“It seems to me that you’re the one with the attitude,” Brice said. “She’s gone out of her way to be nice to you.”

“Riiiighhhht,” Drue said, swabbing at the sink with a sponge to avoid meeting the hurt look on his face. “Just forget I said anything. Bad joke.”

He drained the rest of his beer and threw the bottle into the trash. “Drue? If you and Wendy are going to continue to work together, you two need to call a truce with this bullshit. Whatever happened all those years ago, it’s all in the past. Time to get over yourself and move on.”

She set her half-finished beer on the countertop. “Great advice in theory. Maybe you should suggest the same thing to her.”

He sighed and threw his hands in the air. “I give up. I’ll see you Monday.”

9

After Brice left, she resumed cleaning. A late afternoon squall brought heavy rain and a welcome drop in the temperature. When she went into the kitchen she noticed a puddle of water on her newly cleaned floor.

Drue looked up at the ceiling. A large wet blotch the size of a dinner plate had formed in the plaster, and as she stared at it, another drop of water fell on her forehead.

Another roof leak! She sighed heavily and walked into the narrow hallway, reaching up for the cord that dangled from the ceiling and yanking, hard, until the pull-down attic stairs unfolded with a loud squeak from rust and disuse. She went back to the kitchen and fetched the heavy flashlight she’d unearthed from Papi’s shed, switching it on to make sure that the new batteries she’d installed were working.

As she climbed the ladder she felt a growing sense of dread. She’d never liked dark places. She’d never lived in any other place in Florida that even had an attic. Or a basement. The attic at Coquina Cottage she knew only from her grandfather’s occasional forays, when he’d climb up to set and retrieve rat traps, prompted only by Nonni’s insistence that she’d heard ominous scratching sounds in the kitchen coming from overhead.

“Okay, rats,” she called loudly, right before she reached the top rung of the ladder. “I’m coming up, so you better get gone.”

She listened carefully, ready to beat a hasty retreat at the first suspicious squeak. But all she heard was the steady, ominous drip of water coming from the roof. She popped her head through the attic floor and swung the flashlight in a wide arc. The attic was almost unbearably hot, and dank-smelling.