Welcome Home, Sarah.

"Who is in my room? answer me! Who is there?". I asked again.

Silence.

I stood in the bathroom doorway dripping onto the wooden floor, both hands gripping the doorframe, heart going so fast I could feel it behind my eyes. The darkness was total and absolute and something was in my room and I could not see a single thing.

My survival instinct kicked in before my brain did.

I spun back into the bathroom and roamed my hands across every surface I could reach — until my fingers closed around the towel I'd seen hanging earlier. I wrapped it around my body, tight and fast, and then my hand found the toilet brush in its holder by the base of the sink.

I picked it up.

It was a toilet brush. I was aware of that. It was not a weapon, but I was also a woman alone in a dark room in a house in the middle of nowhere, with a stranger on the other side of this door, and I was not going down without a fight.

I drew a breath. And launched myself out of the bathroom in one move, the brush raised above my head...

The candlelight hit me first.

A single flame, warm and steady, held by a woman who looked to be in her sixties. In her other hand, held out toward me with the patience of a woman who had been waiting, was my robe.

She was smiling.

I stood in the middle of my bedroom in a towel with a toilet brush raised over my head, breathing like I'd just run a flight of stairs, staring at a smiling woman holding a candle and my robe, and the two of us looked at each other for a long, extraordinary moment.

  "I could have broken your head open with this," I said. My voice was not as steady as I wanted it to be. "Do you understand that? I could have broken your head."

The woman's smile didn't move an inch.

 "How did you get in?" I demanded. "I locked that door. I specifically locked that door when I came in."

She stepped forward unhurriedly and held out the robe.

I snatched it from her, wrapped it around myself without taking my eyes off her, maintaining my distance, the toilet brush still in my hand because I hadn't decided I was done with it yet.

 "Well?" I said. "Are you going to answer me or are you just going to keep mute?"

She turned away from me.

I watched speechless, as she crossed the room to the window, set the candle carefully on the small table by the wall, and pushed the window open with both hands.

 "It gets very hot in here at night without the air conditioning," she said, over her shoulder, in the conversational tone of someone discussing the weather. "Especially this time of year."

I stared at the back of her head. "I asked you a question."

"The locks on these doors haven't worked properly in two years." She turned around and folded her hands in front of her, looking at me with warm, steady eyes. "Anyone can come in, I'm afraid. It's on the list of things that need fixing." 

"Who are you?"

"Alice." She said it simply, like it settled everything. "I've been with the estate five years. I looked after your aunt in her last months."

Something in her expression shifted. "She was a remarkable woman. I was glad to be with her at the end." She clasped her hands together, moment passing. "Dinner is ready. I came to tell you."

I looked at her. Then at the candle. Then back at her. "Dinner?" I repeated.

"Yes."

"You came to tell me about dinner." I held up the toilet brush between us. "While I was in the bath."

"I did knock," Alice said, pleasantly. "Twice."

I put the toilet brush down on the dresser because there was nowhere else to put it and pinched the bridge of my nose. "What happened to the power, Alice?"

"Ah. The vineyard draws a great deal of electricity. So the supply runs from nine in the morning to nine at night. After that we use candles and oil lamps." She tilted her head. "Norman usually warns new residents before they settled in."

"Of course he does," I said. "Of course. Norman." I laughed. "So the power cut off in the middle of my bath because of Norman. Nothing has gone right since I laid eyes on that man. Not one single thing."

I caught something in Alice's expression.

"Do I still have soap on my face?" I asked, touching my cheek.

"No," she said. And then she just looked at me. Looked at me in the careful way that people looked when they were comparing something in their mind to something in front of their eyes. 

"What?" I said.

"Nothing." She shook her head slowly. "It's just... you look so much like her."

I went quiet.

"Your aunt Margaret." She said the name with the softness of someone handling something precious.

"The resemblance is remarkable." She was quiet for a moment. "She talked about you, you know. Right up until the end. The niece she hadn't seen in twenty years. She had a photograph of you both. You must have been about seven or eight... it's on her bedside table." She paused. "She never moved it."

I didn't say anything.

"Her room is still as she left it," Alice continued. "When you're settled, I'd love to take you in there. Show you her things. I think you'd—"

"I don't think that's a good idea." The words came out faster than I intended, but I didn't take them back. "There's a lot I'm not ready to revisit."

Alice straightened, the moment folding itself away as efficiently as it had arrived. "Get dressed and come down," she said, already moving toward the door. "You're keeping everyone waiting."

"Everyone?" I said. "Who is everyone? It's nine o'clock at night—"

But she was already gone.