The Dining Room

“I need this sale,” she says into her phone while unlocking the front door of the Somerset home. “The money will mean I can finally put a down payment on a house of my own.”

“That’s huge, sis, it is, but don’t you hate working with people like that?”

“Look, if selling obnoxious houses like this means I get an obnoxious commission to match, I can manage a spoiled child like the owner of this place.”

“Didn’t she just lose her parents?”

She pauses at the question.

She wants to hate herself for judging the now parentless 23-year-old Harper Somerset, but the girl has only cared about the money every time they have spoken. It has been pretty easy to overlook the circumstances that led to this house being prepared for listing.

“Um, yeah. That is sad,” she finally responds, “but she had a whole crew clear out this house today, and she is selling or tossing basically everything just days after the funeral. Who does that?”

The speed of all this is why Sarah Bauer currently finds herself standing in a grand entryway, after her usual work hours, to do a walkthrough of this now-empty house. She doesn’t register what her brother is saying. Her focus is on the beauty of the intricate crown moulding before her and the sculpted wooden railing leading upstairs.

It’s not a modern-looking house by any means, but that adds to its charm and character. The modern luxury comes in with all the smart home features at the ready to be programmed by new owners. She is thankful the light switches are functioning like normal right now, though, with just a click rather than a voice command or something.

Her awe must be coming through loud and clear over the phone.

“The grass is always greener on the other side, Sarah,” he says.

“Yeah, yeah,” she says, “but the grass is pretty damn green over here. I can’t understand what a family of three would even do with this much space. It’s so damn wasteful… But I’m sure it was a fairytale growing up here.”

Once she finally ends the call, she focuses on scanning the kitchen as it's the closest space. The appliances are all high-grade, and she can’t even begin to imagine the parties that were hosted here. Her one-bedroom apartment is basically the same size as this room alone.

She could not be more different than the Somersets, especially since she works for every damn thing in her life. No handouts for her or her siblings. They were taught to figure things out for themselves, and she is proud of what she has accomplished. She would never want a house as frivolous as this, that’s for sure, even if she could afford it.

Sarah finishes up in the kitchen and opens a pocket door while looking at her phone. It leads to what she believes is the dining room. It had been locked when she had first been shown around the house by Harper, and the girl hadn’t bothered to find the key. At least it is unlocked now. She reaches her hand around the wall to turn on the lights and jumps back, letting out a weird yelp, as she looks up and her eyes adjust.

Harper Somerset is lying across a huge dining table below a chandelier, arm laid across her eyes like she is sunbathing at the beach, and only flinches slightly at all the commotion. Sarah clutches her chest, picks up her dropped phone, all while keeping her eyes on the girl, who is at least breathing. Dealing with a dead body is definitely not what she needs right now.

“What the hell is going on here?” she asks and scrunches her nose at the stale air in the room.

The girl laughs while lifting her arm off her face and waving it in a half-hearted circle. Some dust flies free from the motion and catches in the light as it looks for a new place to settle.

“Look around. Nothing has happened here in a long time,” Harper says.

Sarah could leave. She could just back out of the room and leave, but she knows that would be a crazy choice. She does want to, but this girl is obviously struggling. Or on drugs? She has never gotten high in her life, so she doesn’t really know the signs.

Letting out a sigh, she drops her belongings on an ornate apothecary-looking piece of furniture and decides to engage. She’s about to ask more questions as she pulls up a chair by Harper’s side, but her attention goes to the dust she slides her elbows through.

It’s gross, and she tries to shake it off, but it makes it worse. She waves her hands in front of her face and takes in the room. The very much not packed-up room. Then her eyes scan over the girl. Smears of dust coat her tailored pants from where she must have tried to wipe her hands clean after climbing up.

She feels Harper’s eyes focus on her right as she clocks the knife resting in the girl's hand. It’s a butter knife, not as scary as it could be, but a knife nonetheless. Harper is stroking her thumb back and forth over it.

“Um, really, what the hell—”

“Oh, calm down,” the girl says. “Nothing is going on here. Seriously. Have a look around.”

Sarah should probably be more concerned about the knife than she actually is now that her initial reaction has subsided. It’s not sharp by any means, so curiosity gets the better of her. She pushes away from the table to wander and finds herself mesmerized by the china cabinet.

A delicate floral pattern covers every kind of dish she can imagine. Crystal glassware catches the light in its own intricate patterns made with ridges and grooves. A couple of vases sit along the bottom shelf alongside tall-stemmed wine glasses and some weird copper mugs.

There is more dust along the top of the cabinet, everywhere in the room, really, but not inside it. Everything has been protected. She pulls open one of the glass doors and grabs a teacup by its impractical swirling handle.

She barely catches the rustling of Harper finally rolling off the table and walking closer to her. She turns quickly, ready to go into combat with her teacup weapon of choice, but thankfully, the knife has been left behind.

Harper opens a shadow box hanging on the wall that displays a large collection of silver spoons. Each one has unique fancy handles with emblems embedded in some and sculptural animals at the tips of others. She watches the girl run her hand over them carefully, but if Sarah thought caressing these or the knife while lying on the table was odd behaviour, she was sorely mistaken.

The girl methodically pulls the spoons out one by one and licks them before dropping them to the floor. It’s as if she’s eating pudding and trying to get every last bit off the spoon before moving on to her next snack.

Is this grief? she thinks.

She’s read about it manifesting in weird ways, and although the licking is definitely weird as hell, she thinks maybe this is Harper savouring the moments had in this room or something. The process goes on for a while, and this concocted narrative in Sarah’s head endears her to the girl for a moment.

“I was never allowed to touch any of the shit in this room,” Harper says after dropping another spoon to the floor. “Especially not my grandmother’s fucking spoons.”

Okay, so not a heartwarming gesture.

“Oh, um,” Sarah tries desperately to think of something to say while still trying to make sense of what is happening. “The collection was just decor, then?”

“Everything in this house was fucking decor. Everything for show,” Harper says as she waves her current spoon around the room. “Everything was carefully designed to show the perfect and most put-together family for any guests who dared to enter.”

She thinks back to when she first walked in. “But nothing has happened in this room for a while? No parties or, like, family dinners? For a birthday?”

“Ha! Celebrating my birthday? Fuck, no. Who would I have invited? Everyone hates me, and I learned at the funeral that everyone hated my parents, too.”

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“Nobody fucking came!” the girl snaps. “This room shows how delusional my parents were about their high society life. This fucking room where a dinner for three was not worthy of being had…”

Harper pushes past her to grab a short glass and rifles through a little bar cart. Beautiful brass details shine when it rolls slightly, and the girl grabs a glass bottle filled with a pale amber liquid.

Can alcohol go bad? Sarah thinks as more dust flies free.

Harper doesn’t drink it, though. The girl isn’t interacting with anything in this room in a normal way, so why wouldn’t she place the glass on the table and carefully overfill it? Harper looks like a scientist at eye level with a beaker and stops pouring once the liquid begins barely dribbling over the rim. It creates a perfect ring on the smooth wood. She watches her lift it to admire the mark, and begin stamping it along the surface to make more.

“Drop that teacup,” Harper says.

Sarah jumps at the sudden focus on her. “Oh, I’m sorry, I was just looking, I didn’t—”

“Drop the fucking cup,” Harper says more forcefully, “and watch it smash to pieces on this scratch-free fucking floor.”

The grown-up part of her doesn’t want to indulge in this childish behaviour, and the realtor part of her definitely doesn’t want to scuff up the floor, but she can’t help being tempted. As mesmerized as she always is by rich people's clutter, she despises it all. She wants to join in on the f-you antics.

So she drops it.

It’s not a satisfying smash at all because it wasn’t a very high drop. It kind of just cracks. So Harper hurls her glass of liquid at the wall, making Sarah shriek and then fold over laughing as shards fly everywhere and the liquid pools on the floor.

They both pile more dishes into their arms and let loose as they destroy piece after piece. Their laughter fills the space, but she realizes that Harper’s has an edge to it. She turns to look at her to see tears rolling down the girl's cheeks.

“Hey,” she tries to grab her attention while reaching for a cloth napkin. She stands directly in front of Harper, blocking her from throwing more at the wall. The girl drops what remains in her arms and looks around frantically. “Hey! Look, it’s fine. It’s going to be alright. Let’s calm down and take a brea—”

Then Harper is reaching for the knife. Sarah holds her hands out in front of her in some weak self-defense move, but the girl doesn’t come at her. Instead, she cries out triumphantly and stabs the knife right into the center of the table.

Then silence.

The relief on Harper’s face is short-lived as her hands drag through the dust, and she collapses to her knees by the table. She is sobbing uncontrollably. Sarah jumps into action, tugging on whatever minuscule maternal instinct she may have, and wraps the girl in her arms.

“Shh, it’s… It’s going to be alright.” Sarah runs a hand up and down her back as she uses the cloth to wipe the girl's face. It’s awkward, and she ends up kind of poking her rather than dabbing at the tears.

“God, I hate this house, but I couldn’t let them pack up this room,” Harper says as she regains control of herself. “This fucking tomb.”

“Why was this room locked last time I was here?”

Looking up at the ceiling, Harper rests her hands in her lap and takes a long, deep breath.

“My parents liked to fight it out in the kitchen, one of their few shared spaces in this house. They had separate bedrooms, bathrooms, offices… So when they crossed paths there, they fought.

“I took to hiding out in here until things calmed down. When my mom caught me one day, she grabbed me, fucking slapped me, and went on and on about the value of everything in this room.

“So, after that, she locked this all up, and because nobody important enough came over, everyone kind of forgot about it. You’ve seen the weird layout of this house; it was easy to overlook it, and the cleaners or whatever wouldn’t have questioned why it was locked.”

Sarah looks around the room again, but her movements make her wince, and she hears, feels, a crunch under her knees.

“Shit, Harper, c’mon, get up.” She pulls her up and guides her to the kitchen. There’s nothing to work with beyond running water there, though, so she grabs a wad of the napkins on their way out of the dining room.

The girl manages to lift herself onto the edge of the kitchen island, scooches around to get comfortable, and rolls up her pants. Waiting. Sarah lets the water run for a while to get it warm.

“I’m sorry…” she says under her breath.

“What the fuck are you sorry for?” Harper asks.

She thinks of her childhood home, sitting at the kitchen table, for birthdays and holidays, with friends and family. It was cluttered, and they had to pull up mismatched chairs, often using paper plates… But it was a home, and she now sees that this place, this palace, is just a house. The distinction has never felt so clear.

“I think the napkins are wet enough,” Harper says, startling her back to the present. She nods, wrings out the water, and tends to the scrapes on the girl's knees. At least her pants are high quality and haven’t torn, leaving them rather unscathed, all things considered. She rolls up her own very torn pants, brushes away the shards stuck to her, and holds pressure on the bit of bleeding with a fresh cloth.

“Look, you don’t have to pretend to be nice to me.”

Sarah flinches.

“I’ve been really unprofessional,” she says. An understatement to say the least.

“Yeah, well. At least we'll get a lot of money from this place.” Harper says as she hops off the counter and walks over to a window facing the backyard. “Hopefully, whoever moves in next can make some happy memories here.”

It’s not Sarah’s job to play therapist, but she wants to help in some way. She has been so mean to this girl. She wants to believe it's out of the goodness of her heart that she wants to help now, but, if she's being honest, it's about protecting her image and ensuring this girl doesn't badmouth her to anyone important. Maybe both can be true.

“Why don’t I call my brother? He has a truck and can probably come by soon, maybe even tonight if I ask nicely.” The idea forms clearly in her head, a plan that is cathartic, though less unhinged than stabbing the table, and will get rid of the evidence of their chaos. “We can all drag that hunk of wood out and be done with all the crap left in that room.”

“Your brother would be willing to help? Just like that?”

“Of course, he’s family.”

Now Harper flinches.

“Shit, sorry, um,” she doesn’t really know what else to say.

“It’s fine. That would… Thank you. That would be helpful. Sorry about scuffing up the floors. And the walls. That probably makes your job harder.”

Sarah shrugs.

“I had been going through and noting a bunch of things that need touching up before we list the place anyway.” She offers the girl a little smirk and continues, “This place is really fucking ugly.”

Harper chuckles, and her smile grows in the window reflection as she says, “Liar.”