Chapter 4

Vincent Hawthorne's POV

I watched the stack of prints on the tray table from takeoff all the way down to landing. The cabin lights overhead washed the back of my hand pale, and the edge of the tray dug into my wrist the whole flight, dug in until the feeling went out of it.

Black Creek. The negatives came out gray end to end; the slag heaps sat there like bones somebody had chewed and thrown back, and the wind pushed coal dust into the lens so every print I pulled carried specks I couldn't wipe off.

I stayed at the only motel in town still open, the radiator knocking like somebody driving nails through the wall from the other side, and on the third night the owner came up to tell me hot water cost extra.

The morning I left, the guy at the gas station grabbed my case and heaved it into the car himself, then stood there with his hand out and kept it out, and I gave him twenty and he counted it twice in front of me before he stepped aside.

I didn't care about the twenty.

What turned my stomach was how natural it looked on all of them, as if I'd walked onto their ground and the only fair thing left was to be peeled down a layer at a time.

Near the back of the stack there was one I stopped on, then turned past. Four in the afternoon, at the side of the road, a girl walking me to where I'd left the car, not a word the whole way, quick with her hand when the money changed hands, turned and gone, thin as a stalk of grass washed up on a bank.

No different from the ones before her, except that she asked for less and faked it harder.

It was still raining when we landed. The drive back up the hill from the airport took me nearly an hour, the wipers going back and forth, everything past the glass one flat gray shine, and the manor drive ran on and on with plane-tree leaves soaked through and stuck flat to the blacktop, cracking very softly under the tires.

Every light in the main house was burning, bright the way something looks after somebody has just wiped it down. I'd been gone two weeks, and not a speck of dust had settled anywhere in it.

I left the case at the foot of the stairs instead of carrying it up, and went through to the kitchen for half a glass of water. It was cold; my throat moved once as I swallowed, and the cold went down through my chest. The stair rail had just been waxed, and it dragged against my palm.

Arthur came out of the study with his phone still in his hand, shirt cuffs rolled to the elbow, and he looked thinner than he had two weeks ago, or maybe that was the light.

"You're back," he said, like he was checking off an item on a list.

"Mm." The word came out flat, and I didn't bother lifting my eyes from the glass.

"They come Wednesday." He laid the phone face-down on the dining table. "Elena and her daughter, Ember. You'll be with me that day, at the door, waiting."

I didn't answer straight away. I set the glass back on the counter first, and the base knocked against the stone louder than I'd meant it to.

He'd had everything out there arranged, and only then did it occur to him that there was a son at home who could be told.

"I was gone two weeks," I said, and I could hear my own voice going tight. "Did you call me once?"

"You were shooting. You wouldn't have picked up anyway." He said it like it was the most reasonable thing in the world.

"I sent you the number the day I landed." The words came out harder than I meant them to.

He raised his eyes to me. There was no anger in it. It was the look he gives a line of figures that won't behave, and I'd been under that look since I was small, and it had stopped hurting a long time ago.

"She's bringing a daughter," I said. "How old?"

"A year younger than you."

"The last one, you called that building a life together. And the one before, her son was my age and you had me out there teaching him to throw a football." I pushed the glass half an inch forward. "You trade through them faster than you trade cars. I can't even keep the names straight."

"Vincent." His voice went flat the way it does when he uses the whole name. "This is different."

"Different how?" I looked at him. "Is it that this time you finally see what she wants from you, or that this time you finally don't care what she wants?"

His hand pressed down flat on the tabletop, knuckles going white. He doesn't lose his temper often, and when he does he never lifts his voice; the colder he goes, the more certain you can be that you've landed on something.

"You're entitled to feel however you feel about it," he said. "Wednesday, you're there, and you keep your face straight. This is my decision, and this house does not need one more mouth against it."

"Fine," I said, and the word came out sharp enough to cut. "My face will be straight."

"I'm telling you something serious." His voice dropped lower, each word deliberate.

"So am I." I pulled up one corner of my mouth, and even I thought the smile was worthless. "Relax. I won't embarrass you. When have I ever?"

He watched me for a few seconds, took up the phone and started for the study, and stopped in the doorway with his back to me. "Once they're living here, don't start anything. Your mother's been gone more than ten years. This house has been empty long enough—"

"Don't talk about my mother."

The door shut behind him with a solid thud, the way it always does when we walk away from each other.

I carried the case upstairs. The guest room at the east end of the hall stood open, new curtains on the windows in a pale color, two clean sets of bedding laid out on the bed, nothing at all on the nightstand, empty and waiting to be filled.

I stopped in the doorway a moment and my palm went damp on the handle. Every inch of this house was bought by him, and everything in it gets set where he wants it, and whether it was ball or camera, nothing of mine has ever really been allowed to stay.

Now he was moving two people into it, two faces I'd never laid eyes on, and the reason was the same as ever: the house is his, the decision is his.

Back in my room I kicked the case into the corner and sat on the edge of the bed and worked my laces loose. There were voices downstairs, him on the phone, the words not quite coming through, the tone far softer than it had been with me.

A middle-aged woman after money, and a girl brought along behind her. I could guess what they'd look at first, coming through the door. The ceiling height, the cars, how much can be run up on a card in a month.

I've seen the type. The smile that covers everything, the eyes pricing the room the whole time.

Scaring them off wouldn't take much. They came for the good life, and if there isn't one comfortable corner in this whole house for them, they'll walk out on their own.

Outside, the rain tapped on the terrace railing, one beat after another, even. I finished with the laces and went to the window and looked down. The second window along the west side was lit. That was the room set aside for them.

Ember. I turned the name over in my mouth like reading off a plate from a state I'd never been to, and when I finished there was nothing left of it.

I turned off the light and lay down. The rain kept on. In my head I put the next two days in order, one thing after another.