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“BABE, THESE CANDLES have skulls on them. I’m not sure this is an appropriate housewarming gift.”
Quinn examines the candles, placed gently in the gift basket she pieced together that morning. She thinks they pair quite well with the framed serial killer mugshots and skeleton door knocker.
“It’s Matt. What did you want me to do, knit him a blanket? Give him teacups? He loves all things macabre. He’ll be thrilled.”
Aiden pulls Quinn in and threads his fingers through her hair softly, which is her very favorite thing.
“Babe, you do remember that Jessie has agreed to live with him in this house, right?”
Quinn looks up and kisses his chin.
“Well, I guess she better get used to the morbid death vibe if she’s going to share a home with the guy, right?”
She doesn’t wait for a response before turning back to the basket, fluffing the black tissue paper around her carefully curated gifts. She also included a gift card to his favorite online store, Burke & Hare Co. It’s enough to buy a year’s worth of skull candles once these run out. She’s proud of the gift. She slips on her shoes and lifts the basket from the entryway table, balancing it on her hip as she opens the front door. Aiden takes it from her hands and rolls his eyes.
“You are a stubborn, stubborn woman. You know that, right?”
“You married me,” she smiles.
––––––––
AFTER A TWENTY-MINUTE drive, they pull up on the street in front of Matt’s new house. Quinn is impressed; it’s clean, updated, and the yard looks well taken care of. She knows he chose this house to appease Jessie; it’s not his normal style. It even has a sizeable front porch, something Jessie has wanted since they drove by Heather’s house on Ogden Avenue and Quinn pointed it out to her. She became fixated on having a big house with a beautiful front porch, within walking distance of the beach. Just like Heather.
“Hey, you guys made it!” Jessie yells from the front door as Quinn and Aiden exit their SUV. She’s wearing a cooking apron. She’s really auditioning for the role of housewife, isn’t she? Quinn muses, before immediately scolding herself for thinking this way about her best friend.
As Quinn and Aiden walk up the steps to the front porch, she stops in her tracks. Jessie has the porch situated exactly like Heather Green. Two rocking chairs with a small table on the left and a small outdoor sectional with a coffee table on the right. Jessie sees Quinn’s eyes travel left and right and says, “It kind of looks like Heather’s front porch, right? That’s what I was going for. I wish she’d start her Instagram back up so I could have more design inspiration.”
“It certainly does look just like her front porch,” Quinn answers and Jessie slaps her arm lightly.
“Don’t be like that, Quinn.”
Quinn can never hide her feelings from Jessie; she can see right through her. It makes her wonder how she went so long before confronting her about the Shady Oaks situation. It was a hard secret to keep, so Quinn mostly avoided Jessie as often as possible.
Matt is sitting on the couch watching an old, niche horror film when they walk in the front door, which is typical behavior for him year-round, not just in October. What’s not so typical is the appearance of the house. It’s decorated in creams and whites, with a fresh bouquet on the kitchen table and what appears to be Chip and Joanna Gaines’ entire line from Target displayed throughout the house.
“Well, Matt, I picked these housewarming gifts out for you, but it looks like your style has changed a little,” Quinn says, setting the gift basket on the coffee table in front of Matt and looking around the room.
“Yeah, we’re going a little more modern farmhouse with the place,” Matt answers and Quinn exhales so sharply she nearly chokes. She leans forward and places the back of her hand on his forehead to check his temperature before he slaps it away in annoyance. “Get fucked,” he mumbles.
“Matt is creating a man cave in the basement, I think your gifts would fit in perfectly down there,” Jessie says from the kitchen, where she is pulling a tray of cookies out of the oven.
Quinn is annoyed, but it’s not worth the fight. She goes straight to a door off the kitchen that she assumes to be the basement and says, “I’ll just go set the basket down there, so it doesn’t clash with your fancy new décor.”
Jessie ignores Quinn’s quip and offers Aiden a beer, which he gladly accepts before sitting on the couch next to Matt.
The basement is wide open and unfinished, which is perfect for Matt. He can put in whatever flooring and furniture he wants for his man cave. She imagines he’ll be spending a lot of time down here. Right now, it’s just a washer and dryer and about three dozen stacked moving boxes they have yet to unpack.
Quinn moves to the back of the room to place her gift out of the way when she sees her dad’s old tackle box. She didn’t realize he had given it to Matt. She has fond memories of him taking them out on the Escanaba River in his small fishing boat when she and Matt were children. He always kept her favorite candy in the tackle box to bribe her when she started to get antsy and begged to go home. Quinn unclasps the tackle box and opens its lid. She smiles when she sees the Swedish Pimple, a fishing lure patented by a local man decades ago. Her hands stop when she lifts the top tray and sees a rolled up section of thin rope, almost twine-like. It is exactly like the scene in her book when the neighbor is in Malorie’s basement and finds the rope she used to strangle her victims. Quinn shivers and drops the spool. She knows it’s not a murder weapon, it looks like it hasn’t been touched in years. She had to knock the dust off the tackle box before she even opened it. She’s also 99% sure that her brother would never hurt anyone, and Jessie wouldn’t unless it was in defense or retaliation, like what happened at Shady Oaks.
But the thing about being 99% sure about something is that nagging little 1%.
That 1% will eat you alive.