I hear a buzzing noise and notice a dozen or so tiny moths fluttering against the window, trying to get out. I cross the room and nudge it open, careful to avoid a crack running down the middle of the glass, yet another thing to take care of. As I shoo the moths outside, I see that Sam’s car is gone. He’s probably off to the Y, where he goes during lunch sometimes, returning with a mop of wet hair.
Looking around, I consider my options. I could turn the study into a guest bedroom, but what’s the point? There are three spare bedrooms upstairs already, and who’s going to visit me here? Linda? I highly doubt anyone from the city would be enticed by a tour of the strip mall and the additions to the dollar menu at the Wendy’s on Route 9.
I decide to table the question and start with the papers, quickly realizing that this was a family that did not throw things away. Original drawings of the Lawrence House, designed by one of the most renowned architects of the time. Newspaper clippings from as far back as 1936, when Charles Lawrence was a confidante of FDR. Dozens of scrapbooks—stoic Europeans, posing straight-backed on the porch. I become so caught up in the family history—they made millions in oil and, later on, plastic—that it takes a few minutes before I register the noise coming from one of the boxes I’ve moved to the corner of the room.
A voice.
I stop reading. I’m not imagining it. Someone is talking.
I set down the folder I’ve been paging through and walk toward the window. Maybe it’s that neighbor from the brown house on the other side of the narrow bridge, the only other house on the street, coming to say hello. The one with swingy blond hair and that strange-looking dog, always peering over the hedges, trying to get a look at the house. Sidney Pigeon—that’s really her name. I got a piece of her mail once, some bogus car insurance offer, and looked her up. Three boys, their photos all over Facebook. From the window of one of the upstairs bedrooms I can see her front lawn, and I’ve watched her out there with her husband, the way she follows him around the yard, pointing out chores like he’s two weeks into a job at Home Depot and she’s the brand-new assistant manager. And when you’re done here in lawn care, Drew, I’ll have something for you in the plumbing department.
But there’s nobody on the street when I look outside, and I tell myself I must have imagined it. As soon as I return to the papers, though, it starts up again. I inch forward, closer to the boxes in the corner, the voice getting louder as I kneel down and rest my ear against the cardboard. “It’s time for the delivery of the day,” a man is saying. “When our friends at UPS surprise one lucky fan with a special delivery.”
I laugh out loud in relief. A radio inside one of these boxes must have gotten turned on somehow. I strip off the rigid tape and open the flaps, rooting through the contents. There’s no radio here, or in the second box I search, and yet I can still hear a faint voice. I move the boxes aside, and that’s when I see it, in the floor where the boxes were: a shiny flash of metal. A vent.
I lean forward.
“Jose Mu?ez up to bat, Silas James on deck.” Sports radio? I sit back on my heels and clasp my hand to my mouth, putting it together. I can hear downstairs, directly into Sam’s office. I rise slowly and look out the window. Sam’s car is in the driveway, parked behind mine.
I’m frozen, unsure what to do, when a red BMW appears at the top of the hill and turns into the driveway. A woman steps out. It’s Catherine Walker, a patient. I heard her answer her phone two weeks ago on the way out of her appointment—the type of woman who says her name rather than hello when she answers the phone. If Google can be trusted, she’s a rising painter from New York, Andy Warhol Lite, and lives in a house fancy enough to get her a feature in Architectural Digest （who knew acrylic paintings of lipstick tubes could sell so well?）。
Catherine’s dressed casually today: black leggings and a white button-down shirt, ankle boots with a heel on them. I step away and press my back against the wall. I know what I should do. I should cover the vent, return to the business of cleaning, and tell Sam what happened later, at happy hour. I thought I was going crazy, hearing voices, but it turns out the thing I was hearing was you, downstairs in your office. We have to get that fixed.
I push up my sleeves and return to the folder I was paging through—financial documents from the family business—when I hear the faint buzz of Sam’s bell. A moment later, the outside door slams shut.
I hesitate. I should leave, find something else to do. But instead I put the folder down, walk quietly to the vent, and kneel down beside it.