Emma found the station easily enough. It was a gated two-story building at the end of Peddington’s Crossing, with two cop cars parked on the driveway outside. A chilly breeze circled her ankles, brushing away the orange and red leaves that loitered on the ground.
She stood at the fence, surveying the entrance and the one daughter and mom loitering outside, deciding whether or not they should go in. At the sight of her; they paused, stared for a moment, and then quickly ushered into the building.
With every passing minute in this God forsaken town, she was beginning to feel more and more out of place. She took a deep breath, and tried to release the pent up tension in her shoulders, reminding herself that she only had to stay here until she had her shit together. Then she could leave. It didn’t matter that she was clearly an outsider – she was going to be gone soon enough anyway.
With that thought, she steeled her nerves and walked down the pathway and pushed open the door to the sheriff’s station. The paneled woods creaked under her shoes as she walked into the lobby, fluorescent bulbs on overhead casting light on a cluttered front desk and four plastic chairs by the wall that acted as a place to sit and wait.
Seeing as no one was at the front desk, she dropped her duffel bag to the floor and took a seat beside the woman and girl. The whirr of the heating system was the only sound in the room, save for the dim voices coming from the rooms beyond. She was so frustrated with how the past 24 hours had gone that she didn’t even have the energy to feel nervous. This ordeal needed to be done and over with so that she could find the address scribbled on a blank envelope and just sleep for at least 14 hours.
It took twenty minutes an officer came to the front desk and he actually seemed surprised to see that anyone was there at all.
“Margaret, what you doing here?” he exclaimed, after one brief glance at her.
“I’m up to here with this girl. I don’t know what to do with her,” she motioned at who was presumably her daughter, not bothering to look at her while she spoke, “Jeremy suspended her from school, again. I’m here to drop her off with her father and then I’m going to enjoy the rest of my afternoon.”
“Wilson’s already out, he didn’t know you were coming.”
“Well, why don’t you page him and get him back in here. It’s about time he take responsibility for -.”
“Mom -.”
“Oh, don’t you speak!”
Emma sat there miserably, watching the two of them descend into a pointless argument that went on and on, and on, and on. Officer Wilson even joined in once or twice, pretty much ignoring Emma’s existence the entire time. The whole situation was absurd, and she was this close to interfering herself when the officer took the two of them to a back room in the station.
Clearly, Harbordale’s sheriff station didn’t have much else going on.
He was back in a few minutes, and he gave her a warm smile. “You must be John’s kid.”
Either her father had a reputation, or Hunter had already spread the word about her attendance at his home last night. She stood up and leaned against the front desk, “I need to speak to your sheriff, please.”
“Stone? He’s out.”
She blinked. “Where?”
“Sorry, ma’am, I can’t reveal that information to you.”
She sighed, and tried to keep a hold of the thin tethers of patience that still remained intact. “When will he back?”
“Not sure. You can hang around the office until he does if it’s important or I can take your complaint as well.”
“No, I’ll just come back…” she turned around, dejected. But before she took a step, she turned back, “actually, could you give him this?”
Emma fished into her pocket and pulled out the insane receipt, handing it to the officer sweetly. “And tell him there’s no chance in hell that I’m paying this. If he has a problem with it, he can come find me. Arrest me, lock me up, whatever it is that you guys do – I’m just not paying this. So if you could pass that on, it’d be great. Thanks. And I hope you and him both have a great day.”
Yes, that felt better.
Without waiting for a response, she turned around, picked up her duffel and left the station.
xx
One hour and forty five minutes later, Emma let out a slight groan as she dropped the grocery bags on the front doorstep of her father’s home and simply stood there for a few minutes. Her shoulders ached, she was absolutely starving, and it had taken far too long to find this place.
Her father’s home was quite a walk from town, and nowhere in the legal documents did it specify that her father owned a house, along with a lighthouse. It had simply said two pieces of land, one of which she assumed had housed a shed or a workshop of sorts.
But here she was, a twenty minute walk from town and by the harbor, with her very own lighthouse a ten minute walk away. No light was shining from it now and she assumed no light had for quite some time now, something that was going to continue on whether the townspeople liked it or not. Maybe she could sell that land off for some money; it could be an easy way to make dough perhaps.
When it finally felt like her arms weren’t going to fall off, she took out the key from the envelope her lawyer had sent it in and inserted it into the knob.
It opened seamlessly and she pushed her way in, immediately coughing as the dust from inside caught her off guard.
Despite having lived in Harbordale for the first ten years of her life, she had never lived in this particular house and from one quick glimpse at it, she was sure it something that would take quite some getting used to.
Not that there was much to take in. Nearly everything was blanketed in white fabric, as if it protect the furniture underneath. What wasn’t covered were the wooden floors, the dusty carpet in the living room floor, and the box-set television that looked a few decades old.
Too tired to really take a grand tour, she picked up her groceries, locked the door and found the kitchen.
She’d bought a litre of bottle water, knowing that she needed to install filters in the kitchen tap and figure out how the generators worked to get hot water. After heaving the big bottle up on the counter, she unloaded the carton of milk, a sack of apples, a box of cereal and a jar of Nescafe. Calcium, iron, protein and caffeine. One could survive on just the four… right?
She poured some water in a kettle that still sat on the counter and plugged the wire into the outlet. She’d drink some coffee, and then pass out. The two were counterintuitive but she couldn’t help it. She needed caffeine in her blood stream, and she needed sleep as well.
While she waited for the kettle to boil, she leaned against the kitchen counter and took a quick survey of her surroundings. Dust lined pretty much everything, so she’d have to do a thorough cleaning of the place. There was also an odd smell so she’d try to see if she could buy some scented candles – once she’d gotten a paycheck of sorts. Once she’d gotten some rest, she’d have some energy to organize the place, uncover the furniture, and do some washing.
She couldn’t help but feel strange though. Never once had she thought she’d be back here in Harbordale, let alone standing in the kitchen of a dead father that she’d completely pushed out from her memory.
Once she had a warm cup of terrible tasting Nescafe coffee in her hands, she walked around the house to find the staircase and climbed up to find two bedrooms on the second floor. More covered furniture, more dust and more emptiness. Why had he gotten such a large house in the middle of nowhere if he was just going to live alone?
After surveying the two bedrooms, she chose the one that was smaller simply because it was a bit cozier and she could use a bit of comfort right now.
Her body ached with exhaustion as she pulled off the white coverings of the bed, revealing a flowery duvet and blue pillows underneath. Without a second thought, she finished her coffee, the caffeine doing nothing to her system, and got under the blankets.
She was asleep in minutes.
xx
When she awoke, it was pitch black outside and eerily silent, save for the constant sound of a clock’s ticking coming from somewhere in the room. She had completely conked out and from the looks of it, had slept the entire day away. She groggily fished around for her cell phone, it being the only source of lights she knew of.
She turned it on and groaned when it read 9.30PM, which basically meant that she had literally wasted her first productive day here. She lay there, still feeling groggy, as she checked random texts from people who still didn’t know she’d left the city, spam emails and a quick notification from the weather network that said it didn’t know the weather because it couldn’t pinpoint her precise location.
It was halfway through her meandering thoughts that pondered whether she should get up and get some food, or just go back to sleep that she heard a creak.
At first, she thought it had come from outside but it was only when it happened again – and again, that she slowly sat up in her bed.
Were those footsteps?
She grabbed her cell phone as she slowly slipped out from her bed and tiptoed to the bedroom door, closing it gently and locking it before she pressed her ear to the wooden frame.
Her heart stopped as she heard it again.
Those were definitely footsteps. There was somebody here.
She paused, not really knowing what to do. But when she heard something fall to the floor and break, she jumped back and quickly dialed the only number she could think of.
911.