Mezzanine

| 21 |

Carter and I stared at the name at the top of the obituary for a minute in silence. The only sound was the same thought spinning through both our heads on repeat.

"What the hell," Carter finally said it out loud. "But...that's the same last name as—"

"George Renson," I finished his sentence. The man that owned the Renson Factory—the man that perished in the fire on that fateful night decades ago, along with his employees.

Carter nodded, biting down on his lower lip before looking up to meet my eyes. "I mean, it can't be a coincidence, can it?"

I shook my head. "No."

But my Grandma told me George Renson had no family, Carter thought. So how could Jay's father be related to him?

"Did your grandma say he had no family, or that he didn't have any family members written into his will?" I asked.

Carter cringed when I responded to his thought.

"Sorry." I bit my tongue. "It's hard not to do sometimes."

"It's fine," he said, but his thoughts revealed it was still making him uncomfortable.

I crossed my arms in my lap, wishing I didn't have to hear what he was thinking. I hated how intrusive it was and how uneasy it made him. Was it wrong to tell him? Was keeping it a secret worse?

I didn't know.

"Well, now that you mention it," Carter stirred me from my thoughts, "I guess my grandma just said he didn't leave it to anyone in his will. I assumed that meant he had no one to leave it to." He bit at his nails as he considered it. "Maybe he did have family and didn't know about them."

"Living in the same town, though?" I pointed out. "My mom said she and my father dated in high school. They grew up here together. I'd be willing to bet their parents grew up here too. No way George wouldn't have known about his own family members if they were living in Sycamore Falls."

"Good point." Carter took off his glasses, spinning them between his index finger and thumb before putting them back on his face. "So then why wouldn't he leave the Renson Factory to any of them in his will?"

"No idea," I said. "Maybe he didn't like them. Or, since I'm sure he didn't expect he was going to die suddenly in a fire in the middle of the night, maybe he just never got around to including anyone in his will."

My stomach clenched as I said it. I didn't know how old George was when he died, but if he was fairly young, maybe he didn't have a written will yet. It brought me back to the question I still couldn't get past. Why did my father have one when he was only in his early twenties?

I wasn't sure, but that didn't seem like something the typical twenty-year-old considered. Had John somehow known he was going to die, or at least been worried that he might? My mom said she thought something was after him. Did he have the same feeling and write up a will just in case?

But why leave the house to my brother and me instead of my mom? It didn't add up.

"So what does that mean?" Carter asked, breaking me from my thoughts. "You're related to George Renson, but—"

I shook my head. "I don't know." It was all connected somehow, but I couldn't figure it out. My father died on Ninth Street...the same street the factory was on. The factory someone he was related to owned—and died in.

"My mom said she thought something was after him," I puzzled over it out loud. "What if it came from that factory?"

Chills rushed down my spine as I imagined the night described in that article. The woman driving the car said the man she saw walking down the icy road was acting strangely—yelling and threatening her. My mind flashed back to the cloaked figures in the basement of the factory Friday night and how weird they were acting—like they were possessed.