Free The Woman in the Wall by Patrice Kindl Page A

climbed into my armchair and wrapped the quilt tightly around my body until I resembled a butterfly's cocoon. How long, I asked myself with rising dread, had it been since anyone had last seen
me?

    Five years. That was all the time New York deemed necessary before death could be presumed.
    The hateful man and my mother had gone out together alone and unchaperoned to eat, drink, and be merry, leaving me to read the law and reflect upon my fate.
    After five measly little years of non-appearance, the good people of New York State would decide you were no longer among the living and issue a death certificate with your name on it. The legal system seemed to me to be positively panting for the opportunity to start shovelling dirt onto your grave.
    Let this be a warning to you not to retire to the privacy of your room for a spell of meditation and self-communion, or the next thing you know you'll be reading your obituary in the newspaper.
    My mother and my oldest sister had not seen me for seven years.
    Kirsty had seen me now and then, but not for at least three years. All of those sightings were extremely brief, and none occurred after she was over nine years old. Would the law take the word of a twelve-year-old who wasn't really sure but who thought she
might
have seen her sister out of the corner of her eye three years ago?
    The book in which I read about presumption of death also volunteered the information that a diligent search must be made for the missing person before he or she can be declared deceased. I tried to imagine what it would be like, being diligently sought after by the authorities.
    I squeezed my eyes shut and curled up into a ball, whimpering softly to myself.
    They would tear down my walls and lay bare my secret life.
    Of course they would. My family might not be certain, but they must suspect that I had retreated into the walls, and they would tell that to the people who came to look for me.
    The authorities, whom I now pictured as large beefy men with tattoos, leather jackets, and chains, could not possibly fit into my passageways, the big apes, even if they could find the entrance. No, they would have to smash their way in. They'd come after me with sledgehammers and crowbars and great, gleaming axes.
    After a few moments of whining, snivelling panic, I regained control. Stop it, I commanded myself. Don't be ridiculous! Maybe my family hadn't been seeing much of me recently, but they had plenty of evidence of my presence, didn't they? Think of all the things I did for them: the snacks prepared, the clothing sewed, the repairs made to our mutual home.
    But then I thought uncomfortably of how little I had been doing for the last few years. Immediately after the onset of adolescence, I was too depressed to do anything but feel sorry for myself and then, once I snapped out of my dejection, the house was too full of Andrea's friends for me to make much progress on repairs.
    Frantically I tried to recall something, anything I had done lately that would prove my existence. Nothing. There was nothing. I had been angry with my family, believing that they had chased F away. The tuxedo I started for Andrea lay in ruins in a corner. The only gifts I had made for anyone in years were the cookies and western shirt presented to F.
    F! F could tell them I was here! F could...
    No, he couldn't. F thought I was Andrea.
    I burst into tears. At first, out of force of habit, I wept silently, but then, in the extremity of my misery, I began to sob aloud, then to wail, a thin, keening sound like the wind in the chimney. What did I care who heard me? They didn't even believe that I existed anymore.
    Even if my family didn't get the authorities to tear down my walls, they were going to move away and leave me. Mother would marry that Frank Albright. And then they would SELL THE HOUSE. With me in it.
    Such a horrible possibility had never occurred to me before. I knew, of course, that people did buy and sell houses. After all, Father