“Hold on,” Leigh said, as if Callie had a choice.
Light flashed into the attic. Then again. Then again. Leigh was jumping, by the sound of it, either trying to see into the space or providing a strobing ambience to the ghosts-in-the-attic atmosphere.
Callie asked, “What are you doing?”
“You left the phone on the floor,” Leigh said. “I’m trying to see where to throw it.”
Again, Callie had no choice but to lay on her belly and wait. She’d lucked up, because there was something underneath her hips that bridged the joists. Plastic, by the flex of it. Rough against her bare belly, because her Care Bears T-shirt had ripped on a nail. Another outfit ruined.
“Here it comes,” Leigh said. There were some loud thumps before she tossed the phone in Callie’s direction. “Can you reach it?”
Callie blindly felt behind her. The toss had been good. She told Leigh, “Got it.”
“Can you see anything?”
“Not yet.” Light didn’t exactly solve the problem. There was no way for Callie to look ahead from this angle. Her nose was almost touching the back of the Sheetrock that covered the ceiling. Insulation was sucking into her lungs. She had to shove the phone into her back pocket to test whether or not she could raise herself up on her hands and knees. Right hand and knee on one joist. Left hand and knee on the other. Ceiling down below waiting for her to fall through and crack another vertebra into pieces.
The last part didn’t happen, but her muscles howled from straddling the sixteen-inch gap in the joists. There had been a time when Callie could skip along a balance beam, throw herself around the uneven bars, flip head over heels across the gym floor. There was no muscle in her body that held on to that memory. She despised herself for her perpetual fragility.
“Cal?” Leigh called up, her anxiety like the squiggly lines on a cartoon sun. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.” Callie reached out her left hand, dragged along her left knee, then did the same on the right side, testing her ability to inch forward along the joists before responding, “I don’t see anything yet. I’m going to poke around.”
Leigh didn’t answer. She was probably holding her breath or pacing or finding some way to absorb all the guilt that had been trapped inside this house for over two decades.
Callie used the phone to shine a path. What she saw gave her a moment of hesitation. “Someone’s been up here recently. The insulation has been pulled back.”
Leigh already knew this. It’s why she had wanted to go into the attic. They needed to answer the rock-bottom questions, which was the terminology that people who actually crawled through the attic got to use instead of something stupid like the B that linked the A and the C.
What did Andrew know? How did he know it?
Callie ignored the rock-bottom, visualizing the origami swan gracefully pushing back against the current that wanted to drag it down. She had purposefully built her life around the luxury of never having to think ahead. Now, she went against that lifetime of training and crawled forward on her hands and knees, keeping to the path of insulation that had been parted like the Red Sea. A skinny gray cable lay on the seabed. Rats had munched it into pieces, which was the plight of being a rat. Their teeth were constantly growing and they teethed on wires like babies with pacifiers, if a bite from a baby could give you hantavirus.
“Cal?” Leigh called.
“I’m good,” she lied. “Stop asking.”
Callie paused her forward progress, trying to settle her mind, catch her breath, focus her thoughts on the task at hand. None of that worked , but she resumed crawling, carefully picking her way over a thick beam. The roughly hewn rafters scraped at her back as the pitch of the roof narrowed the space. She knew that she had just crossed over into the kitchen. Every muscle in her body knew it, too. She tried to lift her hand, but it wouldn’t leave the joist. She tried to move her leg. Same problem.
Sweat rolled off her nose and splattered onto the back of the Sheetrock. The heat in the attic had sneaked up on her, slowly tightening its fingers around her neck. Another drop of sweat puddled into the other. Her eyes closed. She visualized the kitchen below. Lights on. Faucet running. Chairs tucked under the table. Buddy’s briefcase on the counter. His body on the floor.
Callie felt a snort of hot breath on the back of her neck.
The gorilla was behind her. Gripping her by the shoulders. Breathing into her ear. His mouth moved closer. She smelled cheap whiskey and cigars and Stay still, little dolly, I can’t stop I’m sorry baby girl I’m so sorry just relax into it come on just breathe.