A peculiar 23-year-old named Olive leaves her mother living in a hoard and her husband in Lashona, Washington, to find what she thinks is her alternate life being lived by someone else.
She has hitched a ride with a woman named Alanna who is on her way to visit her aging father. Olive crashes overnight on the couch, waking in the pre-dawn hours to snoop around the house.
Olive abandoned the quest, instead making her way to the stairs. She climbed with soft steps, and once at the landing, she looked to the left then to the right at the two closed doors before popping into the bathroom.
She left the light off. No stars or moon were visible out the small window but there must have been something on the other side of that cloud cover, she thought. She heard one of the doors open. The floor on the landing uttered a creak. She stopped with her hand on the faucet and listened.
She was just about to wash her hands when the bathroom door started to swing open and she called out, “I’m in here.”
A profound, startled howl came from the figure on other side of the door followed by a calamitous shriek. The door was pulled closed with force and Olive could hear a series of sickening thuds as well as the crack of what could have been wood. She drew in her breath and clasped both hands over her mouth, squeezing her eyes shut tight.
Olive didn’t hear the other door open, but she knew Alanna was in the hallway. Olive turned the bathroom light on and flung the door open, and Alanna screamed, “Oh god!”
“Dad? Oh nooo, nooo!” she moaned at the top of the stairs, and made her way down, gliding her hand along the wall.
Olive came out and leaned on the landing rail, and she stepped on something soft—a slipper. She descended the stairs, stopped a few steps from the bottom and crouched. She clung trembling to the wooden balusters, one of which broke away in her hand. She tried not to cry, as Alanna rifled through her purse for her phone then dialed.
“What happened?” she shouted through tears at Olive, as her purse tipped off the dining room table, spilling its contents. Alanna put the back of her hand to her upper lip and paced, pressing the phone to her ear with the other hand. “Come on, come on, come— Hello, hello! … Yes, up on the hill, please! My dad fell down the stairs— I don’t know!” she sobbed. “Please, just hurry!” She bent down and wobbled onto one knee in front of her dad. “Yes, he’s breathing, but he’s— just hurry!“
She hung up and dropped on the wood floor fumbling for the dying man’s hand. “Dad, stay with me.”
Olive struggled to pull herself up. “Is he going to be okay?”
“Ohhh,” Alanna sobbed into her dad’s shoulder. She looked up at Olive and wailed, “What the fuck happened?” as she looked over her father.
“Nothing.” Olive croaked. “I was in the bathroom and he came in… I just said I was—“
“Why’s he only got one slipper?” Alanna said.
Olive scrambled up the stairs and grabbed the other one. “It’s here, Alanna,” she warbled. She picked her way down the stairs holding the slipper out in front of her.
The sound of the sirens came up, low, like they were bouncing off the ceiling of clouds. Olive stopped, one foot a step above the other. “I can’t be here,” she whispered.
“Just hide. And drop the damn slipper!” Alanna barked at her. “Go. Go hide in my room, and don’t come out until they’re gone.”