"You don't know where I live."
"Then you'd better give good directions."
He picks up his keys from the counter. His hands are steady. They're always steady. Except tonight, just for a second, they're not.
twenty
Cole
She insisted on driving, which means I'm watching her navigate Pacific Heights like she has something to prove.
"I've lived in this city for nine years, Cole. I know where Pacific Heights is."
"Knowing the neighborhood and knowing my address aren't the same thing."
"It's a grid. I'll figure it out."
She misses the turn onto my street. Neither of us comments.
Her fingers tap the wheel as she circles the block, that restless rhythm I've watched through windows and across parking lots but never heard up close.
It's the tell that means she's working something through. Processing. The same pattern she drums on the bench outside courtrooms, on the steering wheel before school pickup, on the kitchen counter at midnight when she thinks no one is watching.
She takes the turn on the second pass and pulls into my driveway with the precision of someone proving a point. Thediosantounder her breath when she sees the house undermines it slightly.
She cuts the engine. Just her breathing and the tick of cooling metal.
"This is you?" she finally asks.
Victorian bones with clean Japanese lines. The previous owner's widow sold it to me for under market because I reminded her of her late husband.
Disciplined,she'd said.Old-fashioned. The kind of man who takes care of things.
"I bought it six months after I started watching you." Seven years ago.
Her jaw tightens, then releases. She's getting better at absorbing these revelations without flinching, or she's getting better at hiding the flinch.
"Show me," she says.
The house smells stale when I unlock the door. Two weeks of closed windows and absence. Dust floats in the light from the shoji screens, and I track her reactions the way I would track a target's movement through unfamiliar terrain. Except this is my terrain, and she is the one mapping it.
She steps past me into the entryway. Her hand trails along the wall, fingertips reading texture the way she touches everything. Deliberately, like evidence. Her head tilts at the shoji screens, the hardwood, the careful absence of clutter. Then her gaze drops to the genkan. The shoe rack. One pair of house slippers.
She doesn't comment. She doesn't have to. One pair tells the whole story.
I wait for her to remove her shoes. She does it without being asked, reads the space and adapts. My hand tightens on the door frame.
She stops in front of the calligraphy. Black ink on cream paper, characters I traced as a child before I understood what they meant.
"This is beautiful." Her fingers hover near the frame, close enough to sense the texture of the paper without touching it. "What does it say?"
"Honor in patience." I stand beside her, close enough to feel her warmth. Not quite touching. "My father's hand."
"He's an artist?"
I didn't talk about my family in college. She knew they existed, knew they were traditional, but I kept the details locked away even then. Some compartments I never opened for anyone.
"Kendo master. Eighth dan. The calligraphy is supplementary."