Page 16 of I'll Be Waiting

It wasn’t just my parents. It was me, too. After we left behind the trauma of my junior year, I was the perfect little CF patient. Part of it was an apology for uprooting my family and part of it was knowing that those events would make my parents even warier of letting me attend any postsecondary-education institution that couldn’t be reachedon the Toronto transit system. My goal was software engineering at Waterloo, which was only an hour’s drive, but I really wanted to live on campus like a normal student.

Drinking age in Ontario is nineteen, and I was that weird kid who didn’t actually drink until she was of age… which was also my first year in university. Then it was all shooters, all the time. Okay, notallthe time. But when I went to parties, I didn’t want beer or vodka or, god forbid, wine. I wanted sweet liqueurs, layered in pretty colors, knocked back fast for that delicious buzz.

So my drink for our cocktail hour is shooters. A shooter buffet, to be exact. I’ve brought test tubes, so we can sample without getting wasted. Because my choices are mostly liqueurs, my food offerings are also sweet—homemade caramel corn and spiced nuts.

Jin, Shania, and I enjoy our cocktail hour, chatting away as the buzz settles in. When we’re finishing up, Shania walks to the fireplace and peers at the portrait overtop. It’s a very old painting of a Victorian couple’s wedding day.

“Relatives of Anton’s?” Jin says, waving his shooter at the portrait.

I laugh. “Uh, no. Something the owners found in an estate sale, I bet.”

“Is it just me,” Shania says, “or does she look like she wants to escape?”

Jin shakes his head. “Theybothlook like they were led to the altar by a shotgun.”

“It’s the time period,” I say. “Smiling for portraits wasn’t really a thing—”

Jin cuts me off with a jabbed finger. “None of that. We’re here for a séance. Get in the spirit.”

“Fine. They’re clearly a miserable couple, forced to wed at gunpoint. They spent their first night together, and when he woke, she was gone.”

“Never to be seen again,” Shania chimes in.

“Until years later,” Jin says. “When her spirit began haunting thehoneymoon suite. Then, one day, while playing hide-and-seek, someone opened an old chest in the attic… and out fell her body, still in her wedding gown.”

“Nice.” Shania glances at me. “Are there any weird stories about this house? It’s so old and so big that there must be some.”

I munch some caramel corn. “Nope.”

“No, it doesn’t have any or no, you don’t know any?”

“According to Anton, it doesn’t have any. I’m sure some relative died here in the distant past but if so, their spirit moved on. There’s never even been a hint of a ghost.”

“Well, we are about to change that,” Jin says. Then he makes a face. “Sorry. One too many shots. That was inconsiderate.”

I lean over and lay my head on his shoulder. “It wasn’t. I do hope to make contact with Anton, but a haunting is a very different thing, and this house has no history of them. Dr. Cirillo actually asked about that, and he was happy to hear there aren’t any stories. We’re hosting an intimate gathering, not a wild party. Our invitation is extended to a very select audience of one.”

I rise from the sofa. “Okay, let’s not get maudlin. I should take you two on the tour of this weird and wacky—if boringly ghost-free—estate.”

“Oh!” Shania says, zipping ahead of us. “There’s a locked door. I wanted to show you that.”

She leads us down the hall. At the end is a door. The antique knob has been removed and replaced with a modern lock.

“So what’s behind the door?” she says, waggling her brows. “Any guesses?”

“One vacuum cleaner,” I say, “two mops, and three Costco megapacks—toilet paper, paper towels, and tissues.”

She mock-glares at me. “You are terrible at this game, Nic.”

“No, I’ve just rented enough places to know there’s always a locked room. That’s where they keep the cleaning supplies, and sometimes stuff the owner doesn’t want us touching.”

“Such as the bodies of the last renters,” Jin says. “Stacked like cordwood.”

“We’d smell them,” I say.

He shakes his head. “You reallyarebad at this.”

He looks up and down the hall. “I bet this place has plenty of secret rooms and passages.”

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