Starling House creaks and swells, so that every window sticks and every door is wedged tight in its frame. I expect an outbreak of mildew and weird smells, but the house merely acquires a rich, wakeful scent, like a fresh-turned field. I have the fanciful idea that if I dug a knife into the crown molding I would find green wood and sap. If I laid my ear on the floor I would hear a great rushing, like a pair of lungs drawing breath.
Even Arthur seems affected. He’s altered his usual schedule of lurking and scribbling, spending more and more time outdoors. He returns with mud on his shoes and dirt beneath his nails, a healthful flush across his cheekbones that I find obscurely upsetting.
He frowns repressively if I ask what he’s been doing.
“Careful, your face’ll stick that way.” When he doesn’t answer, I make a stricken expression. “Wait, is that what happened to you? I didn’t mean to be insensitive.”
Arthur turns away so abruptly that I suspect the corner of his mouth is misbehaving again. He crosses to the stove to stir a cast-iron pot of something hearty and healthful-smelling. Eventually he asks, reluctantly, “What are you eating?”
I hold up a sleeve of powdered mini doughnuts from the gas station. “A balanced breakfast.”
He makes a small noise of disgust and stalks away with his lunch, leaving the pot on the stove. There’s a clean bowl and spoon set carefully beside it. Looking at the bowl gives me a weird, knotted feeling in my stomach, so I wad the doughnut wrapper in my pocket and get back to work. The next morning there’s half a pot of coffee waiting, velvety and black, and a skillet of fried eggs on the stove. My phone hums against my hip. It’s not poison, you know.
I waver, worrying about debts owed and the food of fairy kings. But would it be so terrible to be trapped forever in Starling House? The banisters gleam, now, and every windowpane winks as I walk by. There are fewer cracks in the plaster, as if they’re sewing themselves shut, and just yesterday I found myself lying in one of the empty bedrooms, pretending it was mine.
I eat until my stomach hurts.
It’s impossible not to feel guilty, then. I’m not used to it—guilt is one of those indulgences I can’t afford, like sit-down restaurants or health insurance—and I find I don’t like it much. It perches heavy on my shoulder, ungainly and unwelcome, a pet vulture I can’t get rid of.
But I can ignore it, because I have to. Because I learned a long time ago what kind of person I am.
I’ve been checking Jasper’s email every night, but there’s been no follow-up from the power company. Just notifications from YouTube videos and promo emails from U of L. Jasper’s been moody and evasive, always checking his phone and curling his lip when I ask him what’s up, but whatever. I can ignore that, too.
I throw myself at my work, instead. By the beginning of May I’ve scrubbed and polished the entire second floor and most of the third, and Starling House is clean enough that I’ve started flinching when Arthur hands me my envelope at the end of each day, wondering if this will be the last time.
I work longer and harder, conscious that I’m inventing new tasks but unable to stop. I bleach yellowed bedsheets and beat rugs; I order polish online and shine all the silver I haven’t stolen yet; I buy two gallons of glossy paint in a color called Antique Eggshell and repaint the baseboards and windows in every room; I watch a YouTube video on window glazing and spend three days fooling with putty and tacks before dumping it all in the garbage and giving the whole thing up. I even ask Bev how to patch plaster, which is a huge tactical error because she drags out a trowel and a bucket of mud and makes me practice by fixing the hole in room 8 where a guest punched through the drywall. She sits in a folding chair and shouts unhelpful advice, like a dad at a kids’ soccer game.
I knock my forehead against the wall, not gently. “If you tell me to feather the edges one more time I swear to Jesus I will put another hole in your wall.”
“Be my guest. Oh wait! You already are, forever.”
“Not my fault you made a bad bet with Mom.”
Bev spits viciously into her empty can, her lips pressed tight. “Yeah.” She nods at the patch on the wall. “I can still see the edges. You have to feather it—” I throw my trowel at her.
Spring in Kentucky isn’t so much a season as a warning; by the middle of May it’s hot and humid enough to make my hair curl, and there are only two rooms in Starling House left untouched.
One is the attic with the round window—I started up the narrow steps one day with a bucket and broom, and Arthur opened the door with an expression of such profound spiritual alarm that I rolled my eyes and left him to stew in whatever nest he calls a bedroom—and the other is the cellar.