Silverkey Crossing

Little Sister - Part I

Author's note: this was originally going to be one single chapter, but the more I worked on it, the longer it got, and someone finally commented on the previous, substantially shorter Silverkey chapter, "Dear Lord, what a long chapter!"

So I'm dividing Little Sister into more reader-friendly chunks and will post them at a healthy pace.

Don't forget to like and comment if you enjoy the story.

Much thanks.

~ Wentz

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Aiden Keller couldn't remember a time when he didn't share his bed with his little sister. Thing was, Aiden was an only child. His parents didn't bother trying to have more than one. Alan and Mary Keller weren't like most couples that fall in love, boink carelessly, realize that's how kids are made, and decide we may as well boink some more since we're stuck together and the path of responsibility is much cheaper than the alternative.

Alan was an architect. He might have been more established and more well-known if Mary wasn't an antique enthusiast and a hobby historian. The two went hand in hand. An awfully sorry, splintered table isn't just a sorry splintered table. It's the sorry splintered table from the house that burned down at 308 S. Birch. The house had been in the family for generations and this table was the only thing that survived the conflagration. The old refrigerator that moaned every fifteen minutes wasn't any old moaning refrigerator. It was the first appliance that Mr. Lewis had in his corner grocery store that was little more than a big shed he bought off the executor after someone passed away. The corner grocery would thrive for some fifty years and the refrigerator, though seeing better days, was still in operation, complete with the heavy cakes of frost in the freezer.

Alan's work didn't suffer because of any conflict between his profession and his wife's. Sometimes the antiques she would collect were entire houses. Especially houses with a lot of "character," situated in towns and cities with a "colorful, rich" history. The only way to collect the next interesting antique house would be to move.

And so the Kellers would move. Frequently.

He didn't mind it all that much and he loved to see his wife relish the thrill of discovery at each stop. Between the quality of his designs and her way with the local market for antiques and historical events, money wasn't an issue. But it did upset a fair share of his clients who easily lost track of which phone number and address was current. Plus he found that after the stress of each move, his mental muscle for good design had a "warm-up" period. In the midst of that lifestyle, maintaining one child was enough. But there wasn't just one child in the Keller household. Not after one particular move.

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Alan saw it coming. The FOR SALE pamphlets were starting to pile up again on her desk, and they were all from one particular area. Some small burg in Illinois.

Silverkey Crossing.

As quiet and remote as the place was, the number of "unsolved mysteries" was rather high. The missing persons per capita were also high. The more she dug, the more she found. The old Baptist church that had a fire. Twice.

She was prattling to Alan about all this while they toured the available houses for sale. Small as Silverkey was, it had a historical district centered on a hill. Alan felt like the houses were frowning at him, that their history was something they preferred to keep to themselves. His wife was clearly missing this cue.

At the top of the hill was 202 Riverloft. It was love at first sight, when she gazed into those cracked and clouded windows held together by a web of ivy, skeletal in the November cold. The windows were placed in a study of straight, vertical shapes that all ended in points, impaling the sky. The central house had the only horizontal feature in sight. A ribcage of exposed planks shedding white flakes of paint. The building was married to two conical brick towers, one slightly taller than the other. It was overdue for a lot of TLC, but it was a veritable castle.