Page 151 of The Housekeeper

Chapter Fifty-nine

It was aftermidnight the following night when the landline beside my bed rang.

I groped for the phone in the dark, trying to answer it before it could wake Harrison. Instead, I knocked it off its receiver and had to feel around for it on the floor for several seconds before finally locating it half under the bed. “Hello?” I whispered, hearing nothing but ragged breathing on the other end. “Dad?”

Silence.

“Dad? Is that you?”

Seconds later, the silence was replaced by a busy signal.

Maybe it wasn’t my father, I told myself. Maybe it was just an obscene caller. Did people still do that? I wondered. Were obscene calls even a thing anymore?

“Great,” I said, sitting there in the dark, wondering what, if anything, I should—or could—do. “Harrison,” I said, turning toward him, amazed he could have slept through all the commotion.

He wasn’t there.

“Harrison?” I flipped on the bedside lamp and looked towardthe en suite bathroom. But its door was open and the light was off. Was he with Sam or Daphne? I wondered, pushing off the bed and padding into the hallway on bare feet.

But a quick glance into their rooms revealed that the kids were both in their beds, sleeping soundly.

“Harrison?” I called again, wondering if he’d gone to the kitchen for a midnight snack. Elyse had insisted we take home what remained of my father’s birthday cake, and there was still some left. Maybe Harrison had decided to finish it off. And maybe I’d go join him, apologize for my part in our continuing coolness, assure him that I’d make his annual barbecue something extra special this year to make up for his having had to postpone it.

It was at that moment I realized that the door to his office, a door he normally kept open, was closed. A sliver of light emanated from beneath it. Ignoring the little voice in my head telling me to go back to bed, I crossed the hall and opened the door.

Harrison was sitting at his computer in his bathrobe, and he jumped when he saw me. “For God’s sake, Jodi!” he cried. “What are you doing?”

“What areyoudoing?” I countered, watching him quickly click out of whatever file he’d been accessing as I walked toward him.

His computer screen immediately filled with the image of the cover ofComes the Dreamerthat was his screensaver. “I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d do some work on the latest round of revisions for my new book.”

“I thought they were already done.”

“They’re never done,” he said wearily. “What are you doing up?”

“You didn’t hear the phone?” I asked in return.

“Someone called?”

I filled him in on the details.

“You think it was your father,” he stated.

“Don’t you?”

He shrugged. “I’m too tired to think.”

But not too tired to be on your computer,I thought, though I refrained from voicing this out loud.

Harrison gave a little half smile, got up from his chair, and turned off the light. “Come on. Let’s get you back into bed.”

I let him lead me from his office and back to our room, relieved when he crawled into bed beside me, his body folding around the curve of my backside, his arm draping lazily across my hip.

Ten minutes later, the steady sound of his breathing told me he was asleep.

Ten minutes after that, I gently extricated myself from his casual embrace, got out of bed, and returned to his office.

—