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to push Ross’s intelligence, with the hope that he would live up to his incredible potential. She had
given up on her own dream of becoming a journalist, and her hope of a grand future now lay in the
hands of her golden son. This fact was not lost on Ross.
Maybe this was why Ross had been working so hard of late.
Over the past few weeks Julia had seen him disappear for hours on end, not really saying what
he was up to. She had imagined he was working at the Good Wagon Books warehouse or (more
likely) toiling away on the Web site he was now obsessed with. He spent what seemed like days at a
time on his laptop, staring intently at the screen. Maybe, she had reasoned, he was hanging out with
friends in the park or volunteering at a nearby nonprofit, something Ross often did with his spare
time.
But, as Julia was about to find out when the vehicle finally stopped, Ross had been up to
something very different recently. She wondered where they were as the truck’s engine hummed off.
Maybe it was near Highland Mall or Rundberg Lane, or they had driven away from the downtown and
were near Bastrop State Park, outside the city. She heard Ross get out of the truck; the keys clinked, a
door slammed, and he grabbed her by the arms, helping her onto the pavement.
“Okay, hold on to me,” he said as he led her forward. “We’re going to walk up some stairs now.”
One minute and a hundred steps later, Julia heard the sound of a door being unlocked. Ross led
her forward a few feet and then slipped the blindfold off.
As the light bled into her vision, Julia looked around the room trying to survey what he had
brought her to see. She looked left and right, befuddled by the emptiness of her surroundings. They
were in a small and dingy space that looked like an abandoned sanatorium. The only natural light
came from one small window at the other end of the room that was partially covered with some
cardboard for privacy. A stained, yellowing white carpet covered the floor. There wasn’t a single
piece of furniture in the room, just piles of what looked like boxes and vials of chemicals. The room,
she noticed, smelled like animal excrement.
“What is this?” she asked. “Where are we?”
“Come with me,” Ross said as he led her into a bedroom that sat off the drab living room. As
they rounded the corner, a gale of cold air from an air conditioner hit them. Then, as she entered the
other room, like the conclusion to a thrilling mystery novel, it all made sense to Julia. She saw why
she had been blindfolded and exactly why it wasn’t safe for her to know where they were.
“I had to show you because I had to show someone,” he said.
On the wall to the left, another piece of cardboard had been taped over the window. The room
was empty except for a tall, lopsided shelving unit that looked like it had not been moved in a decade.
Then there was that odor. The same pungent, earthy whiff that had greeted Julia when she entered
the apartment and pulled off the blindfold. Only now it was so much stronger, an aroma that smelled
more like damp soil on a forest floor.
Julia examined the shelves, then looked back at Ross and smiled. He didn’t need to tell her what
she was looking at; this wasn’t the first time she had seen him play mad scientist. He had
experimented on a smaller scale in their apartment a year earlier, storing his results in a black
garbage bag in the closet, stuffed in between Julia’s underwear and her high-heeled shoes.
But this—this!—was grander and more impressive than anything she had ever seen. She
approached the decrepit shelving unit, which spanned the width of the entire room. Everything started
to make sense to her—Ross’s disappearing acts. He’d been coming here, she realized.