Chapter Text
Ava wondered if she could jump out of the moving vehicle and run away into the forest. It was an appealing bad idea.
The road shimmered with the heat outside but the air con was blasting in the car, drying out her eyes and aggravating the lingering hangover sandpapering at the inside of her skull. The radio was turned up just a little too loud to a country music station blasting a song about a man who loved a no-good woman, and Ava tried desperately to tune it out. She stared out between the trees instead, into the deep forest, and considered the feasibility of a future as a wood nymph.
She had hated cars ever since she was very young. Other transport was fine - planes, boats, she even went so far as to enjoy the close-packed people-watching of buses and trains. Cars made her anxious though, had done since her mother died crashing one, and this kind of car was particularly bad. It was big and expensive, insulated so thoroughly that she could barely even feel the rumble of the engine, and far too wide for the dirt track roads they were navigating down. Kristian Schaefer had to slow down at every turn, frowning to himself as he slotted the car past the conifers and pine trees lining the road. It felt like a car trying to trick her into believing it wasn’t one, but it would crumple all the same when it hit something.
To distract herself she kept her hands and mind busy playing with the strap of her camera bag, pulling the slider up and then down again, satisfied with the whirring noise it made each time. Schaefer glanced over at her and then at the strap of the bag, and she caught a slight adjustment of his position in his seat, a determination not to be irritated by her.
“We’re nearly there,” he said. He’d said that five minutes ago too, but she nodded as if she believed him.
“I didn’t realise it was so far from town.” Then again, she hadn’t realised much of anything about this place. She had meant to look it up last night when she was getting drunk at the bar of an airport hotel, or this morning as she took a bus to Schaefer’s office. Every time her phone had buzzed with a new missed call she’d turned away from it though, dived into her drink or stared out of the window instead. All she knew was the handful of streets she’d seen that morning, the bleach-clean smell of the Schaefer Legal Services offices located above a laundromat, the hard leather of his car seats.
She half considered pulling her phone out now, doing some belated research, but the thought had barely formed in her brain when they rounded a corner and a house crept into view. It was tiny, only one storey and surely no more than a few rooms, built from dark wood and grey stone and blending so effortlessly into the landscape that it might have always been there, planted when the first trees began to grow. For a hopeful second Ava thought that this was her house, the one they had come to see, but no - there was someone already outside.
From the road, Ava could only make out their broadest features: a woman in a white tank top, her muscled shoulders tanned from the sun, an axe dangling casually in one hand. She had already placed a log in front of her, and as Ava watched she lifted the axe above her head and swung it downwards in a single fluid motion, the taut muscles of her arms working so perfectly with the axe they might have all been one. The log split easily into two, as though she were cutting through paper, and the woman picked up the two halves to place them into a neat stack nearby.
Ava half considered telling Schaefer to stop the car so she could watch her do that again.
“Ah,” Schaefer said, catching the line of her gaze, “That’s Beatrice. Your new neighbour. Don’t mind her too much, she’s a little… eccentric.”
Ava liked eccentric. She also liked women who looked like they could tear her in half without too much effort. She had a feeling she was going to like Beatrice a lot .
They drove past the house, and when Ava glanced backwards she saw that Beatrice was watching the retreat of their car go, one hand held up to shade her eyes from the sun, a dog wagging its tail by her side.
“Almost there now,” Schaefer said again, except this time he wasn’t lying, because they crested a hill in the road and Ava was treated first to the view of the glittering lake, the sunshine sending scattered glittering patterns across it, a mirror reflection of the deep cloudless sky above it. Often she thought in movie scenes, and she thought this would make a great one: the aerial shot following a vast lake and zooming slowly on to a tiny boat, growing larger and clearer until it was fully in view. She could almost hear the gentle sound of oars in the water, even though there was no one around, the only noise the engine of Schaefer’s car and the distant call of birds.
For a moment she thought she might like it here, and then she saw the ugly house squatting by the lakeside. Even from a distance, she could notice the sagging porch, the boarded-up windows, the tangle of weeds crowding around it.
“It’s been empty for some time,” Schaefer told her, a note of apology in his voice. “And the trust your grandparents left didn’t have sufficient budget for maintenance.”
It was a practised, lawyer answer, one that Ava suspected he’d rehearsed from the easy way it flowed out of him. He probably hadn’t expected anyone to ever show up looking for this place, and she supposed she couldn’t blame him for that. The letter from his office had told her the only information she ever knew about her grandparents: that they had died over a decade ago and their property had been left in trust for her until she reached the age of twenty-five.
There she was, almost twenty-six, and she had showed up in his office that morning without an appointment, clutching the letter he sent her in her hand.
“We didn’t think you were going to respond,” he had told her, “You didn’t answer the letter we sent when you turned eighteen.”
That letter had never made it to Ava, but then she had been ejected from the foster system the second she turned eighteen, spent a couple of years in hostels and shelters and crashing on couches until she got her shit together enough to rent her own place. She had no idea where they had mailed that letter to but it sure as hell didn’t make its way to her.
She got the second letter a few weeks after turning twenty-five, and it had been shuffled into the back of a pile of papers mentally marked deal with later , that even she knew she never really intended to do anything with. Until that point she had known she must have grandparents in a theoretical kind of way - if her sixth-grade biology was correct, she was pretty sure her mom couldn’t have sprung out of nothing - but hadn’t given them much thought. The letter got moved from the kitchen counters to a drawer somewhere in the living room, entirely forgotten about, until, three days ago, she crash-landed back in Los Angeles and dug it out. She was on a flight twenty-four hours later.
The tires of Schaefer’s car crunched over dirt and gravel, the remnants of what used to be a driveway, and she flung the door open the second the car came to a stop. For a second she stood still, staring away from the house as she gulped in air, grateful for the escape from the car, and only then did she turn to look at the house.
It was worse up close.
She could see tiles were missing from the roof, that there had been a burst pipe or a flood at some point because the ground was indented and thick with weeds, that some of the wood was rotten through and ready to collapse. She’d had a plan as she passed through security at LAX: she would sell the house quick, maybe she would only be out here a few weeks, then with the money she’d have the security to set up somewhere on her own. No roommates, no boyfriend, no worries.
She had a sinking feeling now that it wasn’t going to be as easy as that.
With a flourish that was absolutely not warranted, Schaefer pulled the house keys from his pocket and handed them over, gesturing to indicate they could make their way inside.
She stepped gingerly up onto the porch, avoiding the cracked boards and the places where the wood had become soft and spongy. The front door had once been painted a bright baby blue but the colour had chipped away into nothing. It took her a moment to fit the key into the lock and, when she turned it, there was a grinding sound of metal on metal.
The house was dark inside - it seemed almost pitch black coming immediately from the bright sunshine outside - but then most of the windows had been boarded over. Perhaps that had been Schaefer’s one concession to maintenance . She looked around for a moment for a light switch but nothing happened when she flipped it, and Schaefer grimaced as she glanced back at him.
“You just need to contact the power company,” he told her with forced cheer, “It hasn’t needed electricity in quite some time.”
Slowly, her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, but it wasn’t as if there was much to see: the house was empty except for dust lying in heaps across the floor, a few faded spots on the walls where picture frames must have once hung. She wasn’t sure what she had expected - to see a home her mother could have left yesterday? The evidence of a childhood spent here? Of course the house had been cleared when her grandparents died.
“We can take a look around, but…” Schaefer trailed off, making it quite clear that the rest of it was much the same as this. She wanted to be away from him suddenly, his forced politeness, the smell of sweat mixed with his cologne.
“It’s fine,” she said with a strained smile, “You’ve been helpful, thank you.”
He frowned, “You’ll need a ride back into town.”
In truth, Ava had planned on staying here in the house until it was sold - she hadn’t thought the plan through much further than there being a house and it seeming obvious that she would stay there. It wasn’t like she had a lot of extra money lying around for hotel rooms, and she had already paid out for the flight here.
She was stubborn though, and besides, she had slept in worse places than this - that leaking Alaskan fishing hut in the middle of winter suddenly sprang to mind - and if it would get Schaefer off her back it might just be worth it.
“I can walk into town if I need it,” she told him. That was true, at least, she was good at walking, preferred it to just about any other method of getting around when she could help it. It was the best way to see a place, after all.
Schaefer didn’t look convinced, but Ava added, “Besides, the neighbour - Beatrice, right? - she’s not too far away. I can always ask her for a ride if I need it.” A ride, a cup of sugar, front-row seats to log-chopping. Whatever, really.
Finally, Schaefer nodded and retreated out of the musty interior of the house and back towards his car. He glanced back only once before climbing into the front seat and starting the engine and, at long last, Ava was left alone.
*
There didn’t seem to be much else to do except walk through the house after that, so she did, coughing when she opened a long disused closet and kicked up dust. She tried the faucet in the kitchen and the pipes groaned and produced foul-smelling, rust-coloured water, but it ran clear after a minute or two. That was a relief - at the very least she wouldn’t die of thirst while she was out here. Dysentery, maybe, but not thirst.
At the back of the pantry she discovered a rusted, unopened tin of something, and she half wondered if she would find something else that had been missed, but there was nothing. No sign of life, no sign of her mom, who surely must have once lived here. The bedrooms were empty, the bathroom thick with mould, there was an ominous swelling in the ceiling of one rooms which looked fit to burst at any moment. Ava knew less than nothing about home ownership and even she knew that this was a shit show.
The worst part of it was that the house had clearly been pretty at one time: the window in the biggest bedroom made that clear, flooding the place with light and looking out over the lake and to the mountains in the distance. Ava could see clearly in her mind's eye the close-crowded armchairs around the disused fireplace where her mom might have sat to watch TV, the bustling family kitchen where she had eaten her meals, the open grass waiting for her to stretch out and sunbathe. It was a better fit for a horror movie these days, a really fucking good horror movie, but probably not somewhere anyone wanted to live.
There was an atmosphere about it that spoke to what might have been: the vast emptiness of the rooms with the cracks of light clawing their way in through the boarded-up windows, the pervasive smell of must and rot. It was oppressive, depressing, and as soon as she could Ava stepped back outside into the sunlight.
The small bag she had with her only contained the barest of essentials (a few changes of clothes, phone charger, vibrator), and it seemed clear that she would need something more than that unless she desperately wanted to sleep on the floorboards. Besides, walking back into town for supplies seemed to offer as good an excuse as any to escape the house.
*
There was a breeze across the lake that made it pleasant to walk back towards the road, but as soon as she left the waterfront the heat enveloped her, and she felt sweat prickling at the back of her neck and the tingling of burning on her shoulders. Still, she felt better now she was free from the dark and gloom of the house, and the pretty sight of her new neighbour’s house only added to her good mood.
The wood stack had grown in the time she had been gone, but Beatrice herself was nowhere to be seen, presumably back inside the house. The dog was still there though, lying in a shady spot by the house next to a bowl of water. Ava waved to him, stopping by the stone wall that surrounded the place as she passed.
“Hey, Dog,” she greeted him, “Happy to be neighbours with you.”
He looked like a labrador mixed with something else, and he thumped his tail on the ground happily when she spoke to him. He didn’t get up to greet her but it was hot and some dogs were shy so she wasn’t too worried about it - she’d never met a dog who didn’t like her eventually. Although she paused by the wall longer than was strictly necessary, Beatrice still didn’t come out of the house, and in the end, she moved on.
It took her over an hour to walk all the way into town, and she was red-faced and exhausted by the time she made it. Calling it a town at all was probably stretching the imagination, really - it was barely more than a handful of streets and scattered buildings. There had been a factory here once upon a time, Ava had seen the abandoned building when she rode in on the bus that morning, but it had clearly been long disused and the place that once supported it was slowly withering away too.
The faces she saw as she made her way down Main Street were uniformly older than her and peered at her with pinched expressions. She thought at first it was her appearance - panting and sweaty - until she realised it was only because they didn’t know her. She glanced over her shoulder once to see an older couple staring after her, watching her movements as though she was likely to steal something at any moment. It was a relief to duck into a store, out from the heat of the sun and their glares.
The assortment of food and household goods and miscellaneous bric-a-brac inside made it clear that this one store served just about everything and everyone in town, but it was the man behind the counter Ava was most grateful for. He was young, to begin with, and actually looked pleased to see her.
“Don’t see many new faces around here,” he told her with a smile as she approached the counter.
Ava snorted, “Yeah, I can tell. Starting to feel like I’m at the part of the horror movie where I get warned to leave before it’s too late.”
“It’s not as bad as that.” He laughed, “Just unusual to see a new face. Are you passing through?”
“I’m staying at the lakehouse,” Ava said. It felt too complicated suddenly to explain that it was her house, or her grandparents’ house that was now hers, and all the baggage that came along with that.
He looked surprised but was clearly too polite to make much of a comment on it because he just nodded. “You’re staying for a while then? Michael, by the way.”
“Ava,” Ava said, pleased with herself that she had managed to befriend the one nice person who lived here. “Just until I get the house fixed up, anyway. If you know any good contractors send ‘em my way.”
Michael shook his head slowly, “Only person I know in town is Beatrice. She built her house.”
Ava blinked at him stupidly, thinking about the pretty, thoroughly sturdy house she had seen from the road, “She built that? By herself? But it’s… a real house.”
“You’d have to ask her more about it, she doesn’t come into town much,” he admitted, “But she definitely built it, took her the better part of a year.”
Ava couldn’t resist pushing for a little more though, “Kristian Schaefer said she was eccentric.”
Michael looked amused by that, “People in town think she is. I guess they’re sort of…”
“Traditional?” Ava suggested. She had only seen Beatrice from a distance but it was enough to judge her screamingly queer .
“Not exactly,” Michael said, catching her hint immediately, “Some are, sure, but my mom’s been with her wife for nearly twenty years and nobody pays much attention to that anymore. Beatrice just keeps to herself. Everybody around here knows everything about everybody, or they like to think they do, and they’re not used to anyone who doesn’t involve herself in that.”
“Huh,” Ava said, with a crushing awareness that she was the kind of person who liked to know everything about everybody too. There was no other reason she would stand here acting curious about a neighbour she hadn’t even met yet, and it was enough to push her to change the subject. “I guess I better buy some stuff instead of just taking up your time.”
She did buy stuff, just enough supplies to keep her fed and comfortable for a week or so, and Michael was nice enough to lend her a camping cot of his own when it became clear it wasn’t something the store had on hand. She left with her tiny backpack stuffed to its limits and the folded cot balanced awkwardly under one arm, but still, when Michael offered her a ride home she shook her head quickly.
“I’ll enjoy the walk,” she insisted.
She didn’t enjoy the walk, as it happened. Even though the afternoon was beginning to cool by then, it was still hot enough and her purchases were heavy enough to make the journey tiring and sweaty. She was aching and red in the face by the time she saw the roof of Beatrice’s house in the distance, but that at least gave her something to focus on, let her know she was nearly home.
Now that she knew Beatrice had built it herself, she took in the cottage with more fascination. The stones weren’t regular brickwork but oddly sized and fitted together in a careful jigsaw, and Ava wondered if Beatrice had to place them all there by hand, finding the perfect one each time to build up the walls. There were solar panels on the roof she hadn’t noticed before too, and the wall surrounding the property was the same style as the walls of the house.
Best of all, standing in the front yard, was Beatrice herself. It had only been an afternoon and already Ava felt she had been anticipating their meeting for a long time.
Beatrice had shrugged a flannel shirt over her tank top to sweep up some of the detritus of her day’s work, although the line of her broad shoulders was still clearly visible as she methodically moved through the yard, the dog around her feet as she went. Ava could see her more clearly now and had time before she reached the house properly to take in the contours of her face, handsome and relaxed as she concentrated on her task, the tinge of pink sunburn on the back of her neck made visible by the way her hair was pulled up, the tiny movements of her lips as if she was talking to herself or, perhaps, to the dog.
She didn’t look up though, too engrossed in what she was doing, and so when Ava called out a cheery, “Hey!” it made her jump.
“Shit, sorry,” Ava said - she had been too excited, she could recognise that, “Didn’t mean to surprise you. Just wanted to say… well, hey. We’re neighbours now. I’m Ava.”
“Neighbours?” Beatrice frowned, and Ava hadn’t expected the British accent to come out of the mouth of someone who looked so at home here, in what was distinctly not Britain . It made Ava want to ask her more again but she bit the questions back, remembering Michael’s admission that Beatrice preferred to keep to herself.
“You’re staying at the lakehouse?” Beatrice asked, “Is that safe?”
Her arms aching, Ava fumbled with the camping cot to lean it up against the wall, “Probably not,” she admitted, “But I guess I’m going to fix that. I don’t know, I’m kind of new to this home ownership thing.”
“I assumed it was abandoned, or at least its owners had forgotten about it. It’s been empty for as long as I’ve lived here,” Beatrice said, the frown still on her face and the broom poised as though she were about to start sweeping again at any moment. There was a small pause, and Ava had the distinct impression that Beatrice was adjusting to the idea of having someone living so close by. Maybe it was strange if you weren’t around people a lot - Ava couldn’t imagine it.
“You’re lucky to live here,” she tried after a moment, believing from long experience that flattery would get her everywhere, “It’s beautiful.”
“You’re a photographer?” Beatrice asked, nodding to the camera bag still strung across Ava’s body. Ava liked the way she said that word - photographer - as if she relished having all the letters in her mouth.
“Location scout,” Ava told her, “Whenever you see some incredibly cool place in a movie… well, it probably wasn’t me who found it. But that’s the idea, anyway.”
Beatrice nodded, “Have you worked on anything I might have seen?”
“Not unless you really love commercial and low-budget TV movies,” Ava admitted, “But give me a couple more years and I’ll be working on blockbusters.” She said it with all the confidence she felt too: she didn’t get into this gig thinking she’d be doing low-paid jobs no one else wanted forever. If she was doing this, she was going to be successful at it.
(As it happened though, she liked doing the low-paid jobs that no one else wanted. She liked going to places no one else would ever think to travel to and meeting the people who lived there, seeing the little quirks of their daily lives - where they bought their groceries, how they heated their homes, the noises that kept them up at night.)
“I believe you,” Beatrice said, with a smile that said she really did.
All through their conversation, the dog had been at her feet, its tail wagging furiously, staring up pleadingly at her. When he finally let out a low whine, Beatrice sighed, “You can say hello,” she told him.
Immediately, the dog bounded up to the wall, putting his front paws up on it and panting happily at Ava. “Oh my God, hi,” Ava greeted immediately, reaching out to pet him, “I guess we’re neighbours too. Your mom has you pretty well trained, huh?”
“His name is Jude,” Beatrice said, and for the first time her features seemed to truly relax as she watched Jude and Ava become firm and immediate friends, “He’s supposed to be a guard dog but he doesn’t have the temperament.”
“That’s alright, Jude, I bet you’re good at a lot of other things,” Ava told him happily, “If anyone broke into my house I’d probably make friends with them too.”
That made Beatrice laugh - or at least, she smiled and exhaled air at the same time, and she looked as surprised to find she had done it as Ava was to hear it. But Ava knew, right then in that moment, that she and Beatrice were going to get along.
*
Ava hummed to herself as she made her way back to the lakehouse, cheered by the knowledge that she had made three new friends this afternoon and that she would soon, she was absolutely certain, have the house looking like it was brand new. She opened the front door to the gloom of the place though, a wall through which her happiness could not penetrate, and her joy seeped from her as though it was drained away through the cracks in the floorboards.
As if to mark her return home, her phone began to ring in her pocket and she dropped her new stuff unceremoniously onto the dusty floor. It had been silent for hours, and she’d thought for the moment she had escaped it, but no. When she pulled it out JC’s name was there, and at the top of the screen a warning that she had only eight per cent battery left. Fuck.
For a moment, her thumb hovered over the decline call button, but a creeping, irritating voice in her head told her that she would have to face up to him eventually. With a tiny sigh, she hit accept and brought the phone to her ear.
Almost immediately, she was assaulted with tinny, blaring music, loud shouting and laughter, then the clear sound of JC’s voice saying, “Ava? Are you there? What the fuck? Where are you? When does your flight get in?”
He was in Vegas. Ava knew that because he had texted her three days ago to say that’s where they were going while she was already in the air on a flight back to California. She had been gone for three weeks at that point, in New Orleans scouting locations for a Hallmark movie - and it was a stupid movie, yeah, it was a movie that would never be shown in movie theatres or win awards or even register on most people’s radar, but it was also the biggest thing she’d ever worked on, and she did a damn good job of it too. Such a good job that the director shook her hand after they wrapped and told her he’d keep her in mind for future projects.
She had told JC all of this, thought they might celebrate when she got home, but he was gone instead.
“I’m not coming to Vegas,” she told him. She had texted him that as well, but he had forgotten, or he was pretending he had, “We’re breaking up.”
Technically they already had broken up multiple times before: he had broken up with her because she was never home, she had broken up with him because he was never there, then they got back together and the whole thing began again. It was different, this time. She was determined it was going to be different. That was why she came here.
“Is this about the movie?” he asked, with a tiny laugh that told her he still didn’t get it. He never would get it, either, because his parents were fuck-you wealthy and anything he ever did was because he felt like it, not because he had to. He was an actor, sometimes, but mostly not, and all of his friends - that tight-knit little group he referred to as family - were in various stages of nepotism careers too.
“No, it’s not about the movie,” she sighed, weary suddenly.
She could hear the chiming of a casino jackpot somewhere in the background of the call, a woman cheering and yelling, and JC told someone, “Yeah, just a minute, just a minute.”
When she got back to his apartment they had all been gone - JC and JC’s friends. Ava had lived there for five years with all of them, but it was still his apartment and they were still his friends, his things that he allowed her to share. She had liked that about him when she first met him: he was the first real friend she made that wasn’t born from the desperation of the foster system, and she thought he was generous, kind. She wasn’t wrong, exactly, because he could be those things, but he could be selfish too, and stupid. The longer their relationship went on the more he showed his selfish and stupid side.
“Listen, you know you’ll come here eventually, so let’s forget this and have a good time,” he told her, turning on that boyish charm that had made her weak at the knees once, “You’re missing out. Randall beat Zori at poker last night, first time he ever did it, and she was so pissed off about it that she bet him double or nothing, except we’d been drinking tequila all night so - “
His voice faded into the background as he continued to talk, a story that would have once excited her turned boring and commonplace. She wondered vaguely when she had fallen out of love with him. When she got back to his apartment, she hadn’t felt angry. Not even sad or disappointed. There had just been flat acceptance, and she had dug Schaefer’s letter out and packed a bag with a clear mind.
Very suddenly, his voice was cut off, and Ava looked at her phone to find that the battery had finally died. She supposed she should feel something other than relief, but she didn’t.
*
Normally Ava could sleep anywhere. She was the kind of person to close her eyes on a plane and nap for a couple of hours before she was wide awake again, refreshed and ready to go. If she could sleep in the frozen Alaskan fishing shack, or the overcrowded apartment of a mother of five she met three hours ago, then it stood to reason that a camping cot in a silent house should be easy.
She couldn’t sleep in this house though.
Something about the noises of it bothered her, kept her awake into the early hours of the morning. With her phone battery dead she had no way of telling the time, and she could only judge it on the way the light changed, filtered through the gaps in the boarded-up windows. It went from black to navy blue to grey in the time she lay awake, staring at the ceiling and watching spiders scuttle across the floor.
Her eyes felt clogged with grit by the time she rolled out of the cot and she threw open all of the outside doors the second she could. Outside, the sun yawned pink and orange over the lake.
From her hotel a few nights ago, she had invited a realtor to come see the house, back when she expected this to be a week-long trip to flip her inheritance and return to California. She saw now that had been naive but still, a glimmer of hope persisted that he’d tell her it wasn’t as bad as she thought.
She was outside when he arrived, removing herself from the house for as long as possible and busying herself taking photographs of the lake - it seemed like as good a way to spend the time as any while she waited. His Porsche bumped painfully over the dirt track road, and as soon as he stepped out of the car in shiny loafers and an expensive suit, Ava knew she was not going to like him.
“Mr Adriel, right?” she asked, painfully aware that she was grubby and sweaty, “Thanks for coming out.”
He was looking at the house with a wrinkle in his nose that already told her exactly what he thought of it. “A roof like that is no good,” he informed her, “And the windows…”
“Someone could look past that though, right?” Ava suggested hopefully, “People want to fix places up how they like them, sometimes.”
He offered a simpering smile that suggested she was extremely stupid, “The bank, honey. The bank won’t lend on a house with structural issues like that. No hope in hell of selling it like this.”
He did, however, deign to take a tour of the place, his disgust with it growing ever more obvious each time he stepped around a dust bunny or examined the chipped paint on the walls.
“It won’t sell,” he informed her once they had stepped back outside into the morning sunshine, the day now starting to grow warmer. “It can’t sell - no one will get the finance for it.” Already, he was pulling a business card from his pocket, “I have a contractor I recommend, he’s from out of town but he can do the job for you.”
Ava took the card from him but she already knew she wasn’t going to call whatever number was printed on it. She had no desire to have the place overrun with more guys like Adriel, slick and patronising, nor did she trust anyone actually willing to work with him. Not that she could afford to hire him even if she wanted to - this stupid, broken-down house was about the only thing she had to her name.
Thankfully, Adriel didn’t waste any time by sticking around. He clearly wanted to leave just as badly as she wanted him to, and she hoped the trees scratched his paintwork as he drove away.
At a loss for what else to do, she began the walk into town as soon as she saw his car disappear around the curve in the road. At the very least she hoped she could find a place to charge her phone, call the power company, figure out what the hell she was supposed to do next.
There was no sign of either Beatrice or Jude when she passed by their house, although there was the faint sound of movement around the back of the building, and the noise of what might have been chickens. It made her feel marginally better to know that they were there, going about their daily routine, and by the time she made it to town the fresh air and the sunshine had lifted her back to her usual levels of optimism. She’d figure this out, and even if she didn’t then screw it , she’d go back to LA and figure something else out there.
Now nearing lunchtime, she was relieved to see the open door of a tiny diner, barely more than four tables in the place, although one was conveniently situated next to an outlet. There was an older man behind the counter, presumably the Vincent the place was named after, tattoos covering his arms that suggested a more interesting life than his greying hair and glasses gave away. He stared at her for a long moment when she took her seat and for a second she thought he was going to reprimand her for charging her phone in there, but when he approached her table he only said, “Hello, stranger. Although, I suppose you’re not such a stranger after all.”
“Uh,” Ava said, “What?”
Vincent shook his head with a smile, “Sorry, sorry, it doesn’t matter. Can I get you something?”
Ava ordered a milkshake and fries and spent the better part of the next hour with her phone pressed to her ear, listening to the looping hold music of the power company, intermittently interrupted to assure her that your call is important to us . As she waited, more people came and went from the diner, and she saw each of their gazes slide over to her in turn. Yesterday she had assumed there was hostility in their staring, that they didn’t want her here, but at close range, she recognised it more as curiosity.
There were two women who sat at the counter together, one fair and the other dark and leaning heavily on a cane, who seemed to be unable to stop themselves from glancing over at her. Once, the darker woman made to get up, but the blonde put a hand on her arm to stop her. If she hadn’t been trapped on the phone then Ava would have said something, struck up a conversation, but as it was she could only offer a smile. The women looked faintly embarrassed that they had caught her attention, and they hurried out soon afterwards.
For the first time, it occurred to Ava that she wasn’t a stranger here, just as Vincent had said. She had been treating it as though it was an excursion to some far-flung town she was sent to on a job, a place she had never visited before and would likely never visit again. But it wasn’t that: her grandparents had lived here, her mother had lived here, she had roots here tying her to this place whether she wanted them or not.
With the hold music of the power company still looping in her ear, she had no choice but to sit in the uncomfortable knowledge that the people here might just know more about her than she did.
*
The unsettled feeling carried her most of the way home, or at least to the wall surrounding Beatrice’s house. Her neighbour was outside cutting wood again, and the sight of her was enough to distract Ava from her discomfort, at least for now.
There was something mesmerising in the smooth swing of her arm, in the focus on her face, in the satisfying thud of the two halves of the wood hitting the ground. Ava found herself watching without saying anything, her elbows up on the wall, and it was only when Jude trotted around the corner of the house carrying a stick in his mouth that they were disturbed. He sprinted for Ava immediately, his tail wagging furiously, and Beatrice looked up to see what had caught his attention and was startled - again - when she saw Ava.
“You really need to stop sneaking up on me,” she said, although her voice was as calm and unruffled as if nothing had happened.
“Sorry, I got kind of hypnotised watching you,” Ava told her entirely unapologetically as she ruffled Jude’s ears, “You really need all that wood?”
“I sell it in town,” Beatrice explained, stacking the last pieces neatly onto the pile, “You’re welcome to buy some if you like. I don’t know what sort of provisions the lakehouse came with.”
“No provisions at all,” Ava pulled a face, “Not even electricity. The realtor told me it won’t sell.”
“Oh, that must have been the car,” Beatrice said, nodding to herself in confirmation, “I thought perhaps it was one of your Hollywood friends.”
Ava snorted at the thought of her having Hollywood friends - unless she counted JC, who definitely wasn’t Hollywood and, at this point, probably not her friend. “Nope, just some jerk who came all the way out here to tell me how shitty my house is.”
She stuck her hand in her jeans pocket where she could still feel the outline of the contractor’s card, and something in that combined with the view of Beatrice’s pretty cottage caused an idea to crash land in her brain.
“Maybe I could hire you,” she said with no tact and even less forethought, “Michael said you built your house.”
“Michael?” Beatrice looked at her and then back at her house, as though she was surprised to find it there, “Yes - I - well, most of it. There were some things I couldn’t do, I’m not an electrician so…”
She looked a little embarrassed, as though she thought there was nothing especially impressive or interesting about what she had done, certainly not enough to warrant a conversation between two virtual strangers. Ava disagreed though: she thought it was both impressive and interesting, much the same as Beatrice herself.
“I’d pay you, obviously,” she said quickly, “I’m not expecting a handout.”
This was Ava’s way, it always had been: she ran almost entirely on gut instinct and half thought out ideas, and usually it worked out for her. She formed her opinions about people quickly too, and she had already decided that she liked Beatrice - liked her quiet demeanour, liked her dog, liked that everyone in town thought she was weird. If she was going to hire anyone, she would rather it be someone like this than a faceless company she didn’t know.
Beatrice’s expression was hard to read, she seemed to have the kind of control over her facial muscles that Ava could only dream of, but she had stopped swinging the axe in her hand and Ava had the impression she didn’t hate the idea. “I would have to look at it,” she said after a long pause, “It might be beyond my skills.”
Ava gestured grandly down the path towards the lakehouse, “Then let’s go look.”
It wasn’t much of a walk really, and it was a pleasant one with Jude ambling in front of them sniffing the ground and occasionally running back to them to encourage them to hurry. Ava’s previous bad mood was mostly forgotten between the view of the lake and the good company she got to enjoy it with.
“See,” Ava said as the dog ran ahead of them again, “Jude thinks it’s a great idea.”
Beatrice allowed herself a small smile, “Jude also thinks rolling in animal faeces is a good idea. I’m not sure I’d stake your financial future on his opinion.”
“Is that why you built your place?” Ava asked, seizing any opportunity she could to angle for more details about Beatrice’s life, “Your financial future ?”
Beatrice was quiet for a moment, “It’s a long story,” she said in the end, “And not one I have time to get into today.”
Ava took that for the gentle dismissal it was and they spent most of the rest of the walk in silence, although it wasn’t an uncomfortable one. She felt her usual sinking sense of dread as they climbed the steps to the porch, but now it was mixed with sharp anticipation that they could figure this out, that Beatrice would help her.
The tour with Beatrice was a stark contrast to the one she had given Adriel that morning: Beatrice seemed quietly impressed, and when they came across problems she studied them carefully, as though her quick mind was already figuring out how to solve them. She ran her hands over the woodwork with a tiny furrow in her eyebrows and Ava looked too, as if she had any idea what the hell she was looking at, while Jude ran excitedly around their feet.
Beatrice made comments like, “I think this is a load-bearing wall, that could be an issue,” and Ava nodded as if she completely understood without any idea what she was talking about.
If Beatrice agreed to help - if - Ava was definitely going to be the ‘carrying and fetching’ side of this operation.
“It’s a beautiful house,” Beatrice said as they stood in the main bedroom, the only room in the place with an unbroken, unboarded window. She must have caught the frown on Ava’s face though, because she asked, “You don’t think so?”
“It’s… a long story.” Ava echoed Beatrice’s words from earlier with a self-deprecating laugh, “It was my grandparents’ place and that situation is kind of complicated.”
Beatrice gave a small nod and tactfully changed the subject, “Well, I think any realtor worth his salt should be able to see that it could be a wonderful family home.”
“Family home, really?” Ava turned to look out of the window at the lake, the first fingers of the sunset already creeping over it. The view and the wilderness were the best things this place had to offer as far as she could see. “I was thinking I’d sell it to a queer art collective or something. Or one of those places they take underprivileged kids to do outdoor sports and activities. I did that a couple of times, this would be a good place for it.”
When she turned back from the window, she found that Beatrice was looking at her with a small, curious smile.
“Alright,” she said, “I’d like to help you.”
*
Ava found herself keyed up with excitement and unable to settle once Beatrice and Jude left. She paced the house instead, looking at all the tiny features and imperfections that Beatrice had pointed out with renewed interest. It felt different here now that she knew she was figuring it out, better knowing Beatrice would help her, and sooner or later she could leave this town behind.
As if to confirm it, she opened up her email to find a job offer waiting for her. It had been a couple of years since she worked with Camila Oliveira on a short film, but the news that Camila had received funding for a feature-length indie movie didn’t come as any surprise.
I know it’s short notice but I was hoping… Camila’s email said, as though Ava was successful enough to have jobs waiting for her three months in advance. Even if she had, she would probably move it all around for the chance to work with Camila and her terrifyingly hot goth girlfriend again.
She typed her acceptance back so fast that she was pretty sure she managed to leave a typo in her own name, bouncing on her toes with how fucking perfectly everything had come together today. Beatrice would fix up her house, they would sell her house, and in three months she would be out of here and flying to one of the best jobs she had ever signed her name to.
With her enthusiastic yes already on its way to Camila, she brought up her messaging app ready to text someone, or call them, buoyed by the need to spill out everything that had happened.
Then she stopped, put her phone back in her pocket and sat down heavily on the cot bed in the corner of the dark room. There didn’t seem to be anyone to tell.