Diary Entry #18: Let Me Handle It
Entry #18 — Thursday
I confronted Plum tonight.
I use the word confronted because it sounds stronger than what I actually did. I did not storm into her house. I did not demand answers with righteous fury. I texted her from my desk like a coward asking for an appointment.
We need to talk.
Her reply came immediately.
Come at seven.
No question mark.
No address.
She had already given me her address once, but I had never used it. I found it again in my contacts and typed it into the map as if it were a place I had chosen to go.
The house was not what I expected.
It was old, but not decayed. Brick, with tall windows and a roofline that should have looked severe but didn’t. The porch light was on. The front door was unlocked. That was the first wrong thing. The second wrong thing was that I was not surprised.
“Come in,” Plum called from somewhere deeper in the house.
I stepped inside.
The foyer smelled of beeswax, dried herbs, and something darker underneath—earth, maybe, or old paper left too long in a closed room. The floors were dark wood. The walls were painted a deep green that should have made the space feel smaller but instead made it feel like the inside of a jewel box.
There were no photographs.
I noticed that right away.
No family pictures. No travel souvenirs. No framed diplomas. No evidence of a life lived in the ordinary way. Instead, there were shelves. Books with cracked spines. Ledgers. Boxes labeled in neat handwriting. A cabinet with glass doors, inside of which hung dozens of keys.
Not house keys.
Not car keys.
Old keys.
Brass keys. Iron keys. Small keys. Long keys. Keys with tags and keys with string and keys with numbers written in faded ink.
Plum appeared in the doorway to the next room.
“You’re early,” she said.
“I left early.”
“You’re upset.”
“I’m concerned.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
She wore a dark sweater and no jewelry except for a thin chain at her throat. Her hair was loose. She looked serene. Not calm in the way people are calm when they are trying to appear calm. Serene in the way water is serene when it is deep enough to hide everything.
“Come,” she said.
I followed her into a back room that might once have been a study. A desk stood near the window. On it were folders, a map, and a cup of tea still steaming. The map looked like a plat survey. Lines and parcels. Little numbered lots. A creek drawn in blue. One section had been circled in pencil.
I recognized the shape of the Kessler property before I recognized the address.
“You’ve been here before,” Plum said.
“No.”
“You have. In your mind.”
I did not answer.
She picked up the tea and took a sip.
“Daniel Okafor came to see me,” I said.
“Yes.”
“How do you know that?”
She smiled.
“Because he’s thorough.”
“He asked about the lockbox.”
“Of course he did.”
“He said my code was used.”
Plum set the cup down.
“Was it?”
“You know it wasn’t.”
“Then why are you asking me?”
“Because you had the key.”
“I had a key.”
“The lockbox—”
“Lockboxes are simple things,” she said. “Codes are remembered. Codes are forgotten. Codes are seen.”
“Seen by who?”
She looked at me.
“By anyone paying attention.”
My hands were shaking. I put them at my sides.
“Doris Kessler died,” I said.
“Yes.”
“The same afternoon you borrowed the key.”
“Yes.”
“Do you understand how that looks?”
Plum considered this.
“It looks like time,” she said.
“Stop doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Speaking in riddles.”
“I’m not speaking in riddles. You’re listening for them.”
I stepped closer to the desk.
The map was definitely Fenwick Road. The Kessler house was marked in the center of the lot. Behind it was another parcel, narrow and irregular, running toward the tree line. I had not noticed it when I took the listing. I had assumed it was part of the same property or an easement or some leftover strip that mattered only to surveyors.
It was labeled Lot 7.
Plum’s hand moved over the paper and covered the marking.
“You worry so much,” she said. “Let me handle it.”
The sentence sounded soft.
It landed like a door closing.
“Handle what?” I asked.
“The questions.”
“What questions?”
“All of them.”
“Plum—”
“You’re tired.”
“I’m not tired.”
“You’re frightened.”
“I’m both.”
She tilted her head.
“That’s honest.”
I looked around the room.
The folders on the desk were not labeled with client names. They were labeled with addresses. Some I recognized from the news. Foreclosures. Estates. A fire on Mercer Street. A drowning in the river district. A house where a man had died alone and been found weeks later. The bones of houses where terrible things happened.
“What do you do?” I asked.
Plum sat at the desk.
“You know what I do.”
“No. I don’t.”
“You help people buy and sell houses.”
“So do you.”
“That’s not the same.”
“No,” she said. “It isn’t.”
I waited.
She did not explain.
I tried again.
“Are you an investor?”
“Sometimes.”
“A consultant?”
“Sometimes.”
“For who?”
“For whoever needs help.”
“Help with what?”
She looked at the map.
“Transitions.”
“What kind of transitions?”
“The difficult ones.”
“Death is difficult.”
“Yes.”
“Doris Kessler died.”
“Yes.”
“Did you do something to her?”
Plum’s expression did not change.
That was the worst part.
If she had looked shocked, I might have believed her. If she had looked offended, I might have felt guilty. Instead, she looked patient, as if I had asked a question whose answer should have been obvious to anyone who understood how houses work.
“I did what was necessary,” she said.
“What does that mean?”
“It means the house needed to be freed.”
“Freed from what?”
“From her.”
I took a step back.
“You’re talking about a woman.”
“I’m talking about a house.”
“She lived there.”
“She had already left.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No,” Plum said. “It isn’t.”
I looked at the cabinet of keys.
“Do you collect them?” I asked.
“I keep them safe.”
“Keys to what?”
“Places that are between.”
“Between what?”
She stood.
“Between owners. Between uses. Between what happened and what happens next.”
I wanted to laugh.
I wanted to run.
Instead, I said, “That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only answer you can hear.”
“Try me.”
Plum came closer.
Not quickly.
Not threateningly.
But I felt the room narrow around us anyway.
“You open doors,” she said. “I decide which ones stay open.”
“That sounds like a metaphor.”
“It isn’t.”
“Then what is it?”
She looked down at my wrist.
The red thread was there.
It had not loosened since she tied it. If anything, it had become more a part of me, the knot settling into the skin as if it had always belonged there.
“You asked me once why I keep asking you for things,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Because you understand thresholds.”
“I’m a broker.”
“You’re a keeper of entrances.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“You will.”
I looked at the map again.
Lot 7.
The parcel behind the Kessler house.
“What is that land?” I asked.
Plum’s eyes moved to the paper.
“Land remembers,” she said.
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you need.”
I thought of the basement.
The smoke.
The copper.
The scorch mark scrubbed but visible.
I thought of the notary stamp in my desk drawer.
I thought of the document I had not read.
I thought of Daniel Okafor’s calm face and his folder and his question: Did Plum ever ask you to notarize anything?
I said, “I lied to him.”
Plum’s mouth softened.
“I know.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you came here instead of calling the police.”
That hurt.
It hurt because it was true.
I looked at her and tried to find the woman I had met at lunch, the woman who had praised me, the woman who had made me feel chosen. She was there. That was the problem. She was always there. Every version of her seemed real. Every version of her seemed like the one I could trust if I could only get close enough.
But I had no idea what she actually did.
I could describe her effects.
I could describe the rooms after.
I could describe the luck, the closings, the keys, the favors, the thread, the way people leaned toward her as if she had already solved them.
But I could not describe her work.
Not in nouns.
Not in titles.
Not in anything that would fit on a business card.
“What are you?” I asked.
Plum smiled.
“Your friend,” she said.
I left soon after that.
At the door, she said, “Don’t go to the police.”
I turned.
“Why?”
“Because you’ll need your hands.”
I stared at her.
She touched my wrist one last time.
The thread warmed.
“And you’ll need your name.”
I drove home with the windows down, even though the air was cold. I kept thinking about the cabinet of keys. I kept thinking about the map. I kept thinking about the way she had said your name, as if it were something I was only borrowing.
I am writing this because I need to remember what belongs to me.
My name.
My hands.
My license.
My stamp.
My signature.
I keep saying them like a list.
They do not feel as solid as they used to.