They Wanted My Haunted House, I Let Everyone Leave novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: What He Took

Rupert is bound by stealing a ring and freed only when he returns it unbroken.

Rupert had put a ring on before deciding whose finger it suited.

He held his hand beneath the sitting room lamp.

The ring was gold, broad, and much too small for his middle finger.

"Family piece," he said.

His hand had gone pale from the wrist down.

I stood in the doorway with Pippa behind me.

"Take it off."

"It's stuck."

He tried to laugh, then pulled hard enough to frighten us both.

His fingers stayed perfectly straight.

The house's card had stopped being an eccentric decoration.

"Keep the ring," I told him, trying the easiest remedy first.

"I'm offering it now."

Nothing changed in his pale fingers.

The theft had already happened; a later offer couldn't undo it.

I went cold with fear and made myself look at the cabinet.

It stood open beside a low chair covered in carved flowers.

There were empty velvet hollows inside its top drawer.

"What else did you take?" I asked.

"Nothing."

Pippa looked at his bulging coat pocket.

He removed a silver pencil.

"I was checking whether it still worked."

He set it in its hollow.

The color returned to his thumb.

Rupert looked down and stopped trying to smile.

"The rest," I said.

He put a small watch beside the pencil.

Then he produced a tiny pair of folding scissors.

Elaine, arriving behind us, asked whether those had belonged to her mother.

I turned toward her.

"Not now."

She closed her handbag with great care.

Rupert could bend his fingers again, but the ring remained fixed.

He tried to go past me into the hall.

The sitting room door opened onto the sitting room.

We could see his back through the doorway he was facing.

Pippa cried out.

Rupert backed away so fast he struck the cabinet.

"Open the front door," he told me.

I didn't argue.

I went into the hall and opened it onto the dark drive.

The evening smelled of wet leaves and the sea.

For a moment I wanted to step out and keep walking.

Then my cousin called my name.

I returned to the sitting room.

Rupert was still facing his own back through the impossible doorway.

I'd granted his request to leave.

He couldn't use that grant while the stolen ring made him part of the house.

"You aren't a guest while you're keeping that," I said.

"The card was clear about giving it back."

He stared at me with real fear now.

I didn't enjoy that.

He was my brother, even when he made helping him difficult.

"You haven't broken it," I said.

"We'll put it back together."

I held his hand over the cabinet drawer.

Pippa found the ring's empty hollow and pulled the drawer out under his hand.

The ring loosened at once.

Rupert almost flung it away.

I caught his wrist before it could hit the floor.

"Unbroken," I reminded him.

He lowered it into the velvet with shaking fingers.

The sitting room door opened onto the hall again.

We all looked through it.

The front door still showed the ordinary drive beyond.

"You can go," I told him.

Rupert stared at the open cabinet.

For a moment I thought he'd accept the invitation to go.

He'd lost the pleased look he'd worn under the lamp.

I could see him measuring the short distance between the sitting room and the ordinary drive.

Then he looked at the cabinet's untouched lower drawers.

I'd seen him make smaller versions of this choice at family meals.

Someone else would provide the transport, pay the bill, or stay until he'd finished.

He was waiting for me to promise exactly that.

"Somebody should stay to protect the valuables."

Pippa looked at him until he closed the drawer himself.

I shut the front door and returned to the low carved chair.

A small brass plate on its back said BEST GUEST.

"I'll stand," I said.

Behind me, an old woman's voice asked whether she might join us.

I turned and saw traveling shoes beneath a skirt that wasn't quite touching the floor.

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