Free The Woman in the Wall by Patrice Kindl

a panic, Elaine," Mr. Albright said grumpily. "You are—very odd about this house. And this, as I've said before and will no doubt say again, is an odd house.
Very
odd, in fact."
    Mother was silent for a moment. Then she sighed deeply and said, "I'm sorry, Frank. I'm all on edge today. I'm sure you're right; it's nothing more than a mouse inside the walls."
    "Well, for goodness' sake, woman, don't sound so tragic about it. We'll put down some poison and get rid of it."
    "No!" she said sharply. "No, I don't want to do that, just in case."
    "Just in case what?"
    "Nothing. I'm sorry, Frank, I really am. About everything." Her voice faded out on 'everything,' and I concluded that she had left the room.
    "Elaine?" he called after her, his voice sounding a little forlorn.
    Ha! Let him suffer.
    "We'll have dinner." Her voice came back to us from afar. "Wait while I dress."
    I gnashed my teeth.
    "Elaine?" he called. After several moments went by without a response, I heard him fling himself into an armchair, making a disgruntled noise that sounded something like a cross between gargling and growling.
    "Aarrghh!"
    I leaned back down and peered through my peephole. He was back sitting in my father's chair again. And as if in mimicry of my poor vanished father, he had barricaded himself behind a newspaper.
    I crouched there staring at him, unblinking, until my eye teared with the strain and my limbs stiffened and creaked. I didn't care; I didn't feel it. A murderous rage sang in my blood and roared in my ears. I knew at last what it was to hate without fear or restraint.

Ten
    So
this
was what had been brewing behind my back. How deceitful my family was, how sly!
    They must, each and every one of them, be aware of this ... this conspiracy. If F, a mere visitor to the house, knew, my sisters must. When F said that Mother and Mr. Albright were getting serious, he meant that they were thinking of getting married.
    And no one else had thought to mention it to me. I could not imagine a situation that more directly threatened my happiness and security. My mother feared my death by fire; how much more merciful that would be than this!
    The fact that my mother had refused so firmly did not comfort me very much. I saw how quickly she gave in about going out to dinner and a movie with this interloper. How much longer would she hold out against marriage? She was saying no now; would she still be saying no tomorrow?
    And there was something else about my mother's manner that disturbed me. When she agreed with Mr. Albright that the noise they had heard was nothing more than a mouse in the walls, she sounded like she meant it. Yet she must have known it was me; that was why she tried to steer Mr. Albright away from the walls and denied that there was anything to hear.
    So why did she sound so sad when she finally conceded that my involuntary cry was only a rodent squeaking? And what did she mean by refusing to put down poison "just in case"? Just in case I was still here and might eat it by mistake? Why on earth
wouldn't I
still be here? Where else could I be?
    I felt more and more uneasy as I thought about it. She had wasted no time in having my father presumed dead as soon as the law allowed. Just because no one had laid eyes on him for seven years, Mother and the District of Columbia, where he had disappeared, had been prepared to scratch him off the list of the living. That apparently put an end to any obligation Mother felt toward her husband. After all, here she was, a bare eleven years after his disappearance, being wined and dined by other men and listening to their marriage proposals.
    I began gnawing nervously at my fingernails with my teeth. How many years did New York State require to elapse before death could be presumed? Would it be a longer or shorter time than Washington, D.C., I wondered? We had a book that would tell me, but it was on the library shelf, and that awful man was still in there.
    I would have to wait him out. I