Hilltop House

Maeve, Four

Maeve hated working evenings, not because of the work itself but because she hated leaving Cora alone. Her daughter was fully capable of taking care of herself, and at some point soon, she'd have to anyway, but that didn't make Maeve feel better about not being there. She did frequently text Cora, and the girl always grudgingly responded, but it wasn't the same as being there with her.

She stepped out the backdoor of the convenience store and lit a cigarette. Maeve had quit smoking years ago, but lately, the old need had returned. A fifteen-minute break, a quick cigarette, and she could perhaps make it through the next several hours.

It was difficult to do these nothing jobs when she had a degree, when she had experience and expertise, but what choice did she have? She couldn't take on anything long-term. Not jobs, not friends, not men—nothing she'd have to commit to. She'd grown used to being something of a nomad, made so by necessity rather than choice, but she did feel bad for her daughter's sake. Surely Cora would've appreciated, maybe even thrived with, some stability. Hopefully they'd be able to make the next year work, at least, keep Cora in the same school to finish out her senior year.

Maeve's childhood had been beautifully stable. Too stable, maybe. Her mother and father had been loving enough, raised her as best they could, she an only child. They'd been Evangelical strict, but Maeve had never noticed. She knew their love and affection, lived unaware of any sort of unhealthy censorship, until she explored a little freedom during her adolescence. Having been told literally nothing about sexuality, having learned what little she knew from the spare romance novels she'd sneaked from a friend, Maeve was a terrible combination of naïveté and false assumptions, and she'd unfortunately fallen into the arms of the first handsome twenty-something that had paid her attention at the age of eighteen. Her parents had refused; she'd rebelled; Cora had come along; the man had disappeared.

That was the gist of it, anyway.

Then the man had come back, and that'd been much worse. But Maeve couldn't think of all that. It hurt too much.

"You need another?"

Maeve startled to attention. She'd been so lost in thought that she hadn't heard the back door of the neighboring establishment—a rather homey-looking bar—hadn't seen the man step out with his trash bags until he'd spoken to her.

She realized he was talking about her cigarette, looked at her hand and saw it'd smoldered down to a stub. Maeve put it out entirely against the metal railing of the back stoop. "No thanks. I have to get back in."

The man nodded, threw his bags of trash in the dumpster the businesses shared, and added, "Come on over next door, get a drink when you get off, if you need one. It'll be on me."

"Thanks," she returned, meaning it. "But I'm here all night."

He smiled sympathetically from within his thick but trim dark beard. "So am I." Then he headed back into the bar, and Maeve caught the sound of revelry as it drifted out into the night.

She checked her phone; three more minutes of peace but no response to the last text she'd sent her daughter. Sighing, Maeve just went back inside as well.

About four thirty AM, Maeve turned her car into the weird little street on which she now lived. She'd found the house online, had not really had any inclination of where to move until she came across the house on a hill and couldn't believe the price. She'd actually purchased the residence because it'd somehow been more cost effective to buy than to rent, and even as she'd balked at the commitment of owning a house, Maeve knew that if she ever had to just cut and run, she'd figure it out, as she had in the past.

The house was entirely dark but for the lone porch light. Maeve marveled at her daughter's lack of fear. Cora was far braver than she'd ever been at that age, was far braver than she was even now. That would serve her daughter well, hopefully, although bravery could sometimes tip into temerity and foolishness. At least Maeve hadn't been like her own parents in withholding information from her daughter. She and Cora had had talks ad nauseum about relationships and sex and not just physical but also emotional and even spiritual safety. Maeve had probably talked too much about such topics, but she'd been determined not to let her own daughter fall into a situation like she had.

But pulling into the driveway, Maeve bitterly laughed aloud at herself. She and Cora might have had the birds and bees conversation to death, but when it came to withholding information, Maeve had her own parents beat, and she knew it.

An eerie pre-dawn glow hovered about. Maeve closed her car door quietly, wondered briefly why her neighbor Niecey's basement lights were on, then decided she didn't care and left the carport for the front door. The porch swing sat still and solemn, the pillows for some reason on the ground. Maeve stooped to pick them up, then shifted her keys to find the right one. The house was odd, she thought, finding the key and using it to enter. Cora's room in particular had some sort of strange quality to it, but why her daughter had thought the walls and floor were warm she couldn't say. She'd wondered, actually, if Cora were ill, but there were no signs of sickness beyond the girl's insistence that the walls felt weird.

The house had quirks otherwise, as well. For example, one kitchen cabinet in particular wouldn't hold a shelf. It was the strangest thing--all the other cabinets had two shelves for dishes, cups, spices, food . . . whatever. But there was one, up and to the left of the sink, that just wouldn't. Even though there were pegs in there to hold up the shelf slats, and even though Maeve had checked them against all the others and seen no problems, every time she put something on that cabinet's shelves, they just fell. It didn't make any sense. She'd just left it empty, for the time being. There was the basement, too. The laundry and dryer were down there, and the place was relatively livable with some carpeting and closets, but some sort of smell just hovered thickly down there. Not quite like something dying or something musty . . . it wasn't as if a dead animal moldered somewhere down there, and it didn't smell like sewage or a pipe leakage or gas or anything identifiable. It was actually a sort of powdery smell, like baby powder, though it was sometimes overwhelming to the point that neither Maeve nor Cora wanted to spend any time down there beyond necessary for the laundry. The source of the smell was unknown; Maeve had left a message for the company that had inspected the house, but they claimed not to have noticed it, and much like the strange atmosphere of Cora's bedroom, Maeve just shrugged it off, figured it was the least of her concerns for the moment.

Beyond the cabinet and the smell in the basement, there didn't seem much more unusual about the place. It was an older home, after all, and it hadn't been lived in for over a decade, so Maeve put little thought into its present eccentricities other than to figure they were harmless and would work themselves out. As long as the house was solid and safe (and it did seem both), there wasn't need for concern.

Removing her shoes and padding softly through the house, Maeve checked in on her daughter. Cora lay out of the covers atop her bed, looking for all the world like a large child in her dreamy slumber, and Maeve caught herself smiling. She did love that girl. Truly, she did. One of the greatest tragedies of her life had been giving her up to her mother for the first half of Cora's life. Maeve hadn't wanted to leave her daughter; she'd been forced to do so, and the same forces that had caused her to leave had then caused her to return. They threatened again, those forces, but Maeve would die before leaving Cora a second time, even if it meant keeping her endangered them both.

She'd figure it out . . . she'd have to.