The rotary phone had started to ring when he was in a room on the other side of the house, looking at art. Sipe had sprinted, out of the room, down the hall and through the living room to catch the call in time. Running hadn't seemed a bad idea until he was leaning into the wall, catching his breath, watching blue sparks behind closed eyelids. Talking to Susan hadn’t made him feel much better.
The bedroom some sort of storage space. The one upstairs room behind a shut door. Lots of boxes. A bookshelf against one wall with the top shelf actually holding some books, the lower shelves storage slots for more boxes.
The windows in the storage room gave view beyond the top of the clothesline onto a field. Wild grasses sun-dried to a shade of hay bale.
The tallest box in the storage room one of those deep spaces meant for clothes, dresses or suits, but it'd been intercepted from that intention and was now sort of catch-all detention space for artwork. Drawing pads, sketchbooks, and canvases.
Before he'd started looking at art he'd looked at the living room, Henry's bedroom, the upstairs bathroom, and another bedroom. He remembered what the blonde girl had said. Henry's mom was out of town.