My Selfish Sister: A Second Chance at Retribution? novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Where the House Went

Maeve shrinks the old house and everything in it as Britt's headlights arrive, and Britt tells the empty lot she knows Maeve remembers.

I left before the sun came up.

Britt's bedroom door was shut, and her light was off.

I drove an hour into the countryside with a large empty suitcase in the back seat.

Pine Hollow had been deserted for six years.

Our grandmother's farmhouse stood at the end of the gravel road with its porch sagging and its windows dark.

I parked my car behind the collapsed barn, half a mile before the house, and walked the rest.

The delivery boxes were stacked in the front room, just as the courier's card had said.

There was a freezer, a generator and two beds.

There was a dining set, a sofa, a stove and a long list of other things I had ordered at midnight.

I put my hand on the first box.

I pictured it small.

It folded in on itself until it sat in my palm, and I dropped it into the suitcase.

I did the second box, then the third.

I shrank the freezer and the stove.

I shrank the beds and the sofa and the dining set.

By the time the sky turned gray, the whole front room was empty, and the suitcase was full of things the size of dice.

Then I stood in the middle of the floor and looked at the house.

My grandmother had taught me to bake in that kitchen.

I had planned to leave it for the weeds.

But I was going to be small for a long time, and I wanted a home that was mine.

I walked out to the yard and put both hands flat on the porch rail.

I thought of the swing and the cracked step.

I thought of the one window with the blue curtain.

The house shrank.

The roof, the walls and the chimney all folded down together until the whole farmhouse stood in my cupped hands.

It was the size of a loaf of bread.

I carried it carefully to the suitcase and set it on top.

That was when I heard an engine.

Headlights swept across the road at the end of the lane.

I dropped flat in the tall grass behind the empty foundation.

A black car stopped fifty feet away, and two doors slammed.

"Declan, hurry up!" Britt called. "She's here, I know she's here!"

Declan walked up behind her with his hands in his pockets.

"Britt, it's six in the morning."

"She told me she was storing boxes in Grandma's house!"

"Then where's the house?"

She stopped short.

Her flashlight swung across the packed dirt where the farmhouse had stood.

There was only a rectangle of old stones and a patch of flattened weeds. "It was here," she said. "Declan, there was a house here. I used to sleep in that room."

"There's nothing here," he said.

He did not say it unkindly.

"Your sister is at work, like she told you. Can we go?"

"No!"

Britt knelt and pressed her palm to the ground where the porch had been.

"Go sit in the car," she said, and her voice went strange and flat. "Please. Give me a minute."

He looked at her, then at the empty field.

"My mother wants me back by seven," he said, and he went.

I lay in the grass and did not breathe.

My sister stayed on her knees at the edge of the old foundation.

She stayed there until the car door shut, and then she started to talk.

"You took Shrink on purpose."

Her voice carried clearly across the quiet field.

"You didn't even argue. You just said, I'll take the Shrink System, and you smiled."

She laughed once, a thin laugh with no joy in it.

"You remember. Don't you, Maeve? You remember the roof."

The sky behind her was turning pink.

"You shrank the whole house. So that's your plan. You're going to curl up somewhere tiny and wait out the rains."

She stood and wiped her hands on her jeans.

"Fine. But the apartment is mine, and I know every room in it."

She turned and walked back toward the car.

Then she stopped and looked over her shoulder.

"I'm going to search your room," she told the empty air, softly.

The car door opened, and she said to Declan in her sweetest voice, "Take me home. I need to check something in my sister's closet."

The engine started, and the headlights swung away.

I stayed in the grass until the sound had gone.

My hands were shaking.

I had spent two days building a perfect hiding place, and my sister had just announced she was going to knock on its walls.

I grabbed the suitcase and ran for my car.

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