BEHIND THOSE DOORS

The key stuck in the lock, just like it always had. Claire remembered fighting with this same lock when she was eight, standing on her toes to reach it. She jiggled the key the way her grandmother used to, a little lift, a little turn and the door finally opened with a creak.

She stood in the doorway for a second before going in. The moving truck was still running behind her in the driveway. The house smelled exactly the way she remembered, Lemon cleaner and old wood, and something else underneath that she could never quite name. It just smelled like Grandma’s house.

She stepped inside.

The furniture was still there, covered in sheets in a few spots, like someone had started cleaning up and then stopped. Claire dropped her bag in the hallway and stood still for a moment, listening. The house wasn’t exactly quiet. Old houses never were. She could hear the wood creaking, a radiator ticking somewhere, wind slipping through a window that didn’t quite close all the way.

I’m fine, she told herself.

She’d been telling herself that a lot lately. Ever since the phone call from her mom.Ever since the funeral.Ever since sitting in a lawyer’s office listening to him talk about “the estate” and “what your grandmother wanted.” She was fine. She just needed a change of scenery. A break from her job. And now she had a whole house to deal with, which was as good a reason as any to get away for a while.

She started in the kitchen because kitchens were easy. Same chipped mugs. Same mismatched plates. Each one gave her a small pang of memory. She moved into the living room next, where her grandmother’s reading chair still sat by the window, turned toward the light like someone might walk in any second and sit down with a book.

Claire kept walking. Down the hallway, past the bathroom, past what used to be her mom’s old room, past the guest room where Claire had slept every summer as a kid. Family photos lined the walls, dozens of them, slightly crooked in their frames. She slowed down to look at a few. There she was at six years old, missing a tooth, sunburnt, sitting on her grandmother’s lap on the porch steps. And there was her grandmother, much younger than Claire had ever actually seen her, standing next to a man Claire didn’t recognize.

She kept going.

The hallway felt longer than she remembered. That was probably normal, places always seemed different when you came back as an adult. Still, she caught herself counting the doors as she passed them, an old habit from childhood. Bathroom. Mom’s room. Guest room. And then, right at the end, past a small bend in the hallway, a door she didn’t remember at all.

She stopped in front of it.

It looked like any other door;same white paint, a little yellow with age, same brass doorknob. But when she reached out and turned it, nothing happened. Locked.

She frowned and tried again. Still nothing.

Probably just storage, she thought. The thought came so easily that she didn’t stop to notice something strange in all her years of visiting this house, she’d never once wondered what was behind this door. She let her hand drop and kept walking, already thinking about the boxes waiting outside in the truck. She filed the locked door away in the back of her mind. Not important right now.

By the time the movers left and the sun had dipped low, turning the living room gold, Claire was too tired to think about doors at all. She made up the guest bed with sheets that still smelled faintly like cedar, ate a granola bar standing in the kitchen because she’d forgotten to buy groceries, and fell asleep almost right away. The strange, familiar sounds of the house settled around her like something she remembered instead of something she was actually hearing.

She woke up once, a little after midnight, to what she told herself was just the wind. A soft sound, more felt than heard, coming from somewhere down the hallway.

She didn’t get up to check.

By morning, she wouldn’t really remember hearing anything at all.