If you want to be Silas’s wife, you take care of his mess, or you get back on the plane to Ohio.
The wind howled through the canyon, rattling the old windows. Inside, the house grew colder with every passing minute.
The air conditioner, long dead, was not the problem. The true enemy was the creeping cold of the October night.
I’d tried the gas stove again. Nothing. The pilot light was out, the knobs stiff and unresponsive. The water faucets in the kitchen and bathrooms gurgled once, then stayed silent.
Victoria hadn’t just cut the phone lines. She was systematically stripping away every comfort, every basic utility.
Eli watched me, a grim confirmation in his eyes. “No gas. No water. She wants us out.”
“She thinks we’ll freeze,” I muttered, rubbing my arms. My breath misted in the air. “Or starve.”
A memory surfaced: my own father, a carpenter by trade, teaching me how to split firewood, how to build a fire from nothing but kindling and determination.
“Where’s the garage?” I asked Eli.
He pointed to a detached structure behind the main house. “It’s full of old film props. Victoria keeps it locked.”
I found a rusty crowbar in the pantry and Eli, surprisingly, didn’t argue when I motioned for him to follow. The garage door creaked open, revealing a dusty cavern filled with forgotten movie magic. Cardboard cutouts of monsters, fake ancient pillars, crates of plastic weaponry.
And, thankfully, stacks of discarded wooden pallets.
“These are perfect,” I said, a plan forming.
The younger children, bundled in their thin blankets, huddled together in the grand, drafty living room. Toby, the youngest, shivered despite Maya wrapping an extra blanket around him.
I went to work, the rhythmic *thud* of the crowbar breaking the stillness as I pried apart the wooden pallets. My hands ached, but the memory of my father’s steady hands, teaching me to respect the wood, pushed me forward.
Eli watched, then surprisingly picked up a smaller piece of wood and began breaking it into kindling.
“We need a fire,” I told him. “A real one. Something that will last.”
He nodded, a flicker of something in his eyes that wasn’t just suspicion. It was a small, fragile seed of cooperation.
We cleared the debris from the enormous, soot-stained fireplace in the living room. It hadn’t been used in years. Soon, a small flame began to dance, growing steadily, crackling as the dry wood caught.
The heat was a slow, welcome embrace. The children instinctively gravitated towards it, their faces softening in the warm glow.
“But we still need water,” Maya said, her voice small. She pointed to a painting on the wall, a pastoral scene of the Topanga hills. “There’s a well.”
“A well?” I asked, surprised.
“Behind the guest house,” she clarified. “My mom, Silas’s first wife, used to take us there sometimes. Before Victoria took over everything.”
She led me out into the cold night, past the guest house, to a small, overgrown patch of garden. Hidden beneath a tangle of jasmine vines, a rusted iron pump handle jutted from the ground.
It was almost completely concealed. Victoria’s team, in their haste to cut off all obvious utilities, had clearly overlooked it.
I grabbed the handle and pumped. At first, only a dry cough of air. Then, with a groan, water gushed out, cold and clear, splashing onto the parched earth.
Maya’s small face broke into a tentative smile. For the first time, I saw a hint of the childhood she should have had.
We had heat. We had water. We wouldn’t freeze or starve tonight. Not yet.
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