The Haunting of Silver Creek Lodge Read online

  “Can I do that instead of the pills?”

  Dr. Alvarez rubbed her palms against her thighs. “I can’t force you to fill a prescription, but in instances like this, I highly advise you take some course of action. A suicide attempt—”

  “I did not attempt suicide,” I said hotly.

  She was quiet for a moment while I recaptured my dignity. “Whatever you call it, it endangered your physical health. Normally, I would refer you to a mental health facility, but if you refuse treatment, no one can turn over that decision for you.”

  “I refuse treatment.”

  “Do you want to keep feeling like this?” she asked. “Do you want to stay empty and emotionless? Or feel terrified when nothing is wrong? Do you want your husband to live in a constant state of fear because you won’t take steps to help yourself?”

  When she mentioned Simon, I remembered the look on his face last night. He was scared out of his mind. The panicked yelling, the way he tried to force himself through the tiny window to reach me, how he’d run into the snowy yard without a shirt or shoes.

  “Okay. I’ll take the pills.”

  Simon managed to contain himself until we left the office and got into the car. When he started the ignition but didn’t put it in drive, I knew it was coming.

  “Well?” he demanded. “What did you tell her? What did she say?”

  “She says I have PTSD,” I replied simply. “That trauma and stress are piling up on me. She gave me this.” I waved the prescription. “Are you happy?”

  He snatched the prescription and read it. “Antidepressants?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  He set the prescription onto the center console, where he could keep an eye on it and reversed out of the parking space. “We’re going to pick it up now.”

  At a red light near the center of town, his phone rang. He dug it out of his pocket and hit the speakerphone button.

  “Hello?” he said.

  “Hey, Simon. It’s Keith. Where are you?”

  “We’re in town,” Simon said. “I had to take Max to the doctor.”

  “Is she okay?”

  Simon glanced over at me as if trying to decide the answer. “Yes, she’ll be fine. What’s up?”

  “Uh, I guess you forgot,” Keith said. “We made an appointment for Boyce to tour the Lodge today. So you could talk about investment opportunities with him?”

  I glared at Simon. He hadn’t told me about any of this.

  “Shit, is he there now?” Simon asked, pointedly avoiding my gaze.

  “Yeah, he’s waiting outside. Should I let him in?”

  “Not without a hard hat.” Simon switched his turn signal and pulled into the opposite lane. “I’m on my way home now. Keep him busy for twenty minutes.”

  “Can do.”

  Simon hung up and looked over at me. “Don’t be mad.”

  I let out a short, derisive laugh.

  “We’re running out of money,” Simon said tersely, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the steering wheel tighter. “We’ve burned through three-quarters of our budget already, and we haven’t bought any materials for the second floor yet.”

  “This is why I was hesitant to buy the Lodge in the first place,” I reminded him. “It’s a money pit. We’ll go bankrupt and have nothing to show for it.”

  “Not if Boyce invests,” Simon said. “He’s loaded, Max. He casually offered twenty-five thousand dollars at the last Gentlemen’s Club meeting. That was his first offer.”

  I gaped at him. “Twenty-five thousand?”

  “Do you know what we could do with that money?” He glanced over his shoulder to check his blind spot and moved over another lane. “We could finish the Lodge in no time. He offered to help with marketing, too, so we’d pull a profit our first year in business.”

  “So, this is what you talk about at those meetings, huh?”

  “It’s mostly business,” Simon said. “The guys in that club are all working to better Silver Creek. Now that we’re a part of it, they want us to succeed, too. Why is that such a bad thing?”

  I gazed through the window, pondering Simon’s question. Wealthy men wanted to give us money so we didn’t fail miserably in a doomed project. If it was such a great idea, why did it open a pit of doubt in my stomach?

  We were quiet for the rest of the drive. When we pulled into the Lodge’s parking lot, the sun bounced off the shiny windows of Boyce’s black Cadillac and into my eyes. The brightness made me sneeze.

  “I have to get in there,” Simon said, hurriedly unbuckling his seatbelt. “Are you okay on your own?”

  I wondered if he was just desperate to get away from me. “I’ll be fine.”

  Simon rushed inside, but I took my time getting out of the car. For once, it wasn’t snowing, so I dawdled in the front yard. To make myself look busy, I pulled dead weeds from the flowerpots and tossed them into the dumpster. When my hands were dirty and numb from the cold, I gathered my courage and went inside.

  Simon and Boyce were coming down the stairs as I walked in. They were deep in conversation about the state of the Lodge, so much so that Boyce barely noticed me. All I got was a polite nod and smile as they passed.

  “The presidential suite has promise,” Boyce was saying. “People would pay hundreds of dollars a night to stay there. That is, if you make it worthwhile. I think you should upgrade that bathroom. We’ll get you a double-wide tub with jets and a dual-sink counter. It’ll be the ultimate honeymoon suite, especially with that view off the private balcony. You’ll have a waitlist a mile long.”

  Simon nodded, eating up Boyce’s words as if they were gourmet chocolate truffles. “I like that idea. We thought about living in the presidential suite ourselves, but it seems stupid to waste that space.”

  “I suggest you build yourselves a cabin elsewhere on the property,” Boyce said as they headed down the first-floor hallway. “It’s important to separate work from home. You need your own space.”

  Simon grimaced. “I’m not sure we have the funds to build an entire cabin from the ground up.”

  “We’ll talk finances in a few minutes,” Boyce said, confidence oozing out of his pores. “For now, let’s see we can do about improving these ground-floor suites.”

  Like a nosey ghost, I followed twenty steps behind Simon and Boyce as they explored rooms on the first floor. Simon would pitch his ideas—the ones we came up with together—and Boyce would immediately shoot them down to suggest something more expensive. Simon agreed to almost everything, never once checking with me to see if I liked the changes.

  When they reached the last room on the first floor, the one half the size of its counterparts, Boyce took a startled step back. The locked safe was the prime focus of the room. It was hard to visualize any future guests staying there with a huge metal door smack in the middle of the back wall.

  “My God,” Boyce said. “What is that?”

  “No idea,” Simon answered. “We can’t open it. Even the local locksmith gave it a shot.”

  I braced myself as Boyce approached the safe and laid a hand on smooth metal. He showed no sign of feeling the pulse of energy I did when I went near the safe. As a matter of fact, he looked more worried than anything else.

  “This is inconvenient indeed,” he muttered, eyebrows knitted together as he ran his hand over the safe’s dial.

  “We’ll get rid of it,” Simon proposed. “If we can work out finances, I’ll get a construction crew in here to remove the safe and widen this room. I was going to work around it, but if we have the money—”

  “No, no, no,” Boyce said. “This is a delicate procedure. We can’t go ripping this thing out all willy-nilly. It could bring the whole building down. No, you’ll have to leave it.”

  “Leave it?” Simon’s nose wrinkled. “Forever? I wanted to get rid of it eventually.”

  “I’m no architect,” said Boyce, “but I believe this part of the building is supporting a great deal of the presidential suite above it.
You can’t remove the safe without risking collapse. Then you’d be in a whole mess of trouble, one I don’t think I could afford to get you out of.”

  Simon nodded. “Got it. We’ll leave it then. What do we do with this room, though?”

  “Make it a storage closet,” Boyce suggested. “You won’t be able to keep guests here. It’s much too small, and there isn’t even a bathroom.”

  “Should I wall up the safe?”

  Boyce regarded the metal door, curiosity growing in his beady eyes. “No, leave an access point. It may come in handy later.”

  An hour later, Boyce was satisfied with his tour of the Lodge and the grounds. While he put on his coat and hat, he fed Simon more hope. “I see a lot of potential,” Boyce said, buttoning his wool pea coat. “If you’re willing to take my suggestions into account, I’d love to invest.”

  Simon made a triumphant fist but refrained from raising it in the air like a first-place athlete. “Thank you so much, Boyce. You have no idea what this means to us.”

  “I’m happy to help out our newest locals,” Boyce said. “I want this place to succeed as much as you do. I’ll talk to my business partners and see what we can afford to put up. Keep in mind, I’ll want updates as you work. I like to know how my money is being spent.”

  “We’ll update you every day if you want,” Simon promised.

  Boyce chuckled as he tugged on his gloves. “You kids are so eager to please. That’s refreshing. We need more people like you in Silver Creek.” He tipped his hat to me. “Maxine, it was lovely to see you again. I hope you’re feeling better.”

  “Thank you, Boyce.”

  He shook Simon’s hand. “We’ll talk soon. I’ll take you to lunch, and we’ll hammer out the finer details.” He turned to leave but stopped himself. “Oh, and Simon? The Club is heading out to the slopes tomorrow. Can I interest you in joining us?”

  Simon shifted his stance. “I don’t really ski.”

  “Neither does Keith,” Boyce said with thinly hidden amusement. “Have you ever done it before?”

  “Two or three times when I was a kid.”

  “That’s all the experience you need,” Boyce replied. “Don’t worry about equipment. We’ll get you set up. I know a guy who can help you out. Plan on being there, okay? I don’t like excuses.”

  “You got it.”

  I held the door for Boyce as he walked out. He looked down at me and smiled. “Thank you, Maxine. Enjoy the rest of your day.”

  Simon lightly rested his arm across my shoulders as we watched Boyce remote start his fancy car and get into the front seat. He waved through the windshield.

  “I don’t know if this is a good idea,” I muttered, teeth clenched in a smile that didn’t feel genuine as we waved back. “You heard him. If he invests, he wants a say in what we do with the Lodge.”

  “So what?” Simon said. “He has good ideas. He can make this place into the number one tourist destination in Silver Creek. That means more money for us.”

  “Money that he’ll have a claim to. He’s basically offering to be our landlord.”

  Simon rolled his eyes. “You were worried about money, so I’m fixing the problem. Now you don’t like the way I’m fixing it?”

  “No, I—”

  “We still own the Lodge, Max,” he said. “Boyce can’t take that away from us. The profits are ours. So what if we have to host the Gentlemen’s Club or other community events every once in a while? What’s the harm in that?”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t want to host events.”

  He rubbed his eyes, and his voice grew softer. “I don’t want to argue about this anymore. After my lunch with Boyce, we can discuss his official offer. But just so you know, I plan on telling him yes.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” I demanded. “We bought this lodge with my savings. My publications are what got us here.”

  “I contributed!”

  “Not much,” I reminded him.

  He glared at me. “So we’re doing this? Arguing about every nickel and dime?”

  “If that’s what it takes to have a say here.” I couldn’t read his expression before he turned away from me.

  “You always have a say, Max,” he murmured, so softly. “That’s what worries me.”

  10

  Since we weren’t talking, I didn’t bother to remind Simon about picking up my antidepressants. I’d go to the pharmacy alone, while he was out skiing with Boyce and the rest of the Gentlemen’s Club.

  As if to clarify we were in a fight, Simon slept on the couch in the lobby. I woke to a cold bed and an empty heart. I alternated between getting mad at Simon for the decisions he made without me and missing him terribly. The back and forth was starting to get to me.

  When I persuaded myself to come out from under the covers, I found Simon huddled beneath a small throw blanket that didn’t cover his entire body. His bare feet poked off the end of the couch. I fetched another blanket from our room and laid it on top of him, but he woke up abruptly.

  “What time is it?” he mumbled, bleary with exhaustion. “I’m supposed to meet Boyce at the slopes at nine.”

  “It’s eight-thirty,” I told him.

  He threw off the new blanket, nearly whipping me with it as he rolled off the couch. “Shit, I’m going to be late. Can you get my snow pants? They’re on the radiator in the entranceway.”

  “They’re not there,” I called to him a moment later.

  “Where did you put them?” he hollered back.

  “I didn’t touch them!”

  He stumbled into the room, trying to lace his snow boots and zip his coat at the same time. He wore jeans instead. “If you didn’t touch them, where did they go? I left them to dry there.”

  “It’s not my job to watch over your clothes.”

  “Some would beg to differ, considering your role as a wife,” he snapped back. Right after the words came out of his mouth, the rage dropped out of his expression. “I am so sorry. That was an awful thing to say. You know you mean more to me than—”

  “Here,” I said shortly, shoving his winter hat at him. “Stay warm.”

  He leaned in, aiming to kiss me on the cheek, but I turned my head. Chagrined, he stepped past me. On the porch, as I was about to close the door behind him, he said, “I love you.”

  The door snapped shut before I could reply. I stood in the hallway until I heard the car start up and rumble out of the front yard. Then I let out a long sigh.

  “Good morning, Max.”

  Lily, as was her habit, had appeared at the bottom of the staircase as if she’d just woken up and was on her way down for breakfast when she happened to eavesdrop on mine and Simon’s fights. I hadn’t seen her in person since my hallucination last night.

  “Lily!”

  I ran up the steps and threw my arms around her, hugging her tightly to me. I inhaled deeply, taking in her familiar metallic and musky scents. At once, the empty part of my head—where my emotions normally sat—began to fill.

  “You’re okay,” I said, squeezing her shoulders as if to make sure she was really there.

  “That remains to be seen,” she teased. “Are you okay?”

  She led me to the couch, and we sat in the warm spot Simon had recently vacated. I held the blanket up to my nose. Like Lily, he had a very specific smell—cinnamon and fresh snow—but I couldn’t catch it like I usually did. The blanket smelled of nothing but dust.

  “I miss him,” I muttered, kneading the blanket.

  “Simon? He hasn’t even been gone for five minutes.”

  “No, I miss the old him, the old us,” I clarified. “We never used to fight like this. I don’t know what’s happening between us, and it scares me.”

  Lily wore a look of guilt. “It’s not you.”

  “It’s him?” I guessed. “That’s selfish, don’t you think? Relationships should be about both people.”

  “No, it’s not you or him,” Lily said, though that didn’t make things any c
learer. “It’s the situation. It’s this place.”

  “The Lodge?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, yeah. Of course it is.” I wiped a stray tear before it could roll down my cheek. “It’s a lot of stress. Financially, physically, and emotionally. This whole thing with Boyce—”

  “That’s not what I meant, either—wait, what thing with Boyce?” she asked.

  “He wants to invest in the Lodge,” I told her. “We estimated how much this place was going to cost us to renovate before we bought it. Naturally, we lowballed ourselves. Boyce is willing to give up thousands of dollars, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to let someone as powerful as Boyce have such a huge impact on our main source of income.”

  “I agree with you one hundred percent,” she said firmly.

  My chin wobbled. “You do?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I know everyone in town loves Boyce, and he does a lot of Silver Creek, but it’s important to have boundaries. If you don’t trust him not to be overbearing, go with your gut. Besides, I know things about Boyce that would send shivers down your spine.”

  Just the phrase itself made me wriggle in discomfort. “Like what?”

  Lily’s eyes darkened if that was even possible. She seemed far away when she answered. “Let’s just say he’s not who the town thinks he is.”

  “I’d already guessed that,” I said. “No one with that much money and so willing to part with it is innocent. He has to have an agenda with the Lodge, right?”

  She nodded emphatically. “He definitely has an agenda, and it’s not helping you and Simon become successful business owners.”

  “That settles it then,” I said. “I’m telling Simon I don’t want him to invest.”

  “Beware an argument,” Lily warned. “Simon isn’t going to take it well, especially if Boyce is getting on his good side. Free money is hard to turn down.”

  “But it’s not really free,” I pointed out.

  “Simon doesn’t understand that.” She tugged a piece of paper out of my pajama pants. “What’s this? You’re taking antidepressants?”