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I RAN MY HANDS THROUGH my hair, letting the warm water rush over my body and scrub off the remains of the day. Damn, I was exhausted, but I still had something I needed to do today.
I was looking forward to checking in on Celeste. Making sure she was doing a little better than she had been the last time I’d seen her. She had brightened up as soon as she had heard her daughter was going to be back in town, and I hoped the lift in her mood would be enough to make her recovery a bit easier.
And I was toying with the idea of helping out Ellie with some of the work that needed to be done on the house. I had always enjoyed working with my hands; I had built a dresser from scratch for my mom when I was back in high school, finding great comfort in taking my time to put it all together piece-by-piece.
In fact, I had thought about training to go into construction before I had gotten the scholarship to study medicine. Even when it had come through, I had gone back and forth a little on just what I wanted to do, but I knew there was no way I could go with anything else. I wanted to help people, and the best way to do it would be to take on this line of work and focus all my energy on making the world a little easier for the people who needed it most.
I finished my shower and threw on jeans and a tee, not bothering with the usual smart clothes I wore to the clinic. This was just a casual stop-by, after all, a chance for me to get to know Ellie a little better and ensure she had everything she needed to keep her mother’s recovery ticking along smoothly.
Plus, if I was being honest with myself, there was a part of me that wanted to find out what it was that had kept her from this place for as long as she had been. Where had she been all that time? What had she been doing?
I wasn’t sure why I was so interested. Maybe because she was the first person I had met since I came to this town who really felt as though she might have had a life outside of it, same as I did. I had shut her down when she brought up New York before, but maybe I should have been a little more open to it. After all, we were close to the same age, and she was really cute.
And it would have been utterly unprofessional for me to even entertain the idea of doing something with a woman like her. She was the daughter of one of my patients, and the only reason I was even considering seeing her was to ensure she didn’t screw up Celeste’s healing. It wasn’t because she had invited me around on some cute date. It was because I was taking care of a patient who needed it.
Besides, she would likely be out of town again as soon as she got the chance, ready to make a run for it when she was sure her mother was back on her feet. I almost wanted to ask her about it—how long she intended to stick this out—but I figured it wasn’t any of my business. She was here to help, at least for now, and that was all I was allowed to care about.
Climbing into the car, I headed across Maple Valley to Celeste’s house, where I had agreed to meet with Ellie that evening. The sun was beginning to set in the sky above me, casting the long shafts of golden light cross the tops of the houses I passed. This place really was pretty, in a way the city could never hope to be. There was a peace to it I enjoyed, even if I didn’t intend to stay forever.
I was just covering for as long as it took for them to find a more permanent person to take up my position, like I kept telling myself. I wasn’t going to make this place my home. It didn’t suit me. Yeah, I liked the people well enough, but there wasn’t enough going on here, and I needed a little more life to keep me entertained.
Though Celeste was making sure I had plenty to do on that front, what with her injury. I pulled my car to a halt outside her house, and found Ellie outside already waiting for me, a warm smile on her face.
“Hey!” she greeted me as I climbed out of the car. “Thanks for coming over. Mom’s taking a nap upstairs.”
“Good to hear she’s resting,” I replied. In this light, Ellie looked even more striking than before. Her freckled face in the late-day sunshine was gorgeous, her hair playing slightly in the breeze rolling in over the top of the house.
“Yeah, and I thought we could talk about where we need to do these modifications,” she replied. “I haven’t had much of a chance to go through everything yet, but—shit!”
She exclaimed as she caught her foot on the missing step of the porch, tripping and nearly sprawling out on to the ground in front of her. She grabbed on to a chair sitting next to the door to keep herself from crashing into the wooden porch below her, and took a deep breath before she straightened up.
“Okay,” she began, dusting herself off. “So, I think we need to start there, right?”
“I think so,” I agreed, trying to stem the chuckle of amusement I wanted to let out at the sight of her like that. I figured she wouldn’t appreciate it.
“Do you know where it was she actually fell?” she asked me, and I shook my head.
“She just said on some steps, but I’m not sure if they were inside or outside the house,” I replied. “I don’t think she wanted to get too specific.”
“Probably because she knew you would come around here to change up the house,” she shot back, but she was smiling. She didn’t seem too mad, which was a relief. I just hoped she could understand I wasn’t doing this for the sake of it, I was doing it because I didn’t want to see Celeste have another fall and get hurt again. She seemed like a nice lady, and the last thing she needed was to end up injured in her own home if we could avoid it.
“I’m not going to make any changes I don’t think we need to,” I replied.
“So you’re not in cahoots with all the construction guys in town to sell us something we don’t need?” she asked me, cocking an eyebrow. I couldn’t help but laugh.
“I haven’t been here long enough to be in cahoots with anyone,” I pointed out, and she shrugged.
“You never know,” she replied with a playful wink. She had an energy about her, as though the air sparkled with aliveness wherever she walked. Or maybe it was just the sunshine picking out a side of her I hadn’t seen yet.
We took a look around the outside of the house, to see if there was anything else out there we needed to take a look at. Ellie seemed genuinely surprised by the state of all of it, and I wondered how long it had been since she had come down here to help out. How long since she had visited her mother? Or perhaps her mom had done her best to cover up all the dangerous little corners this place had hiding in it, worried it would freak out her daughter too much. Women like Celeste, they often had this conviction that they needed to take care of themselves, and anything that threatened to get in the way of it was a danger to their way of life.
“I can’t believe how bad it’s gotten,” Ellie remarked, as she picked at some rotted wood next to the back door. What had it been like here for her when she was growing up? I wished I could ask, but it would have been completely overstepping the line. I was meant to be here to help, not to get deep into her past with her mother. Whatever had driven her away from this part of the world for as long as it had was clearly something she didn’t want to bring up quite so soon, and I didn’t blame her. We all had pasts, and sometimes, it was better to leave them there where they belonged instead of dragging them into the forefront once more.
“Yeah, it’s not great,” I replied. “And inside—well, I think there are a few changes we need to make if we’re going to be able to keep your mother safe in future.”
“I think we could take a look around inside too, if you want,” she replied. “Mom’s a heavy sleeper, I doubt she’ll hear us.”
“That would be great,” I agreed. She took me around to the front of the house—and she was about to open the door, when it stuck against her shoulder.
“Shit,” she muttered, and she tried again. And then, all at once, I watched the blood drain from her face as something clicked in her mind.
“Oh, crap,” she gasped. “The door’s locked. I’m so sorry, I didn’t even think to get a key, I didn’t realize it locked on its own.”
She looked utterly humiliated, as though this as just the last in a long line of things she was failing to deliver on. She really hadn’t been here in a while, if she thought it was going to open so easily. Her mother had been living there alone long enough not to want to risk the possibility of someone wandering in off the street, even in a town as safe as Maple Valley. Maybe it had been different, when Ellie was growing up—maybe her father had been around as well, though I had no idea what had happened to him—but now, her mother was more wary of people than before. Perhaps Ellie had something to do with that, whether or not she wanted to admit it.
I paused for a moment, trying to remember when I had come here and helped Celeste after her accident. She had mentioned a key somewhere to me, made sure I would be able to find it to let myself in. There was a small ceramic turtle, slightly chipped, who sat at the edge of the porch, and I seemed to remember him having something to do with it. I grabbed him, flipped him over, and sure enough, there was a key tucked into a slot underneath him. I pulled it out and handed it to Ellie.
“Try this,” I told her, and she furrowed her brow.
“How did you know where that was?” she asked, and I shrugged.
“Been here before,” I replied.
“You sure you weren’t the one who pushed my mom down the stairs?” she asked me, and I had to hold back from laughing.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” I replied, and she grinned as she slotted the key into the lock. The way she handled herself, it was clear she knew just how she came across. She knew what she could get away with, and what would have been overstepping the line. It was a skill I could have done with learning a little in my time, too.
I followed her into the house as she dropped the key into her pocket, and took in my new surroundings.
