Onix would have loved to run these grounds. When I first adopted him, before his arthritis got bad, he’d take off in zoomies around the dog park, galloping in circles before flopping joyfully at my feet.
“It’s just for a while,” Julian says from behind me. He hasn’t spoken in so long that hearing his voice jolts me out of my thoughts.
I snort. “Oh yeah? You swear?”
He doesn’t respond, becauseof course he can’t. I shake my head. Then, because I am powerless to do any different, I walk up to the door. “So. Who wants to give me a tour of my jailhouse?”
Twenty-Eight
The cottage where I will be held indefinitely has three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a beautiful sunroom. The walls in the entryway are painted a soft canary yellow, and the “Welcome” rug is faded in the middle, as if feet have been stamping out mud and snow upon it for years.
“It’s…” I say, surprised as I whirl around the living room, gaping up at the admittedly pretty high beamed ceilings, “homey.”
Julian looks down at me, and I can see the hopefulness in his gaze.
“Ritika and I will unload the car,” he says. “You should look around. Pick a room.”
I give him a rueful look. He sounds like a dad who’s moved his family across the country and is trying to convince his despondent kids to feel less horrible about it.
Which, to my surprise, I do. For some reason, I expected Julian’s safe house to be a cold concrete bunker, but this home feels lived-in. There are cat posters on the walls, a plush sectional that I can sink into, a huge, slightly outdated television hooked up to a DVD player. Everything is a little worn and well loved, and I can see signs of a life once lived: a feather wand toy once used to entertain a long-gone cat,a chest of blankets once cuddled under, a lacquered wood coffee table with overlapping water stains.
Next to the kitchen, I find a sliding door that I assume leads to a formal dining room and shove it open. When I see what’s inside, I snap it shut again.
“Tell me the truth,” I say, when Julian and Ritika return with their boxes of supplies. “Has the Steinway always been here, or did you have it brought in?”
It’s a baby grand. It gleams in the dining room, the keys unyellowed by the passage of time. Not just that, but there’s an entire shelf of books and sheet music.
“Of course you’d find it immediately,” Ritika says with a long-suffering sigh. She places her box down, gives Julian a knowing look, and marches back out into the cold.
We’re alone. It feels strange to be, after a whole day with Ritika, even though it used to be the most natural thing in the world. Compared to his assistant, Julian seems so large suddenly, and the breadth of his shoulders and height as he leans against the kitchen counter bestow him a potent, primordial power.
“I had it brought in,” he says, softly.
“For me?” I ask.
“For you,” he confirms.
It takes time to source, buy, and ship pianos. I know, because before I realized a baby grand wouldn’t fit in my apartment, I’d inquired after one myself. Nearly a year to build if buying one custom, but still a hassle to ship a premade one from a showroom to a little house in the middle of nowhere.
It confirms what I’ve suspected since the second I could think after Julian whisked me off that bloody gallery floor—Julian has beenplanning this for some time, and he’s been planning it for me. His plan B, just in case things go to shit.
I walk past him and into the dining room and plop myself on the bench. I run my fingers along the keys. The seat faces a large French window that has a direct view of the backyard, and I imagine sitting here on a spring day, watching hummingbirds flit by, spotting deer gather at the salt lick, and feeling at peace.
Julian watches me from the doorway. I can feel his gaze on the side of my face like sunshine pouring from a window.
“You were right, you know,” he says. “About when we first met.”
I hum in acknowledgment. My fingers have chosen to play “Für Elise,” the first “hard” song they learned by heart, and I decide to follow their lead.
“Ididtarget you,” he continues. “You were single. Childless. Not particularly close to your family. By my accounts, a person who very few people would miss. You kept company with Brandon, who was so clearly simple, and I assumed you would be simple too. And Leila was fine with it, because it was supposed to be quick. Wasn’t going to get in her way. I take you out, show you a good time, skim a few years off the top, and then leave you a little confused, a bit disappointed, but not too worse for wear.”
Hearing Julian talk plainly like this—as the hunter he is—is oddly relieving, even as it sets off a thunder drum against my sternum. Like he’s been wearing an unconvincing disguise and has just torn it away to reveal the wolf I’ve always known was peering out underneath his wool.
“So I was disposable,” I say quietly, thinking back to those early days, the moments when I’d turn away from him and feel like I’d just made a narrow escape. “But I’m not anymore. So what changed?”
“I heard you play in that room,” Julian confesses. “Saw how you cared for your goddaughter. Watched you live by your own terms. You intrigued me, at first. Then inspired me. And I…I don’t know. I just realized one day that I enjoyed you. That I wanted to be around you, then be with you, then be yours.”
My vision blurs with a whirlwind of emotions: rage, because of the many times I’d chosen to believe his words over my intuition. Hurt, because he’d still initially seen me the way the world so often did: as a woman of a certain age who, having eschewed the positions of wife and mother, was inherently less valuable. Sorrow, because the enormity of his betrayal aside, he sees me in a way that no one ever has.