Deja’s face fell. “What does it look like?”
“Like something gross. Puss…or molasses?” Sabrina wondered what Deja was getting at. “Is there asbestos in this house?”
Deja composed herself. “No, of course not. You think I’d put your lives at risk?”
“I don’t know what you would and wouldn’t do. You fed my haunted story to Tristan. Why not throw a bunch of beauty queens into a house ruined with asbestos? Sure sounds like something a producer would stoop to.”
Deja took two fast steps, then was right in Sabrina’s face, her hot breath coming down on Sabrina’s wine-warmed cheeks.
“I wouldn’t hurt you,” she said. “That’s a step too far.”
“And the story?”
“Tristan is dumb as a doornail. I give him good stories. So what? If you married him, he’d steal your stories all the damn time.”
Sabrina relaxed. “It wasn’t to provoke me?”
“Oh, honey.” Deja grinned like a madwoman. “That’s all anyone in this business is ever going to do to sweet women like you. Your only way out of being poked and prodded? Give in to the wild side on your own. No prodding necessary.” She winked. “Unless you’d like a little prodding. I hear he’s not so bad in bed, that low-rent John Wayne.”
“John Wayne was a terrible racist.”
“Ha!” Deja gestured for Sabrina to follow down the hall. “Your boy Tristan has his fucked-up ideals, I’m sure.”
“The fuck?” Sabrina said, but Deja was too far past to hear as she disappeared around a corner. Sabrina followed, but all the doors were closed, and no light peeked out from underneath. The hair rose on her arms. The weird old place was getting to her. She touched a doorknob, ready to turn it and see if the door led to the parlor, but instead of laughter, inside she heard a high-pitched whine, like a scream turned to too high a frequency. She pushed the door open and stepped inside, ready to rescue Marion from whatever spider had crawled across her chest, but the room was empty and dark.
She started to turn back when the lights flickered on. They were electric. She breathed a sigh of relief at the hum of electricity. Some areas of the house were wired, but they’d been instructed to rely on the gas lamps for ambiance.
The room was a blank expanse of wood walls and floors. Sabrina spun in its center. If a camera entered, it would capture a brilliant shot of her: carefree, a perfect specimen of femininity. Strong-willed enough to hold her own against the cowboy, but demure enough that she’d make him feel special. She imagined the teaser for the season, her spinning right in the middle. The room moved around her as her thoughts traveled from the idea of being watched until she was just Sabrina. She laughed out loud. For one moment, she didn’t want to be a wife. She wanted to be this: a woman spinning in a room of her own.
She stopped, shook herself, and uttered a silent apology to her mother’s memory, to her sister back at home waiting for her to win this thing.
The air thinned, and she doubled over to keep herself from falling dizzy to the floor. When she stood back up, a woman stepped out of the wall.
Sabrina screamed, but she was still alone. She narrowed her eyes; the woman hadn’t stepped out. Instead, her outline pressed itself from inside the wood, as though she was trapped inside. By the time Sabrina pressed her shaking hand to the wall, the wood was smooth again.
She pursed her lips until all the blood fled from them. She was seeing things. Hallucinating. She’d need to be more careful. The last thing she needed was to faint in front of Tristan. Weak women couldn’t work farmland with the man of their dreams.
But as she flexed her fingers against the wall, they sunk into it. A panicked wave moved through her, followed by her mantra: I’m a rational woman. I’m a rational woman. On shows like these, producers did everything in their power to control situations. Determination settled in her twisting gut; there had to be a trick to it. Some secret compartment behind the wall where the producers stood and made puppets of themselves. She stepped back. Deja would be cleaning the goo for a while yet. She needed to find the trick.
• • •
Sabrina was no architect, but she understood that the wall had another side somewhere. She opened the door to the hall and peeked out. She didn’t want to be scolded, but the coast was clear. As she snuck through the passageway, she kept one hand against the wall, feeling her way along. Finally, her hands landed on a part that felt less than solid. When she knocked, a hollow echo answered.
As she pressed her palms to it, it flexed like plywood painted to match the surroundings. When she pushed in harder, it met its stopping point, refusing to budge farther. She pressed into it again, pushing up, and the panel slid away from the floor into a secret slit in the ceiling. She ducked under and into a deeper dark.
Relief flooded her at the implication; trap doors meant tricks, and tricks meant that her rational mind was right. She felt her way through the secret area, wall surrounded by wall, until her fingers curved around a corner. She turned into another long stretch, then followed a straight, claustrophobic line until she felt a handle.
“Holy shit,” she muttered, then twisted it open.
It opened into a crawlspace. As her eyes adjusted, she noted the dirt floor. She climbed down a little ladder, and her feet landed on soft earth full of footprints. She made her way on hands and knees through the crawlspace, her back brushing against the underside of the floors, until suddenly, she felt air. She unfolded herself, standing at her full height, and took in the trick: someone had cut into the cross-beams a little hideaway, and as Sabrina stepped onto the platform inside the wall, she felt the softened give of something other than wood. Her hand left an imprint in the strange material.
She laughed as she listened through the thin substance; a mechanical hum, like the hum in the empty room. She was a rational woman after all. As she pulled away, she heard another sound: voices, Tristan’s and Deja’s and Marion’s, an echo. Her heart rate picked back up. She stepped away, back into the dirt, then hurried back through the secret passage.
• • •
“Everything okay?” Tristan asked when Sabrina entered the parlor.
“Fine,” she said. “Just fine.” And she let him wrap his arms around her shoulder and pull her to him. Together, they fell back onto the couch as Deja ordered Tatum to throw away the rags she’d dirtied while cleaning and then patch the hole in the wall.
“Old pipes,” Deja said to the cast, shrugging as she shut the door behind her.
Chapter Eleven
Linda
Back in the parlor, Sabrina and Marion had seized the opportunity granted them by the absence of two competitors to get an edge in with Tristan. They sat on either side of him on one of the raggedy couches, sipping wine and giggling.
“What did we miss?” Charity said as they entered the room.
“I’m calling the game,” Tristan said. “You and Marion win.”
“Yes!” Marion yelled.
“Congratulations.” Sabrina pursed her lips.
“No surprise there.” The pink goo had been cleaned off, the wall patched good as new. “Did you guys figure out what that stuff was?” The smell had dissipated a little, but Linda would have to suck it up for the evening.
“No clue,” Sabrina said. “Maybe you hit a dead mouse trapped in the wall? Maybe it’s weird sap. Deja said old pipes.”
