Chapter 4: What He Saw

"Draft it tonight," Lucan says into the phone. "Two weeks' pay, a reference, and she signs the confidentiality agreement again on her way out."

Adrian takes his time answering. On the other end Lucan hears a pen click, then stop.

"She's been there one day."

"Fifteen hours."

"You hired her on Monday."

"Which is why it's cheap to fix. She was given a floor plan, Adrian. She took a different route and looked through a door."

"It was open."

"Two inches."

"All right." Adrian's voice never rises. It just gets more careful. "Are you firing her for the door, or for something else?"

Lucan looks at the dark window. "For the door."

"I'll have it by midnight."

The call ends. He sits in the lamplight, waiting to feel the relief of a decision made. It doesn't come. At eleven-thirty he gives up and goes downstairs for water.

He's halfway across the hall when he hears it. A laugh, low and cracked, from the east wing.

In nine years Mrs. Calloway has laughed in front of him twice. He stops walking.

The east corridor has one lamp on. Mrs. Calloway sits on the floor with her back against the wall, a gray blanket over her knees and a bag of ice on her left ankle. Beside her, cross-legged on the bare boards in a cardigan too thin for the draft, is Celine Arden, both hands moving.

"—so he's fifteen, and he decides the ceiling fan needs ambience."

"Ambience," Mrs. Calloway says.

"Fairy lights. He wraps a whole string around the blades. For the disco effect."

"Dear God."

"He flips the switch, and for about four seconds it's the best thing that's ever happened in our house."

"And then?"

"And then the lights jam the blades and the entire fan comes out of the ceiling and lands on his bed."

Mrs. Calloway laughs again, and it turns into a gasp. She presses a hand to her side. "Stop. It hurts."

"Sorry. Do you want me to stop?"

"No."

Lucan stays where he is, at the edge of the light, and counts to sixty without meaning to. Neither of them looks up. Celine tells her about the ceiling, the bed, the hole, her mother asking what happened and her brother saying structural issue. When Mrs. Calloway wipes her eyes, Celine adjusts the ice on the ankle without breaking the story. Her hands are careful. She's done this before, for someone.

He thinks about the letter waiting in his inbox.

"How long has she been down?"

Celine's head snaps around. Mrs. Calloway tries to sit up straighter and fails.

"Mr. Mercer," says Mrs. Calloway, in the voice of someone caught doing nothing wrong.

"Don't move."

"I wasn't."

"You were about to."

"Forty minutes," Celine says. "She missed the bottom step of the back stairs. I heard it and thought it was the pipes."

"You didn't come and get me."

"She asked me not to."

"It's late," Mrs. Calloway says. "Nothing is broken."

"You can't know that."

"I know my own ankle."

"You've been on the floor for forty minutes."

"I've been comfortable for forty minutes."

He looks at Celine. "The ice. The blanket. Where did those come from?"

"The kitchen."

"That's the far side of the house."

"I left her for three minutes. I didn't move her, I didn't know if it was her hip." Celine meets his eyes and doesn't look away. "She didn't want a fuss. I thought if I stayed, it wouldn't feel like one."

Something in his chest shifts, and he doesn't have a name for it. He takes out his phone.

"I'm calling a car."

"Mr. Mercer, really, I don't—"

"A doctor will look at it. I'll cover the cost."

"I've never taken a day off in my life."

"Then it's overdue."

He keeps the call to nine words. When he hangs up, he crouches and slides an arm under her shoulders.

"On three."

"Surely someone else can—"

"Who?"

She goes quiet.

"One. Two."

She weighs less than he expected. Her fingers close on his sleeve and stay there until she's standing, all her weight on the good foot. Behind them Celine gets up slowly, one hand flat on the wall, and stays there a second longer than she needs to.

"Are you all right?" he asks.

"Pins and needles. Forty minutes on a floor."

"Sit down."

"I'm fine."

"I didn't ask if you were fine."

"I know. That's why I answered the other thing."

He lets it go and can't say why. "Her coat, by the back door."

Celine goes. Her footsteps fade down the hall, careful and steady, and the second they're out of range Mrs. Calloway's grip on his sleeve tightens.

"Tomorrow's conversation," she says, low.

"Not now."

"I assume it's been canceled."

"Go to the hospital."

"That is not an answer."

"It's the one you're getting."

"She didn't ask me for anything, Mr. Mercer. Not once. She sat on a cold floor for forty minutes and told me about a boy and a ceiling fan so I wouldn't think about my ankle." Her voice is flat. "I thought you should know before you made up your mind."

"My mind isn't your department."

"No," says Mrs. Calloway. "But I'm the one you asked to deliver the message."

He has no answer for that, so he doesn't give one.

Celine comes back with the coat. Headlights slide across the corridor wall. Lucan walks Mrs. Calloway to the door himself, one hand at her elbow, the other carrying the ice bag she won't hand over. At the car she turns back to Celine.

"The fan story. Is it true?"

"Every word."

"I'd like to meet him."

"He'd be unbearable about it."

"Good." The door shuts. The gates open for the car, then close.

Lucan stays on the step. Behind him, Celine says, "You'll tell me how she is?"

"Yes."

"Okay." A pause. He can tell she wants to say something else. She doesn't. "Goodnight, Mr. Mercer."

"Goodnight."

Back in the study, he opens his inbox. Adrian's draft sits at the top. Termination of Employment: C. Arden. He reads two sentences.

He deletes it.

His phone buzzes. Adrian. Did you read it?

Yes.

And?

He types. Deletes. Types again. Hold it.

Until when?

He turns the phone face down on the desk and sits in the dark a long time.

At seven, the breakfast table is set for seven-fifteen. It's the one rule of his that nobody has ever needed to be told twice.

She's already there. Standing, shoulders level, hands folded in front of her, the way someone stands when they've decided to take whatever comes without making it harder for anyone. Same cardigan as last night. Shadows under her eyes. A cup of coffee she hasn't touched.

"Sit," he says.

"I'd rather stand."

"I'd rather you didn't."

She sits. He takes the chair across from her. Gray light fills the window behind her. She doesn't fill the silence, and he sees what holding it costs her: her jaw, her left hand pressed under the table where she thinks he can't see.

"You can stay," he says.

She looks at him.

It takes her a moment. Her face doesn't loosen. It just goes blank, the way a face does when it's handed something it didn't know it had been waiting to lose.

"I wasn't aware that was in question."

He had the next sentence ready. A small, clean, defensible one about the corridor.

He puts it away.

"It wasn't," he says.

He pours his coffee. His hand is steady. He picks up his phone, scrolls past a message he doesn't read, and goes back to his day.

He has just lied to her face for the first time.

He knows it won't be the last.