Raya's Heritage Chapter Four

“We have to figure this thing out,” Raya declared, as they left the library.

“No kidding,” Bruce sighed.

“Yeah,” Connor said. “I mean what did Mom do?”

Julia whirled on her older brother, eyes blazing.

“How do you know it wasn’t Grandma Therisson’s fault?” she demanded.

Raya stopped. Her sister was tightly wound, every muscle in her body tensed for a fight. Connor held up his hands in a placating manner.

“That’s not what he meant,” Raya said.

“Then what did he mean?” Julia demanded, turning on her.

“Come on, Jules,” Bruce said, stepping in between her and Raya. “It’s a classic black sheep story. All the indicators are there. A bad fight, someone gets cut off, and everybody’s mad at them because of it.”

“That doesn’t mean Mom was in the wrong,” Julia said defensively, placing her hands on her hips.

“We’re not saying that,” Bruce frowned.

“Then tell me what you are saying, because I’m not hearing it,” Julia said.

“We don’t want to shift blame on Mom,” Bruce said. “We just want to know what happened and why. That’s it, Jules.”

Julia was silent as she mulled it over, looking back and forth between her brother and sister. Finally, she sighed.

“Okay,” she said.

Bruce smiled. Connor and Raya looked at each other.

“Nice going, bro,” Connor whispered in his ear. Bruce’s smile widened.

“So,” he said. “What’s our first move?”

“Whoa, whoa, wait. Move?” Connor asked.

“Yeah,” Julia said. “Move. We’ve got to figure this out, Connor.”

“But no moves,” Connor said. “Guys, this isn’t a spy game. Not like when we were kids. If you want to know anything, you should do like Uncle Chad told you to. Ask Mom.”

“But we can’t,” Julia protested. “Mom hasn’t told us yet, so what makes you think that she will now. Especially now. Especially after everything that happened. We can’t drudge that stuff up now. It’ll only hurt her further.”

“Then wait,” Connor said. “Wait for the right time. I’m not going to let you do…whatever it was that you were planning to do.”

“But we weren’t going to do much of anything at all,” Julia said unconvincingly.

Connor crossed his arms and stared at her until she bit her lip and looked away.

“Look, do what Dad told you. Explore the estate. I mean, look at it. This is an awesome place,” he waved his arms around the grand foyer.

Raya had to admit that she did want to see more of the mansion, but she also wanted to find out more about this fight between Grandma Therisson and Mom. She could tell Julia and Bruce did, too.

Which is why it came as a surprise when Julia sighed and said, “You’re right.”

Bruce opened his mouth to say something, but Julia shot him a scathing look. He shut it.

“Really?” Connor asked.

Julia nodded. “Yeah, well, you’re right. I don’t want to upset Mom. Besides, she’ll probably tell us when she’s ready.”

“Well, good,” Connor nodded. “Good.”

He stood there for a moment as if waiting for Julia to say more. When she didn’t, Connor sighed.

“I’m going to go look for Ryan,” he said. “Remember what I said, Julia. Don’t go snooping where you don’t belong.”

“You don’t trust me?” Julia asked innocently.

Connor just gave her the Look before heading out the front door. Julia watched him go. When the door closed, Bruce turned on his sister.

“We aren’t actually going to do what he said, right?” he asked.

“Of course we are,” Julia replied. Bruce opened his mouth, but she put a hand over it. “You never know when we might come across something while we’re ‘exploring,’” she added.

Raya rolled her eyes but smiled. She her sister could be terribly crafty, but they’d followed her lead before and she’d never steered them wrong. Besides, Julia was right. There were a lot of things to be discovered while exploring.

“Okay, remember the rules: don’t break anything and don’t do anything illegal,” Julia reminded them. “We’re not criminals.”

“Oh, and don’t forget, we only have the rest of today. Tomorrow is the funeral, remember?” Bruce added.

How could they forget? Raya wasn’t looking forward to attending that. She would do it for Mom, but going to a funeral of someone she barely knew was a little creepy.

“Okay,” said Julia. “Whoever finds Ryan first, tell him what went down and what our plan is.”

Raya nodded, but before they separated, Julia gave them one last order.

“And for sanity’s sake, remind Ryan to keep his big mouth shut. We don’t need Connor on our backs and we certainly don’t need Mom any more upset than she already is.”

~*~*~*~

While Julia and Bruce went their own way, Raya decided to start in the mansion. She might have gone back into the library to look at the books – at least three of the walls were covered in them – but when she and her siblings had left, Mr. White and Renee were still there. She didn’t want to search the shelves with them watching her, so she started opening doors in the foyer.

For an hour or so, Raya explored the mansion, peeking into rooms and out of windows. She began with the pair of doors beneath the stairs. It led to a massive ballroom with an empty bandstand and a small bar. On the other side, a door had been opened to allow fresh air and sunlight to brighten up the room. For just a moment, Raya was tempted to go outside and explore, but there were so many more places to see inside. She left it for later.

On the ground floor, she discovered a dining room, a kitchen, and a door to what Raya assumed was the basement. She didn’t go down, though. She could imagine the rats’ squeaks and cold drafts just fine from up here. She also found a small, unused study and three different living rooms, one with a lovely terrace that overlooked a garden in the back. Her favorite one, though, was a gold, white and green themed room that reminded her of winter turning into spring.

When that was done, Raya decided to head upstairs and explore there. She climbed up the stair case and stood on the balcony that overlooked the foyer. Looking down, she felt like a grand lady overseeing her property. She imagined the knights coming from their posts to bow before her. She blushed. The whole idea was a little foolish, but she lingered as she walked away, holding onto the feeling of being grand.

The halls split in three ways: to the right, to the left, and straight ahead. Carsen had said that the rooms for the Colt family were on the right, so she avoided them, not wanting to bother Mom and Dad. But then she realized that her extended family had to have rooms, too. Though most of them could be accounted for, there was one girl that Raya had no desire to meet, especially if she were caught snooping in her room. So then, the rooms were off limits completely. Raya eyed the hall that stretched out in front of her. There was only one door at the very end of the hall. Raya very much doubted that it was a bedroom. For one, the double doors didn’t seem all that practical for a room. The rest of the rooms down the halls were single. For another, it was centered in front of her as if it were important in some way.

Raya glanced down the halls to her left and right. No one was watching. She edged slowly down the hall and pushed the door open, revealing a large study. There was a big, oak wood desk in the middle of the room and heavy red drapes framed the open windows behind it. There weren’t as many books as Raya expected to find in a study, just one tall bookshelf pushed into the corner. To the right of the bookshelf was a small corner table with a floor lamp and two comfortable looking arm chairs.

It was cozy enough, but despite the sunlight filtering in through the windows, it was still dark. It was the walls which were painted a dark brown, and the furniture which followed the same theme. Raya circled around the desk, running her finger along its edge. She stopped when she noticed the picture. There was a young woman, a mother by the looks of it, standing over a baby’s crib. The baby was laughing, its big eyes crinkled and its mouth opened in a toothless grin. The mother was tickling her child with a finger, a soft smile playing on her lips. Raya could remember pictures like this one from her own mother’s picture album. Dad would be behind the camera while Mom held her newborn child, her green eyes alight with happiness.

Raya frowned. This was her grandmother’s mansion, and so her grandmother’s study. Raya had no doubt that Grandmother Therisson loved her kids when they were little, but Raya seriously doubted that the picture was of her mother. That thought alone messed with her feelings.

She set the picture back down on the desk with a little more force than was probably necessary. The frame stand folded and the picture dropped with a loud thud. Raya winced and grabbed at it, staring at the door for a long moment before sighing in relief and picking it back up. The back of the picture had popped off. Raya tried to put it back on, but realized that it wouldn’t go because there was too much behind it to let it close all the way. She frowned and pulled it back. There were five folded pieces of yellow parchment behind the picture. Raya pulled them out and opened one up.

Her eyes widened. It was a map drawn in black ink of the whole estate. Raya recognized the long driveway in the front and the mansion. The estate was much bigger than Raya had realized. There was a stable, a farm, a second house on the other side of the estate on a mountain top, a garden and pool in the back, and a small lake with a small square that was labeled boat house. She unfolded the rest of the papers one by one. Three of them were maps of the house with two floors on each paper. That meant that there were six floors, but Raya had only saw five floors on the outside of the house. She thought that one might be the basement, but when she opened up the final one, she saw that it was labeled basement in red ink on the back.

It was difficult to tell which paper went to which floors. Raya had to go on the labels on the back because they looked so different from what she had walked. She thought that it might be that these were outdated, but next to each label in careful lettering was the date 2014, which was only last year. She looked at the floor she was on and spotted the office. It wasn’t near the back of the mansion as Raya had first assumed because of the open windows. Rather, it was on a wall that led to a small, private courtyard with a fountain.

There was something different about the room, though. In the drawing, there was an extra space, a small corner, but when Raya traced its position, there was only the bookcase. She frowned, stood up, and approached the shelves. There didn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary. The books were mostly boring stuff on law, business, and taxes, and there were a few on farms and gardens. But in the midst of all of them was a lone novel. Gulliver’s Travels. Raya frowned. Though it was classic literature and just as boring, it just didn’t seem to fit in all of these other books. She hooked her finger at the top and pulled it down for a closer look.

Something clicked. Raya jumped back, nearly dropping the map as a section of the bookcase slid backward, making the books shudder. She put a hand to her mouth to stop herself from screaming in excitement. She’d found a secret tunnel. When did those things ever happen in real life? In this mansion, she supposed, one could never be completely sure, but to her? She wasn’t Nancy Drew, and she certainly wasn’t Sherlock Holmes.

She peeked inside the dark space beyond and put a hand out on the wall to steady herself. To her surprise, she felt regular walls. A little to the left was what felt like a light switch. As she flipped it on and light flooded the small space, she felt a little disappointed that she wasn’t the first to find this. Someone had obviously fixed it up and made it usable over the years. It had to have been Grandma Therisson, given the light bulb swinging above her head.

There was a sound of walking footsteps that was coming from outside the study. Raya’s heart nearly jumped out of her chest. Someone was coming. She didn’t know if it was Carsen or just a maid, but she had a feeling that she wasn’t supposed to be in the study or know about the maps. She’d found them hidden in a picture. She looked around for a hiding place and saw the secret passageway. She ducked inside, only to remember the maps and the picture frame. She hurried back over to the desk, grabbed the maps, fixed the frame and then ran back over to the shelves. She heaved on the bookcase.

Gosh, this is heavy, she thought.

The bookcase swung closed as the door to the study swung open. Raya bit her lip and put her ear to the back of the shelves. She could hear someone moving around on the other side, but she didn’t know who it was. That meant she didn’t know how long the person would be in the room, and she didn’t want to stay here until supper. She turned around and for the first time, noticed the hole in the floor. It was big enough for a person to fit through comfortably. She peered down. There was a ladder on one of the walls, with light fixtures spaced evenly between the rungs. The thought of going down made her shudder. She certainly didn’t want to end up in the basement with a rats, but she didn’t want to have to explain herself to whoever was in the study. She groaned, glanced back at the now closed bookshelf-door and groaned again. Then she put her foot on the first rung and started to descend.

The good news was that it didn’t lead into the basement. There were only 23 rungs, not enough to go that far down. The bad news was that she now had no idea where she was headed. When she got to the bottom of the ladder, she faced a long tunnel. The lights here flickered, casting shadows on the walls and making Raya think that it might not have been such a good idea to go down here in the first place. There was no turning back now, though. She wasn’t going to face whoever was in that room and get in trouble.

At least there’s light down here, thought Raya as she walked down the tunnel. At least I don’t have to wander through the dark like Nancy Drew and Sherlock Holmes did.

She didn’t know how long she walked through the tunnel. She only knew that it was longer than she felt that it should have been. She was no longer in the mansion. That she knew for sure. The only question was, where did the tunnel lead? She tried consulting her new maps, but there was nothing on them except for the entrances. Several times she considered walking back. Whoever was in the room was surely gone by now, but she had no way of knowing that for sure. Besides, she was getting curious. What was at the end of this tunnel? A priceless artifact? A secret treasure? The secret to immortality?

But, no. The only thing at the end of the tunnel was another ladder. Raya felt disappointed and maybe slightly cheated, but what else did she expect? It was only a passageway. She ascended the ladder. At the top was a trap door. She pushed against it. It didn’t budge. Raya’s eyes widened. She pushed again. It still didn’t budge. This was not going to happen. She braced herself against the opposite wall and slammed her palms into the base of the trap door again and again. For one fateful moment, she thought that it wasn’t going to budge again. Then it hit her. She was hitting the wrong end. The hinges were on this side. Her cheeks grew warm, and she shifted to get into a better position. The trap door lifted easily and she peered out.

There was an old wooden wall just across from her. The white paint was peeling. The ground was littered with what looked to be straw. Or hay? She wasn’t sure. She looked around to make sure that no one was looking and pushed the trap door all the way up.

There was a high pitched whinny and snorting from the other corner. She whirled around to see a beautiful bay horse prancing in the corner. The stables. That’s where she ended up. The horse whinnied again and reared, kicking the trap door closed. Raya barely got out of the way in time. She backed up against the wall, staring at the silver hooves that were just seconds from trampling her.

“What are you doing in there?” came a rough voice.

There was a creak of wood and hinges. A hand grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back. She stumbled and fell, landing on her back in the middle of a dirt path. She groaned and rubbed the back of her head. A boy was standing in the stall, his hands splayed out in a placating gesture. The bay horse danced and pranced, but eventually the boy calmed it down. When he was done, the boy turned to her. He was about her age, with raven black hair and the bluest eyes that Raya had ever seen before. His anger only intensified their color.

“What did you do to him?” he demanded, crossing his arms.

“Nothing!” Raya protested. “I swear, he was the one who attacked me!”

“The bay’s just a filly. She’s barely just learned to tolerate a stall. And here you go, waltzing in and almost ruining everything!”

“I’m sorry!” Raya said.

“How did you end up here anyways?” he questioned, grabbing her arm and hauling her up onto her feet. “Who are you and how did you get on the estate?”

“Let me go!” Raya protested, trying to shake him off. “I don’t answer to you!”

“Yeah, well you know what we do to trespassers and thieves around here?” the boy asked, grasping her arm tighter.

Raya froze.

“I’m not a thief! I swear, I-“ she stopped realizing that she couldn’t tell him about the secret passageway. Well, she could, she supposed, but then he would only ask more questions and tell on her. “I just came out exploring, like my Dad told me to, and saw her.”

She gestured to the bay horse, which snorted at her and shook her head, pawing at the ground.

“And you just decided to climb into a stall with a strange horse and hope to …what? Pet it?” the boy asked.

“I don’t know,” Raya said, looking away.

“You don’t-“

“Cole?”

Raya turned her head to see an elderly man leading another horse into the stables. He looked between the boy’s angry expression and Raya’s fear.

“Cole, what’s going on? Let go of her.”

“But grandpa!” Cole protested, relaxing his grasp. Raya pulled free. “She was in the filly’s stall.”

The old man tied the lead rope of the horse on a hook and ambled towards them.

“Were you now?” he asked. “That’s a mighty dangerous place to be, seeing as I just got to training with her.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Raya said, her voice small. It was one thing to defy a stupid boy, but another to talk back to an elderly man.

“Well, now, how does that work? It’s mighty difficult to find your way into a horse’s stall by accident.”

Raya blushed but said nothing. She would not reveal the passageway. The old man looked at her for a long time before he smiled and patted her shoulder.

“That’s alright,” he said. “I know you didn’t mean anything by it. Just remember though. If you want to come back and visit the horses, don’t climb into their stalls.”

“Yes, sir,” Raya breathed. “Thank you, sir.”

“Now don’t you go calling me ‘sir’,” the old man said. “I’m Michael Daine, and this is my grandson, Cole.”

Cole rolled his eyes and looked away. Raya frowned.

“Don’t worry,” Mr. Daine chuckled. “He gets like that a lot.”

Ignoring his grandson’s squawks of protest, Mr. Daine took Raya gently by the shoulder and led her to the stable door.

“You wouldn’t happen to be here for the funeral, would you?” Mr. Daine asked.

“Yes, s- I mean, yes Mr. Daine,” Raya said.

The old man sighed and leaned against the door frame. “Well, it’s better than ‘sir’ I suppose. Who’re your parents?”

“Oliver and Melissa Colt,” Raya answered.

The old man nearly fell over, he was so surprised. “Well, I’ll be…Melissa back at Therisson estate.”

“You knew my Mom?” Raya asked.

“Since she was a little tyke, right up until the day she up and left without a good-bye,” Mr. Daine shook his head sadly. “It was a sad day, a very sad day indeed.”

Raya asked slowly, “Might you have any idea why she left?”

Mr. Daine eyed her. “Seeing as you’re Melissa’s girl, I suspect you’d know the answer to that better than me.”

Raya bit the inside of her mouth and looked away. Mr. Daine sighed.

“Truth be told, I kept my nose out of it,” he said. “I didn’t need no trouble down here in the stables.” Sighing, he checked his watch. “You’d best be getting on back to the mansion. The supper bell’s going to be ringing in an hour and a half, and by the looks of yourself, I think you might want to clean up before you sit at the supper table.”

Raya looked down at herself. He was right. Her clothes were filthy and her hair had straw in it. She wrinkled her nose.

“Thanks,” she said.

“No problem, Miss Colt. Say,” he said, and she stopped. “I never did get your name.”

“Raya,” she called back. “My name’s Raya.”

“It’s been a pleasure, Raya,” Mr. Daine tipped his hat at her, brown eyes twinkling.

Raya smiled and headed towards the mansion.