IF I HADN’T broken my hand, and lost my scholarship, and ruined my chance to go to UCLA, I’d probably have been preparing at that exact moment. I’d be in the home furnishings section of Target with my dad, talking about which trash basket design would work best in a dorm room, or what towel set would make me look the most like a Bruin. I’d be working out with Coach Shelby, or falling into the rhythm of my reps from the Match Mate—the pop of the machine, the punishment of the racket, the recoil of the impact against my arm, the whiz of the ball over the net, and the next ball immediately lining up for its chance. I’d feel strong and safe and at home.
Instead, I was in the back of a cab in Elko, Nevada.
“Gold,” the cabdriver responded when I asked what people in town were there for.
“I didn’t know people were still looking for gold.”
“Everyone’s looking for gold, boss. We just find more of it out here.”
Elko itself was a mountain town. The downtown area was dominated by two enormous casino hotels, surrounded by a few local bars.
The town thinned as we drove. Streetlights grew fewer and farther apart until there were none, and the casinos’ marquees disappeared below us as the road climbed. The only light came from an almost-full moon. “This part of town’s mostly abandoned,” he told me. “Everybody’s living over on the west side now. These houses aren’t really worth shit.” I felt the sudden need to reach for my seat belt, but it was broken, lying useless across the middle seat.
A few moments later, he turned onto a lonely street that disappeared straight up the mountain. There was trash lining the gutters, and the broken street sign was half hidden behind a willow tree: Church Street.
“Can you pull past it a bit?” I asked with bitter saliva in my mouth. The houses looked like they belonged to angry Nevada men with guns and dogs.
“Whatever you say, boss.”
I watched house numbers go by, each more decrepit than the last: 27 Church Street . . . 21 Church Street . . .
“You sure that’s where you wanna go, boss?”
I swallowed.
Seventeen Church Street was abandoned. There was no car outside, no light on the porch, and the grass in front had shriveled into patches of weeds and dirt. The house was large, on a huge plot of land, adorned with dead bushes and two enormous willow trees. Several massive pillars held up a balcony in the front of the house, above a wraparound deck. In its day, it might have been elegant, nearly a mansion, but its day was long gone.
“That’s the address,” I said. “Can you keep the car running up here? If there’s no one home, I guess . . . I guess you can just take me back to the train station.”
“Sure thing, boss.”
It was cold outside, the kind that grips every part of your body and doesn’t let go. I pulled the hood of my sweatshirt up over my head and walked up the broken concrete walkway. Branches from the willow tree flung upward in front of me in the wind, like they were trying to hide the house.
The closer I got, the surer I was that it was deserted. No human could live like this. The windows were haphazardly boarded, and there were tree branches and remnants of old storms across the lawn. I wondered if this was the same house that my grandfather had found. I wondered if he’d even made it this far.
A few stray drops of rain found my face as I reached the door. I pulled open the outer screen and knocked.
“What is it you’re looking for?” Mason’s voice cut through the wind.
“Some kind of clue.”
“In there?” Mason covered his eyes to look through the window. “Here’s an important what if—what if she died in there?”
“She didn’t die in there.”
“You think the person who lived here didn’t die in this house? You know if she is dead, you’re the first suspect.”
“I’d be able to smell it.” I tried knocking again, slamming on the front door as hard as I could, but nothing happened.
“What if you find her, and you accidentally spit or come or something and your DNA is on—”
“How would I accidentally come?”
“Maybe she was super hot—”
“Jesus, Mason.”
“Still,” he said, leaning against the siding. There was a ring on his left hand, and he rapped it against the old wood. “Will you at least tell me what brought you here?”
“No, I won’t.”
“Arthur, I understand why you’re—”
“Then good.”
“But we’ve known each other ten years, and that was one—”
“Mason. We’re fine.”
I tried knocking again, slamming on the front door as hard as I could, but nothing happened.
“It doesn’t have to be like this.”
I knocked again, even harder, almost breaking the wood.
Mason watched. “I think . . . you’re expecting too much.”
“I’m not expecting anything.” The handle was barely clinging to chipped wood around it, and without much effort, it clicked and let the door fall open.
“I’m sorry, Arthur.” No sound came from inside the house, but the wind outside threatened to pull up several boards from the porch around me.
I ignored him. The air inside was stale, like it had been circulating inside for years. It was dark, but the moonlight showed rough outlines of what waited inside.
It was full of clutter. There were at least thirty old wooden chairs, haphazardly set around the room. Paintings were spread at random, and a table in the back was piled high with junk. Behind that were dozens of boxes. I motioned inside to no one. “Look, it’s a junk house. People throw their trash in here because they know eventually the city will deal with it. No dead people.”
But the wind didn’t answer.
I went to slam the door, but before I did, I froze, noticing something on my hand. The hair was sticking up, ever so slightly. Small goose bumps were forming. The air inside the house was warm. I leaned my whole body inside to confirm. It was at least twenty degrees warmer. Someone was keeping the heat on.
I slipped in the door.
It felt like diving into a cave, the only light a narrow beam coming from my cell phone flashlight. There were two tables pushed against the back wall, behind the clusters of chairs, with a dozen boxes piled on top of them. I opened one—it was old records: Led Zeppelin; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; Simon & Garfunkel. They looked used, like someone had bought them for their record player, not just decorative living room props. Another box contained clothes, old, tough fabrics of dresses and dress shirts that I couldn’t imagine anyone wearing. There was another box of plain cloth T-shirts, with old designs for businesses, like THE WATERING HOLE and BIG RAY’S SALOON. Yet another was small paintings and a collection of horseshoes. Several boxes were filled entirely to the brim with books.
I wandered through an open doorway into a kitchen. The clutter wasn’t just confined to the living room—the whole house seemed full. The kitchen table was covered with appliances: old microwaves and blenders and the occasional power tool. Turning to the far window, my flashlight found another stack of books, and on the very top was a shiny new hardcover with a colored pencil sketch of a wooden shack, set against a gray-purple sky and light green corn. The title text was in light red along the bottom: A World Away by Arthur Louis Pullman.
I reached for it and behind me, someone laughed.
I spun around.
“Mason?” I called out tentatively, shooting the flashlight around the kitchen.
“Kaitlin?” But the house said nothing.
I backed into the hallway. I couldn’t see any light, but over the sound of my own breathing, I thought I heard muffled laughter.
I snuck my way down the hallway, shining a light into every open door. There was a bathroom that was so rusted over, the sink had collapsed into itself. In a hallway closet, there were no clothes, but an enormous stack of Chicago Tribunes that must have dated back forty years. I picked one up, and in the address section in the bottom right corner, it read: Susanne Kopek, 17 Church Street, Elko, Nevada. I swallowed hard and placed it back on the top of the pile.
As I neared the end of the hallway, the laughter got louder. I could hear it: not just one person, a group of people.
“Kaitlin, don’t do this to me,” I called again to the silence of another hallway.
I waited. At the end, there was flickering light coming out from under the only door.
The reality of finding someone, or multiple someones, caught up to me. What if it wasn’t Sue Kopek?
I inched toward the door. There was a clock hanging in the hallway; its ticking was the loudest noise in my ears. I synchronized myself with it: tick-tick-tick-step, tick-tick-tick-step. I reached the door and clicked the handle open.
The smell rushed out, like a refrigerator of spoiled food. The laughter was coming from a small, old television set in the corner, the kind that received its signal from a built-in antenna, and on the screen, a black-and-white program was fading in and out of static. As I pushed the door open farther, I noticed the small windows were covered in tinfoil, blocking any potential light from reaching the room. There was a rotting chest of drawers, a bed with a floral spread on top, and an old woman in a nightgown gingerly sliding down off it.
Her frail body tensed when she heard the door. She didn’t turn around, her face glued to the far wall, her body halfway between the bed and the floor. One of her bony hands clutched the bedspread.
“Sue?” I asked.
She turned. Her face was wrinkled in confusion. She stared at me for a few seconds as if I was a ghost, and then, abruptly, the confusion melted. She had to cough a few times before she could produce words, but when she did, her voice was delicate:
“Oh, heavens, it’s just you. Hello, Arthur.”