After unpacking my few clothes into my new room, I wandered the mini-mansion, figuring out how to turn on the touch-sensitive lights, and jumping when I approached the refrigerator for water and it told me the weather in a disembodied voice. Forty-two degrees Fahrenheit, partly cloudy. In the hall bathroom designated for me, I found a shower with six shower heads and a jetted tub. And there was high speed Internet. I could click on my Tumblr account and see everything in less than a second. Glorious. At Gram’s I could make a sandwich waiting for pages to load.
By five I was grinning as I flopped on the overstuffed sofa, a soda in one hand, a doughnut in the other. Hattie had told me to eat whatever I wanted. There was a restock list I was to shop from each week with household funds. I might have exaggerated my driving abilities. As in, I had none. No driver’s license either, so I wasn’t going to be taking the truck that was sitting in Mr. Gold’s garage for the caretaker. I would just ride my bike, like I always had, and he would never know.
The house had to be ready at all times for an unexpected appearance from Mr. Gold, and he had a sweet tooth. Chocolate éclairs were to be kept fresh and ready to go in his mouth on a moment’s notice.
I liked the rich guy already. His never-used house rocked my socks off and his fridge was nirvana. I wondered what happened when he didn’t show up three hundred and sixty days out of the year. Who ate the éclairs, the Canadian geese in the yard? Crazy. Rich people were flat out nuts. But screw the geese, I was eating the doughnuts now. Alone.
Yet as the hours crawled by, it felt more and more alien to be by myself. What had seemed so awesome, the ability to talk really loud just to hear myself, and rolling around on fat plush furniture, and taking random bites of various junk food, gave way to an overwhelming silence and a queasy stomach. I turned the TV up loud because the remarkable quiet was unnerving.
I could feel and hear myself breathing.
I swear I could even hear dust drifting down onto the furniture. By nightfall, I had turned on every light within reach, and flicked on three ceiling fans, despite the cold temperatures outside. The fridge said it was thirty-nine degrees now. Camped out in the family room at the back of the house, I peered through the glass of the windows in the darkness, my reflection and everything around me clearly outlined. There were no blinds, no drapes. I felt totally exposed.
A minnow in a fishbowl.
Even squinting, I couldn’t see into the dark beyond the multi-tiered terrace to the lawn, and beyond that the ocean. If there were someone out there, I would never know. Yet they would see me, quite clearly.
When the sun was shining earlier, I had only thought about how amazing it was to slide over the wood floors in my socks, in complete blissful solitude.
Now in the dark of a blustery Maine nightfall, Richfield felt too large, too empty, too exposed. Still.
Yep, the house had a name. Who did that?
Guys whose last name was Gold.
Mr. Gold of Richfield Hall. Was that irony or what?
A man so rich he could own a house he never came to, just because.
Clutching my cell phone, I decided to turn off most of the lights so I wouldn’t be so visible from outside. Wearing a tank top that I’d had since I was fourteen and was too small, thus proving that I had in fact grown despite my fears to the contrary, I tugged the bottom of the shirt down for the tenth time in an hour and moved around the family room, flicking off a half dozen of the lamps I had turned on during the high of my newfound independence. No one to holler at me if I wasted electricity. But now all I could think was that Hattie was right- it was a big house.
I had mistaken assumed only old houses made creaking noises. Richfield was only five years old, but the wind hit the windows with an ominous straining sound, and at random intervals the floors seem to pop and groan.
Cat was texting me and I was grateful for the interruption. After Gram had kicked me out, I’d stayed with my one-time foster sister and best friend. Only friend, honestly. Bouncing from foster house to house didn’t lend itself to lasting friendships. Cat and her boyfriend Heath took me into their house in Vinalhaven, but I had known I couldn’t stay long. I needed to find some way to support myself, and their lovefest didn’t need me around. They basically smoldered at each other on a regular basis, and I rolled my eyes so many times I almost knocked myself over backwards. I was happy for them. I just didn’t need to see how in love they were repeatedly in the form of their casual groping.
But despite the dumb luck of landing this job, I was glad to know they were both still close by, and happy that Cat was sending me stupid YouTube videos of cats falling down stairs. I smiled as I sat on the couch in the mostly dark room and watched as a cat made the most godawful screeching sound at a dog on my phone screen. The dog barked back.
And kept barking when the video stopped.
I sat up straight, heart thumping. There was a dog barking outside.
Not good. Because who did it belong to? And why was it barking?
I figured I could either sit there and wait for it to stop, or for the intruder the unknown dog was barking at to break into what was supposed to be an empty mansion. Or I could get up and see what the noise was about. Being practical, I shoved my cheap cell phone in my pocket and moved to the hallway, planning to go to the cabinet Hattie had shown me that housed the owner’s hunting rifles. They weren’t loaded, but I did know how to shoot. I could at least lift it as a threat if necessary. Debating calling the cops, I stopped in the hall and listened carefully.
Nothing. No barking.
I dismissed the idea of calling the cops. Years in the foster care system had proven to me that while there were great officers, there were also those who were bored and bitter, who didn’t give two shits about a teen girl, and would be annoyed that I had interrupted their TV viewing to go out and investigate a whole lot of nothing. I was about to go for the rifle cabinet when the front door swung open without warning and I froze, debating which way to run.
“God, it’s bloody cold out there for October,” a man said as he entered, presumably to the dog who ran into the house alongside him. In shadow, the man stamped his feet on the doormat, drawing up short when he saw me. “Who the hell are you?”
Chapter Two
I felt trapped under his scrutiny, nowhere to hide. Nowhere to run. He’d used a key on the front door so this was no burglar. I swallowed hard. “I’m Tiffany.” Then because I had a sick conviction this was undoubtedly the owner of Richfield, I added, “Sir.” I had no clue how to speak to a rich dude but it seemed like I should be respectful. I wished I hadn’t left the box of doughnuts carelessly on the coffee table in a sticky disregard for his expensive property.