“Come in here,” Charlie whispered. I shook my head no. I hadn’t driven two hours to play silly parlor （pantry?） games. I was there for one reason, and it wasn’t to play “clown car” in my undead mother-in-law’s food closet.
“I’m not coming in there,” I said.
“Just for a second,” Charlie pleaded.
“Oh, for God’s sakes,” I said, stepping into the claustrophobic cupboard. Charlie was looking at me with wide eyes. It was kind of freaking me out. “What?”
“We think we know where Mom is.”
“Where?” And he pointed straight down. And for a second I thought he meant hell, because, after what she had put us through, that’s certainly where she belonged.
I shook my head. “What are you pointing to?”
“Under the house,” Charlie whispered. “In the bomb shelter.”
Charlie had told me his mom’s house had a bomb shelter, but I had never seen it. Frankly I found the whole idea of a hermetically sealed room underground morbid and insane. If a bomb went off in my town, I’d rather my skin fall off than be trapped in a cave with my husband and his family.
“How do you know?”
He pointed to the empty shelf. “The monitor is gone,” Charlie said.
“We think she took it so she could spy on us,” Winnie added.
“On the closed-circuit security system,” Charlie clarified. And then I remembered that this house of horrors not only had a wretched soul, it also had eyes, in just about every room.
“You think she’s watching us now?”
“That’s why we’re in the pantry,” Charlie said. “No camera.” My skin was crawling like it was covered with maggots.
“How long do you think she intends to stay down there?”
“Until we bring her back from the dead,” my unhinged sister-in-law said.
“And when do you intend to do that?” I asked.
Winnie and Charlie looked at each other. Neither said a word, but I knew what they were thinking.
“What, now?” I said, and they both nodded. “Jesus Christ,” I muttered, and then we all filed out of the pantry. Theo was sleeping upstairs, and Zander was playing on the iPad in the parlor.
“Where are you going?” my son asked, momentarily looking up from his game.
“Just checking something out in the yard,” I said. “Stay here, we’ll be right back.”
I slipped on my boots, then descended the front porch steps into the misty morning air. I followed on my husband’s heels as he crossed through the side yard, past the bird feeder, and into the back garden.
Charlie stopped at the entrance to the toolshed at the edge of the woods and looked at his sister. “Why do I feel nervous about this?”
“She wants us to find her,” Winnie said. “That’s what this whole thing was about.”
She was right, of course. My mother-in-law was a first-class narcissist. If she had truly wanted to disappear, she would have gone full Sylvia Plath and put her head in the oven. She faked her own death because she wanted her family to come looking for her. She wanted to know, needed to know, that her kids cared about more than just her money. Which, maybe they did, or maybe they just wanted to prove to the woman who had demeaned them their whole lives that they were smarter than she was.
Rain was spitting down from the sky, burrowing into my hair and clothes. “We’re getting all wet, Charlie,” I said, to hurry him up. He nodded, took a deep breath, then opened the door to the shed.
It was dark in there, and it took my eyes a few seconds to adjust. From over Winnie’s shoulder, I could see the jagged edges of rakes in several different sizes jutting out from the walls. I saw a shovel, some pruning shears, a stack of empty flowerpots. A rusty wheelbarrow sat in the corner next to two ninety-six-pound bags of cement. It seemed an unremarkable little toolshed, like any other you might get at Home Depot. Until Charlie leaned down to roll back the rubber mat and its unique feature was revealed.
The door on the floor was rectangular, about four feet long and three feet wide. There was a thick rope handle on one end that sat in a little cutout made to accommodate it. Charlie extracted the rope from its nook, then pulled.
The door wafted open on simple metal hinges. Charlie looked a little queasy as he stared down into the abyss, and for a second I thought he might faint.
“I’ll go,” Winnie said. And Charlie shook off her offer.
“No, it’s OK.”
“Then let’s both go.”