Chương 2
Daniel remained on his knees.
Evelyn looked down at her son.
“I forgave my son,” she said. “I won’t protect a thief.”
Sarah stepped toward Margaret.
Richard closed the legal file.
The sirens drew closer.
And Daniel, who had spent most of his adult life believing his mother would eventually rescue him from the consequences of being himself, finally looked at her and saw that she would not.
Three months earlier, Evelyn had still been trying to convince herself that the missing passport was an accident.
She had been staying at her sister’s house in Santa Barbara after what Daniel called “the plumbing disaster,” although no plumber Evelyn spoke to ever described it that way.
A supply line under one of the upstairs bathroom sinks had leaked.
Daniel told her mold had been discovered behind several walls.
He said the remediation company advised that she leave the property for at least two weeks.
Then two weeks became three.
Three became six.
Evelyn disliked staying with her sister not because she disliked Anne, but because Anne believed mornings were improved by conversation.
Evelyn did not.
For forty-seven years, she had begun most days with coffee and silence.
Thomas had understood this.
He would sit across from her with the newspaper, occasionally folding back a page and saying something useful like, “They raised the trash fee again,” or, “You remember Phil Donnelly? Apparently he’s dead.”
Then silence would return.
Anne, by contrast, treated breakfast as an opportunity to discuss cholesterol, neighborhood landscaping, politics, the moral decline of television, and whatever her daughter had said on the phone the previous night.
On the thirty-ninth morning of Evelyn’s stay, Anne placed a bowl of blueberries on the kitchen table and said, “Daniel called again.”
Evelyn buttered toast.
“I know.”
“He called me.”
“I assumed you didn’t mean the pope.”
Anne frowned. “You don’t have to be difficult.”
“I’m not being difficult. I’m eating toast.”
“He says the house may not be safe for months.”
That made Evelyn stop.
Daniel had told her another week.
She put the knife down.
“What exactly did he say?”
Anne hesitated.
That hesitation was the first thing that bothered her.
“He said you might be better off making other arrangements.”
“What arrangements?”
“A condo. Something smaller.”
Evelyn stared at her sister.
Anne immediately became interested in removing a stem from a blueberry.
“Did he ask you to say that?”
“No.”
“Anne.”
“He didn’t ask.”
“What did he do?”
“He suggested.”
Evelyn pushed her plate away.
The house Daniel wanted her to leave had belonged to Evelyn before Daniel was born.
Thomas had not bought it for her.
His parents had not bought it.
Evelyn’s father, a commercial architect in Pasadena who distrusted almost everyone with a real-estate license, had purchased the original property in 1978. At the time there had been a low stucco house, an ugly kidney-shaped pool, and a driveway that turned to mud every winter.
Evelyn inherited it after her father’s death.
She and Thomas spent thirty years changing it.
Not all at once. They did not have that kind of money in the beginning.
First came the roof.
Then the kitchen.
Then the stone tower Thomas insisted looked “Mediterranean” and Evelyn insisted looked like a place where a wizard should keep prisoners.
Later came the west terrace.
After Thomas’s company was acquired and money stopped being an everyday worry, they rebuilt nearly everything except the old kitchen fireplace.
Thomas died in the house.
Not dramatically.
Not in Evelyn’s arms.
He went upstairs one evening to get reading glasses and never came back down.
A heart attack at seventy-two.
For months afterward Evelyn hated the upstairs hallway because one of his slippers had been found there, overturned.
Daniel knew all of that.
Which was why, when he began talking about selling the mansion, Evelyn told herself he meant well.
The house was large.
The taxes were irritating.
The irrigation system behaved like a malicious animal.
There were rooms she entered only to make sure spiders had not established governments in them.
Daniel said he worried about her.
Rachel said the stairs were too much.
Margaret said coastal properties required constant management.
Three people saying the same thing can turn an insult into concern if you are lonely enough.
Evelyn had almost believed them.
Then she needed her passport.
Anne had suggested a cruise to Alaska in September. Evelyn did not especially want to go, but after six weeks in Santa Barbara she would have considered a cruise through a municipal drainage system.
Her passport was normally kept inside a locked desk drawer in the mansion library.
She drove home without telling Daniel.
The front gate code had been changed.
At first she thought she had entered it incorrectly.
She tried again.
Nothing.
She called Daniel.
No answer.
She called Rachel.
No answer.
She sat in her car outside her own gate for nine minutes.
The humiliation of it was strangely precise.
A landscaping truck arrived behind her. The driver recognized her and waited politely.
Evelyn tried the code a third time, though she already knew it would fail.
The landscaper finally climbed from his truck.
“Mrs. Carter?”
“Yes.”
“You okay?”
“My gate appears to have developed opinions.”
He smiled uncertainly.
She called Daniel again.
This time he answered.
“Mom, where are you?”
“Outside my house.”
Silence.
Then: “Why?”
The word bothered her more than the changed code.
“Because I live here.”
“You’re not supposed to be there. The remediation crew—”
“Where is the remediation crew?”
“They’re not there today.”
“I can see that.”
He exhaled.
“Mom, I’m twenty minutes away.”
“Then give me the gate code.”
Another silence.
“It’s temporary.”
“Daniel.”
“Five-eight-four-two.”
She entered it.
The gate opened.
The landscaper waved apologetically.
Evelyn drove through.
There was no remediation crew.
There were no plastic barriers.
No air scrubbers.
No warning signs.
No open walls.
May you like
The house smelled faintly of furniture polish.
She entered through the kitchen and found Rachel standing at the island with a stack of folders.
