Page 5

The following day, Thomas drove Vivienne to New Haven without issue. He sat outside the studio and rifled through a workbook on practical skills, bubbling in the self-assessments with a pencil until the nib snapped and his head hurt and he felt more directionless than ever before. When Vivienne was finished, he interpreted a brief, informal conversation with her adviser.

Later—after he’d been the go-between at a nearby café—they drove home in silence. The radio was off. Her iced tea sat sweating in the cupholder between them. The trees whipped past the window in streaks of vivid green. He drummed his thumbs against the steering wheel and tried to pretend he couldn’t feel her assessing him out of the corner of her eye.

At home, she slid out of the car before he’d managed to put it in park. She was already halfway up the walk by the time he caught up to her, sweating through his suit. She went into the house without so much as a thank you and shut herself upstairs in her room.

She didn’t reappear.

Thomas spent the remainder of the day down in the gym, working out his frustration at the rack. Annoyed with himself for being so easily annoyed with her. By all measures, the day had gone fine. Perfectly, even. There’d been no power struggles, no skirmishes. She’d been on her best behavior, and he on his.

This was how the job was supposed to go.

And yet.

When he finally emerged from the gym, sweating and irritable, it was to find Amelia Farrow waiting in the hall outside his room. He drew up short, towel slung around his neck, and waited for her to greet him.

As a rule, Vivienne’s mother steered clear of him. The last time they’d spoken was the morning he’d nearly lost his job. From the look on her face, he wasn’t sure today’s conversation was about to go any differently.

“Philip is hosting a work dinner this evening,” she said, flipping idly through what appeared to be a home and garden magazine. “Vivienne is expected to be there.”

“Okay.”

Amelia shut the magazine with a long-suffering sigh, as though Thomas had said the exact wrong thing. “She’s refusing to come in and get ready. I don’t have the time or the energy to deal with it today. I’m suffering an unbearable migraine.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am,” said Thomas.

“Do something about it, please .”

“The—” Thomas faltered, uncertain. “The migraine?”

She looked down her nose at him, as though he were terrifically slow. “Vivienne. My daughter. Talk to her. And do it sooner rather than later.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, massaging it between her thumb and forefinger. “Goodness knows, she gets ready at a snail’s pace, and dinner is in an hour.”

“Am I also attending this dinner?”

“You?” She looked scandalized by the thought, as though he’d suggested bringing a diseased rat into the house. “What for?”

“Well—” He faltered. The answer felt obvious to him. “To interpret.”

Genuine and obvious displeasure flickered in Amelia’s eyes. “I am quite capable of interpreting for my daughter, thank you.”

“I didn’t mean to offend you, ma’am,” he said, “I just—”

“You may spend the evening in the guest room,” she said, which sounded less like permission and more like a sentencing. “Your presence won’t be necessary.”

···

After a short search, Thomas found Vivienne lounging out by the pool, sunning herself in a checkered bikini. She wasn’t alone. Frances Lefevre was there, perched on the edge of a chaise and fiddling with a vintage-looking camera. Sprawled out next to her was a girl Thomas didn’t recognize. Music blared through the space, bass pumping out from a rock-shaped speaker situated beneath a nearby hedge. The third, unidentified girl sat up as he advanced, her dark curls fanning out around an oval face.

“Vivienne,” she said, tugging down her shades. “Mikhail 2.0 is here.”

Vivienne opened one eye and peered up at Thomas before shutting it again. With all the indolence of a cat, she flopped from her belly to her back. He might as well not have been there at all.

“Your mom wants you,” he said. “She says it’s time to get ready for dinner.”

Frances snorted. “What are you, a footman?”

“I’m just passing along a message. Dinner’s happening in an—”

“How tall are you?” interrupted the third girl, still sizing him up. “Six one?”

“Six three,” said Thomas. “Who are you?”

“Are you serious?” The whites of her eyes widened. “Vivienne didn’t tell you about me?”

“She doesn’t tell me much.”

“I can’t believe this,” said the girl, sounding indignant. “Not even one mention?”

“This is Hadley,” said Frances flatly. “Her dad is the chief of police.”

“That is not my most defining personality trait, Frances. I hate when you lead with that.” Hadley crossed her legs under her and turned toward Vivienne. “This is criminally offensive, Vivienne. He met Reed before me.”

At the name, Vivienne jacked upright, but it was too late.

“Reed,” echoed Thomas. “Who’s that?”

Hadley tugged off her sunglasses. “What do you mean, who’s Reed? He’s the goth townie she used to—” She didn’t finish. Vivienne bent forward and slid a hand over her mouth, silencing her.

“Cute,” said Thomas. “That’s very mature.”

“Isn’t she just,” deadpanned Frances, without looking up from her camera. “Viv, this is the last time I let you borrow anything of mine. I think you cracked my lens.”

And just like that, they fell back to ignoring him. Like he was a seagull hopping nearby, begging for scraps. A sear of irritation ripped through him.

Wading into the landscaping, he located the nearest outlet and unplugged the speaker. The music cut out. Silence fell, and three pairs of eyes swiveled toward him.

“Party’s over,” he said. “It’s time for your friends to go.”

Vivienne rose, fuming, from her chaise. Turn the music back on.

“I don’t think I will.”

“I’m actually going to pack it in,” said Frances, rising to go. “I’m getting a sunburn.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Hadley. “The vibes are not great.”

They gathered up their things in a hurry, pulling on swim covers and shoving tumblers into beach bags, casting the occasional glance in Vivienne’s direction. Thomas and Vivienne stood there all the while, facing off like opposing chess pieces on a board. Neither of them said a word. It was a different sort of silence than they’d endured in the car. That one stagnated.

This silence blistered.

Vivienne felt it, too. She jumped when the gate slammed shut.

You can’t tell me what to do , she signed. Each gesture was as quick as a slap.

“Oh, I’m aware,” he said. “But I can motivate you.”

This caught her attention. Wariness shuttered her gaze and she angled her head to the side, waiting to hear what he had to say.

“You and I both know I’m supposed to keep tabs on you. Your stepdad wants me to tell him what kind of people you’re hanging around with. I get the sense you don’t want him to find out about Reed.”

Understanding tightened her mouth into a corkscrew. You’re threatening me.

“I’m negotiating with you, Miss Farrow.”

She’d gone pale. You can’t say anything.

“I won’t,” he promised, though now he was burning with curiosity. “It can be our secret, as long as you go upstairs and put on a dress for dinner.”

···

He won out in the end, the threat of being ratted out to Philip enough to send Vivienne stalking inside to cooperate.

His triumph was short-lived. He spent the evening alone in his room, flipping through the endless channels on his television and watching the sun sink behind the trees. When he found nothing to watch, he flopped onto his bed and fell to tossing a balled-up sock into the air in a pathetic catch, repeat.

Out in the house he heard the telltale sounds of dinner conversation. Snatches of laughter. The clink of cutlery. He felt like a dog, shut away in the kennel to keep from biting the company. He couldn’t remember ever being so bored in his life. In previous summers, he and his friends would load up the truck and drive out to Becket Quarry, spend their afternoons diving off the cliff, their evenings huddled around a campfire. They’d all gone off to make something of themselves. To chase something better.

He was the only one who’d stayed behind. Chasing nothing but his own tail.

He rolled onto his side and watched the skies grow dark.

Gradually, the sounds of conversations grew fewer and further in between. Thomas drifted, dozing, lulled to the cusp of sleep by the twilit quiet.

He knifed upright hours later to a heavy thud, the distant slam of a door.

It was full dark; the sky outside his window was studded in starlight. He sat still atop his bed, listening intently, and heard nothing but the harsh saw of his own breath in his ears. The house was as quiet as a tomb, the dinner party long over. Slowly, he lowered himself back onto his pillow.

He didn’t know how long he lay there afterward, staring up at his ceiling and willing sleep to return, before the motion lights clicked on outside. He sat up, startled, and peered through the glass. Out in the dark, a lone figure staggered dizzily through the spotlight.

It was Vivienne, headed toward the pool.

He crossed to the window, one hand thrown up against the light. She was rendered in silhouette, the skirt of her cocktail dress flaring like a bell around her waist. For several seconds, she tilted precariously at the water’s stony edge, looking as though she was contemplating whether to jump. Instead, she wavered a moment more and then collapsed to her knees. Burying her face in her hands, she began to weep.

He felt like a voyeur, standing there watching.

He didn’t look away.

Eventually, the motion light clicked off. Thomas was left momentarily blind, blinking away swimmers. Little by little, the lines of her re-formed, lit from beneath by the pool.

In the dark, unease crept in. This was private, and he was intruding. He reached for the drapes and tried to tug them shut without drawing attention. It didn’t work. The grommets clattered noisily against the rod. Instantly, her chin kicked up. The motion lights winked on and they were each thrown into stark relief. Their eyes met through the glass just as he snapped the curtains shut.

He stood there a moment longer, his heart thudding, a formidable gulf torn open inside his chest. Too deep to explore. Too dangerous to try.

“Fuck,” he said into the quiet of his room.

Stifling his embarrassment at being caught, he climbed back into bed. He lay on his back and stared up at the ceiling, his face burning.

He didn’t sleep.

···

The following morning, he dragged himself out of bed and headed out for a jog, determined to outrun the vision of Vivienne sobbing by the pool. He found Philip in the driveway, loading a briefcase into his car. He shut the door the moment he caught sight of Thomas, his smile genial.

“There you are,” he boomed, in a voice that sent a nearby swallow into flight. “I wanted to tell you—you’ve got next weekend off.”

Thomas blinked. “What?”

“ Next weekend, Walsh,” Philip said again, this time with a grand sweep of his hand. His signet ring winked gold on his pinkie finger. Its flat white stone didn’t catch the light. “Surely you didn’t think you’d be working straight through the summer without a break here and there.”

“But Miss Farrow—”

“Will be with me,” Philip assured him. “It’s a bit of a tradition of ours in the summers. We go fishing out in Long Island Sound one Saturday a month. Do you fish?”

Thomas thought of a distant summer afternoon with his uncle, the rowboat spinning in a tired helix out in Pegan Cove—a bucket packed with pike and a cooler of Pabst Blue Ribbon sweating between them. The peaceable quiet had been broken only by the dry croak of an egret, his uncle’s familiar burr: Your mom tells me you’ve been getting in fights at school.

He cleared his throat. “Not with any regularity.”

“Most men in my line of work like to golf,” said Philip, following his phantom swing through with impeccable form. “They spend all day burning to a crisp out on the green, and for what? A little light networking? I prefer a day at sea. It’s good for the soul. It’s good for Vivienne, too—every once in a while, I like to take her swimming with sharks. Let her rub elbows with kingmakers, see how the money gets made. It’s a good life lesson, don’t you think?”

“Yes, sir,” said Thomas.

Philip peered up at the sun, shielding his eyes with a hand. “Maybe one of these days we’ll get you out there with us. Have you ever been out on the Sound?”

“I haven’t.”

“It’s an estuary—not all that deep. Sixty, sixty-five feet down at most. But you go out to the eastern limits? The water goes down as far as three hundred feet in places. You drop something overboard, who’s to say you’ll ever find it? I like that sort of vastness. I’m sure you know the feeling.”

Thomas frowned, not following. “Sir?”

“No need to play at innocence.” Philip reached out and cuffed him on the shoulder. “I told you, I did my research. I didn’t stumble upon your resume by accident, you know. I’ve got a former colleague whose son went to the same school as you.”

This was news to Thomas. He felt suddenly cold, in spite of the heat. “Oh.”

If Philip noticed his discomfort, he didn’t show it. “I’m told some of the young men in your fraternity dabbled in matters of the occult. You ever take part in anything like that?”

“No,” said Thomas, without expanding. Then, eager to change the subject, “Sorry, I guess I just didn’t see Miss Farrow as the fishing type.”

Philip’s smile flickered. “She’s a bit coddled,” he said, “isn’t she? Her mother’s doing, I’m sorry to say. That’s why we do it. A day at sea here and there is good for the soul. Take the weekend, Walsh. Go home and see your family. You’ve earned it.”

···

Thomas spent the remainder of his day alone. Philip had gone to the city for work. Amelia to her spin class and then lunch with friends. Vivienne remained shut up in her room, with nothing on the schedule. No social obligations. No studio time. No classes. Thomas came back from his run to find the house bone-chillingly quiet.

Inside his head, his thoughts rattled around without ever landing. He’d sprinted nearly the entire way, and he still hadn’t been able to escape the unease chasing after him. It wasn’t that he’d thought it was some strange serendipity that he’d landed this job without ever applying—he knew Philip Farrow had intentionally sought him out.

It was only that he’d assumed it was due to his proficiency in sign language.

He hadn’t thought his schooling held any weight at all.

He wasn’t sure how it factored in—his connection to the Priory.

Like so many other students in need of financial aid, he’d taken a scholarship-based placement test to see where he’d be best suited. It had been his school counselor’s idea. Since his father’s passing, he’d been going through the motions—so wrapped up in what was going on at home, he stopped focusing on what was happening at school. His grades floundered. He was kicked off the lacrosse team. He started looking for outlets to burn off his anger—spent his lunch block picking fights, spent his Saturdays in detention.

Until his counselor set a financial aid application in front of him, he hadn’t given any thought at all to what came after.

The day the letter arrived from the Grants and Scholarships Committee, he’d been outside mowing the lawn. He’d tinkered with the cut deck as Tessa tore into the wax-sealed envelope, his heart in his throat and his expectations low.

“Mr. Thomas Walsh,” Tessa read. “Congratulations on a job well done. You are a recipient of our needs-based placement fellowship …”

He hardly remembered the rest. Only the sound of his sister shouting in his ear, the faint flicker of possibility deep inside his chest.

He didn’t like to think about it—how quickly that possibility had died. He did his best not to think at all as he showered and changed, a stitch in his side. Sprawling across his bed, he flung out his arms and clicked on the television, resigned to another day of nothing.

The screen stayed dark.

It took several minutes of tinkering to locate the source of the issue. Behind the entertainment center the wires had been cut clean through as though by garden shears. Anger settled into a hard knot inside his chest.

“Brat,” he muttered, shoving the console back into place.

Restless—looking for a fight—he headed out into the living room. The dogs were already there, dozing on the couch. Molly picked up her head at the sight of him, ears pricked and gaze wary.

“Boo,” he said.

That sent them into immediate, scrabbling flight. Flopping onto the newly vacant cushions, he found the remote and turned on the television, cranking the volume as high as it could go. It thundered through the quiet of the house, straining the surround sound.

“Three,” he whispered. He was being an idiot, baiting her this way.

“Two.” But something had to give, and it wouldn’t be him.

“One.” A door slammed upstairs. The subsequent gut punch he felt wasn’t entirely due to anger, and that infuriated him the most.

Vivienne appeared seconds later, swallowed up in a sky-blue sweatshirt that fell nearly to her knees. The dogs flanked her on either side, as though they’d personally gone to retrieve her. He cast her a cursory sideways glance and lowered the volume.

“You should have your mother contact pest control,” he said coolly. “You’ve got a mouse problem.”

Her face was swollen, her eyes puffy, as though she’d been upstairs crying. He had a brief flashback to her out by the pool, her skin silvered in the light, her shoulders hitching. The smallest thread of guilt stitched through him. He pressed on in spite of it.

“One chewed clean through the cables on my TV. Isn’t that weird?” He turned back to the television, balancing his chin on his fist. “Felt pretty personal, actually. I think the mouse might have been mad at me.”

Now that she was here, he wasn’t sure what came next. His only thought had been to lure her out—to let her see firsthand that he wouldn’t be rattled. He braced himself to be dismissed, or else insulted in some manner or another.

Instead, Vivienne climbed over the back of the couch and curled into a ball on the opposite end. Surprised, he glanced over at her. She sat several cushions away, chewing at her nails, her knees tucked into her sweatshirt. She didn’t acknowledge him at all. For a while afterward, the two of them watched the camera follow a pod of humpback whales through the icy waters of the Arctic. Beneath the steady baritone of a celebrity narrator, he heard her sniffle.

“Ah, shit,” he muttered.

Her eyes snapped to his. He set down the remote and turned to face her, hooking his elbow over the back of the couch. The tip of her nose was red. Whale song thrummed through the quiet.

“Are you okay?”

Her response came swiftly. P-h-i-l-i-p isn’t paying you enough to pretend like you care.

“I’m not pretending,” he said. “I’m genuinely asking.”

Well, don’t. I don’t want to talk to you.

“Fine. Then we won’t talk. We’ll just sit here in uncomfortable silence.”

Good.

“Good.”

She turned back toward the television and so did he, kicking his feet up onto the coffee table. On the screen, a silver school of fish broke over the thin dorsal fin of a dolphin. The minutes crawled past in torturous slow motion. Twilight fell, and then it was just the two of them and the deep blue sea, the soft sound of two bodies breathing in tandem.

By the time the credits rolled, Vivienne was asleep. Thomas stood and stretched, clicking off the television. As his eyes adjusted to the newly fallen night, the television sharpened into focus. Moonlight turned the screen mirror-dark, so that his own figure reflected back at him. Directly over his shoulder was a face. Vivienne’s, black-eyed and smiling wide. His pulse jumped and he spun around, expecting to find her just behind him.

She was still on the couch where he’d left her, her hands folded under her chin and her knees tucked into her sweatshirt. He blinked away the image, scrubbing his hand over his face.

He really did need more sleep.

Reaching for a blanket, he shook it out, preparing to drape it over her. As he did, her phone lit up. He didn’t mean to do it. To snoop. But he recognized the name that cropped up: Reed.

The message was short. Simple.

Reed

Talked to Grayson. You’re welcome. He says he’s in.

Another came in as he was trying to decipher the first. This one stopped his heart cold.

Reed

Are you ready to die?