Page 42 of Monster Among the Roses (Fairy Tale Quartet 1)

Staring at my hand I had braced against Sheetrock, I couldn’t seem to make a hole.

“Okay, you can start,” Isobel said behind me.

Could I? Really? I wasn’t so sure. This suddenly felt big.

“Anytime now,” she added, only to huff a second later. “Seriously, Hollander, you don’t have to wait.”

“I know,” I muttered, still not getting to work.

“Then why aren’t you?”

“I will.” I held up the hand I’d been pressing against the wall, hoping to quell her impatience. “Just give me a second.”

“A second for what? You know how to use a drill, right?”

“Yes!” I spun to nail her with the full impact of my indignant glare. She knew I knew how to use a drill; she’d been watching me use one all damn week. Then I realized she’d been heckling me on purpose, trying to get a rise out of me, and I scowled.

Lifting her eyebrows to meet my scowl, she set her hands on her hips. “Just what is the problem?”

“I told you…” It was hard to say from between clenched teeth, but I managed. “Give. Me. A. Second.”

“And I asked… For. What?”

“Oh my God!” I lowered the drill and backed away from the wall, losing my cool. “For…for… You know, you are the most annoying woman on the planet. Can you not even wait ten goddamn seconds for me to deal with this and let the gravity of it actually sink in?”

She blinked a moment, before more quietly asking, “The gravity of what?”

“The…that!” I motioned toward the bare wall. “This. Everything. It’s all finally hitting me. These shelves are going to be permanent.”

She sniffed out a degrading sound before nudging my arm and grinning through a teasing eye roll. “Don’t be so sure about that. I give them a couple weeks. In fact, I predict we’ll be calling a real carpenter in here within the month to fix your mess.”

“Wow,” I muttered. “Thanks for your vote of confidence.”

She shrugged, even though her eyes sparkled with her tease.

“It’s just…” I sighed and ran my fingers through my hair. “This is the first thing I’ve ever made that’s going to last. And it’s going in this house, this huge, amazing grand house where freaking millionaires live. Long after we’re both gone, these shelves will still be here, a piece of history.”

She made a sound in the back of her throat and wrinkled her nose. “Again, debatable.”

I ignored that, needing to get this feeling off my chest before I could start drilling anything. “It’s like I’m making my mark on the world.” My chest filled with a sense of purpose. “I mean, I’ve always loved archeology stuff and the history of things, learning about cultures. Studying that had always been my big passion, but this…today…it’s like I’m the one actually providing a piece of my own life for future archeologists and it’s…well, it’s pretty freaking cool. I wonder if someone hundreds of years from now will look at my shelves and comment on them, maybe speculate on why I made them the way I did or wonder about the life I lived. It’s almost…humbling.”

Isobel blinked at me.

I blinked back, realizing how much I’d just exposed. A sense of alarm filled my gut. After Gloria and even kind of my mom had belittled my passion for artifacts, I’d always pushed it down and tried to hide it, thinking it was stupid and trivial. I fully expected Isobel to make fun of me for getting so sentimental and weird, too.

But she just studied me with the oddest expression before turning to look at the bare wall as well, as if never having seen it before.

A second later, she spun away and moved off. I gazed after her, wondering what that meant, what she thought of me now, and where the heck she was going. She paused at the study table and pulled open the drawer under it before riffling around and coming up with a thick black permanent marker.

“What…?” I wrinkled my nose, confused, as she returned to me.

She didn’t say a word, just stopped in front of the wall, lifted the marker and started to draw in huge block letters:

Isobel was here.

A slow grin spread across my face.

When she turned back to me and arched a lofty eyebrow, I nodded my approval and thanks. She hadn’t made me feel like a freak; she’d joined me, making her mark as well.

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