Chapter 8
I didn't see his car arrive. I heard it.
The circular drive in front of the house was paved so smooth that tires made almost no sound, but the big luxury sedan had a low engine hum that carried up through the glass. I was still locked in the dressing suite on the second floor, the one my father called private when he meant isolated. The bandage pulled tight on my left shoulder. I'd been standing at the window because there was nowhere else to go, watching the heat shimmer off the marble drive below.
He got out of the rear seat. Even from that distance I knew it was him. Dark wavy hair, brown suede coat over the striped shirt I'd seen in the car interior flash. He didn't look like someone who belonged on that drive, and that was exactly why my father wouldn't let him in.
He walked straight to the front doors. Not around to the side entrance where deliveries went. Straight up the center steps under the portico.
Our house manager, Ellis, was already there before he could touch the handle. Ellis didn't open doors so much as block them. He was sixty, ex-military, and my father paid him to say no politely.
I couldn't hear the words, but I saw Ellis's mouth move, saw the young man's shoulders tighten. He held his ground for a second, then gestured back toward the car, then forward again, like he was trying to explain he wasn't selling anything, he wasn't lost.
Ellis shook his head once. He kept one hand on the door. That was the rule my father had given that morning after dragging me through the foyer. No visitors.
From up here I pressed my palm flat to the cool glass. My wrist ached, a dull throb right where that golden branching light had spread when our hands joined. I didn't call out. The window didn't open more than an inch, and Ellis would have heard me if I'd yelled.
A county sheriff's cruiser rolled slowly up the drive then. It wasn't there for us, it was just doing its usual loop past the big houses on Ridge Road. The young man turned toward it like it was a chance.
He stepped off the marble and onto the asphalt and waved the cruiser down. I watched him lean toward the passenger window, talking fast. He pushed his sleeve up and showed his wrist. Even from two stories up I could see him rubbing at it, the same way he'd clutched it in the back seat. He was trying to show the mark, trying to make the pain make sense to someone with a badge.
The deputy listened for maybe five seconds. He didn't get out. He nodded the way cops do when they're not going to do anything, said something short, and pointed back toward the main road. Private property. No complaint. Nothing to enforce.
The cruiser pulled away. Ellis watched until it turned out past the gates.
The young man stood there for a long minute with his hands at his sides. He didn't try the door again. He didn't force it. He looked up once, and for a second I thought he looked straight at my window. I stepped back from the glass before he could see me in the nightgown.
He walked back to the sedan, got in, and pulled out slowly. The gates closed behind him with that soft electronic click.
I thought he'd left. I was wrong.
Twenty minutes later the light changed in my window. Not sunlight. The harsh white-yellow buzz of the gas station sign across Highway 9.
I'd forgotten there was a diner and a Shell station directly across from our perimeter wall. From the dressing suite's side window you could see the whole parking lot, the rows of pumps, the Route 66 Diner with its neon open sign. American as anything, trucks idling, a family loading coolers.
His car was there now. Parked at the far edge of the lot, nose facing our house. Not hiding. Just waiting where he was allowed to wait.
I sat on the wide sill and watched him. He sat in the driver's seat for a long time, elbows on the wheel. Then his phone lit up his face. I saw him dial, hold it to his ear, stare at our house while it rang.
My own phone was gone. My father had taken it that morning. There was nothing to answer.
He tried again. Then he typed something, held the phone up a little like he wanted a better signal. No answer came to that side of the road either.
After the third try he put the phone down on the dash and didn't pick it up again. He leaned back and just watched. The diner light caught the brown of his coat each time a car pulled past. He wasn't going to leave before dusk. I could feel it the same way my wrist had felt his pain in the car — that stubborn, quiet pull that didn't need words.
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The sun kept dropping. The marble foyer below me glowed warm. Outside my window, his car stayed put under that parking lot light.
We were separated by a highway, a wall, and my father's locked door, and somehow still stuck to each other.
