Epilogue

That summer was one I'll never forget. Both of us had summer jobs, to save up as much money as we could before college. We were hoping to be able to have some kind of car, but that was mostly dreaming. We wouldn't need one, really. Gramps' house was only five blocks from the campus, and the only purpose for having a car would be to come home now and then. Since Gramps only lived a couple of hours from us, Dad said it would be no trouble to come get us for major holidays.

I worked at a car wash that summer, which was great for beating the heat and getting some sun, but not in huge doses. Robbie got a job at the library, putting books back on the shelves and cleaning up the reading areas and whatever.

We had time to go to the lake, which we did frequently. Sometimes we arranged to meet other friends from high school there. Sometimes we did not. It was a reservoir, held in by a dam, and used to supply the city with water. It was fed by a river, which meant a lot of people fished there, but not all that many people chose it over a nice, clear pool, for swimming in.

Which meant there were lots of places along the shore where a boy and girl could spend a little private time.

No ... I'll never forget that summer.

On the day Dad took us up to Gramps' house, to start our college experience, we already knew that he might not be there. Though he was retired, once in a while he still did some consulting of some kind, and he had already said he would be on a job that weekend. Orientation at Bramley was going to start on a Tuesday, with Monday being the day people were supposed to move into the dorms. He said he might be back, but that if he wasn't somebody would be there to let us into the house.

We didn't think much about it when he said that.

Dad, probably trying to pretend this was all no big deal for him and Mom (who had cried when she hugged and kissed us goodbye, ) waited while we carried our own suitcases up to the front door, and rang the bell. He said something about how we were all grown up now and didn't need his help. I'm sure he was trying to make us feel grown up. When he saw the door open, he waved and started back home.

Had he known who was going to open the door for us, I think he would have stayed. Of course that could have caused a little problem. You'll see why in a little bit.

"Hi! You must be Bobby and Robbie. I've heard a lot about you!"

Her voice was high enough to sound like she was a heck of a lot younger than she was. And it didn't match the appearance of the body it came from at all. That's because, standing before us with a smile on her face, was a woman who was maybe twenty-five, wearing all black. Her hair was short and a deep shade of some kind of bluish purple, that swept down over the right side of her face, hiding that eye. The eye I could see was hazel. Her skin was the kind of white that suggests she might be an albino, except there was an undercurrent of pink in it that said she just kept out of the sun. The exposed ear had two studs and a small hoop in it. The black T shirt she was wearing exposed two tattoos. I looked down, expecting to see biker boots, but she was barefoot, and her toenails were painted bright pink.

She stepped back. "I'm, Anna, your grandfather's housekeeper. He's not back yet, but I can show you where you'll be staying."

"Great," I said. I think Robbie was still staring.

We had been in Gramps house before, of course, but not for a few years. He usually came to our house to visit, because it was easier. With four of us all on different schedules, it was almost impossible for us to all find a time when we could go visit for any significant amount of time. Gramps, on the other hand, had nothing but time if he wasn't on a job somewhere.

So we were familiar with the house. It had three bedrooms. Gramps used the big one. The last time we'd been there, one of the smaller bedrooms had his desk and papers in it, which was boxes of stuff from his former career as a detective. The other one had odds and ends in it. We just assumed they'd been cleaned out and that we'd each get one. Since all three bedroom doors were within ten feet of each other, we had already resigned ourselves to having to behave a lot more than we wanted to.

As we got into the living room Robbie said "I didn't know Gramps had a housekeeper."

The woman looked over her shoulder, which tossed the hair off her face. She was pretty in a porcelain doll kind of way. "Yeah. I've worked for him about a year now."

"Oh," said Robbie, in a voice that I recognized as meaning "Why didn't I know this already?"

But the woman didn't take us toward the hallway that led to the bedrooms. Instead she took us to the door we'd never been through. It went to the basement, and had always been locked in the past. We had asked him about it a dozen times. Every time he came up with a different answer. It got to be a game for a while. We'd get there and ask "Why is the basement locked? What's down there?" When we were young, he said there were monsters down there and it was locked to protect us. Mom yelled at him that time. After that he said he kept a unicorn down there, but that he wasn't allowed to show it to us. Mom didn't care for that one either. She didn't mind "Storage and dust," but then the next time it was right after he retired. "That's where I keep the bodies of all those bad guys I caught, but couldn't prove anything on. Been stackin' 'em up for years." Mom just groaned and said "Dad!" We were twelve then, and were smart enough to know he was BSing us. We were also smart enough to know he was never going to tell us what was really in the basement. I think we lost interest then, because we hadn't asked him the next couple of times we'd been there.

The door wasn't locked this time, though. When she pulled it open we both sucked in noisy breaths of air. She turned to look at us, a questioning look on her face.

"We've never actually been down there," I said.

"Not surprised," she said. "From what I hear the guy was real big on his privacy."

"What guy?" we asked together.

"The guy who used to rent the apartment down there from your grandfather," she said.

I expected something dark and dank, like a dungeon. But it wasn't like that at all once we got down the stairs. The basement was only under half of the house, and one wall was on ground level. I couldn't believe it. Then I thought about it and realized that the only place Gramps had ever let us play was the front yard, which was fenced. We'd never been around in back of his house.