the scent of bergamot tickles past. Anton's aftershave.

I wheel, sniffing to catch it. "Anton?"

Nothing.

"Are you there?"

Still nothing, and the smell is gone, and I know it was never there. I was thinking of him, and a random sound became a soundless noise of comfort. I imagined a squeeze on my shoulder, and so, with my mind on him, I smelled his aftershave.

"I just want…" I whisper. "I just want…"

My throat closes, and I whip around, grab the door handle, and yank. They're bugs. Just harmless annoying bugs, and they will not stop me from enjoying this sunset.

I stride out, letting the door shut behind me. As I march forward, the midges drift into my face and fly past my head, but I steel myself against revulsion.

Just bugs. Harmless bugs.

When I smack into a swarm, I divert. The swarm buzzes all around me, bugs in my face, in my hair, crawling on my clothing.

They won't kill me. Just keep going.

I walk three more steps, and the insects engulf me until I need to slit my eyes. One still manages to hit, my left eye stinging enough that I gasp and bugs fly into my mouth and—

I bend over, letting out a near snarl of frustration as everything in me screams to run back to the house.

Just bugs, damn it. Just bugs.

I want to be stronger than this. Goddamn it, why can't I be stronger?

In the end, it isn't the bugs in my eyes or my mouth or my hair that break me. It's the whining buzz of the swarm, setting every nerve on edge after a day of listening to that goddamn buzzing—

I wheel and run back to the house. I get inside, slamming the door, only to really snarl in frustration when I see the small cloud of bugs I brought with me.

I grab a tissue and begin angrily plucking them off the walls. Footsteps approach, and I look up to see Jin hurrying toward me.

"I went outside," I mutter.

"Okay." There's a note in his voice that has me looking up. "Alone?"

I pause. Shit. I forgot that part.

My shoulders fall. "I'm sorry. I just… I wanted to see the sunset, and I was focused on braving the bugs. They're just insects, and it's a gorgeous sunset and…"

I know how I sound. Ridiculous bordering on unhinged.

"I just wanted to see the sunset," I say as my throat clogs. "We always… When Anton was here, we always went out to see the sunset."

Jin's arms go around me in a hug, Then, without a word, he takes a tissue and starts plucking bugs from the wall alongside me.