Chapter 8: The Blue Door

My mother's cottage sat at the end of a gravel drive in Sierra Madre, under a live oak that had grown over the roof.

I had not seen it in sixteen years.

My father had always told me it was his, and that it was falling down.

Frances parked behind me at two o'clock with Nate Hensley in the passenger seat.

"I sell her hydrangeas," he said when I stared at him. "She called. She said you'd need a heat gun."

"I don't know how to use a heat gun."

"That's why I'm here," he said.

He carried a canvas bag over one shoulder and a scraper in his back pocket.

I led them round the back and put the brass key in the cellar door.

It stuck, and then it turned.

The stairs led up into a kitchen with white walls and an empty floor.

My father had cleared out every stick of furniture.

Even the curtain rods were gone.

The front door stood at the end of the hall, painted a flat, thick white.

"That door was blue," Frances said behind me. "A dark blue. Your mother painted it herself the week you were born."

I put my palm flat on it.

The white was cold and chalky and new.

"He painted over it," I said.

"Last week, I'd guess," Nate said. He crouched and ran a thumbnail along the edge. "This is fresh. Two coats. He didn't strip anything first."

Keep reading free with an account. Start I Don't Need Your Blue Roses Anymore from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.