CHAPTER 4- THE STRANGER RETURNS

CELESTE'S POV

"No," I said, pushing the key back across Nadia's kitchen table. "I can't accept this. It's too much."

Nadia did not push it back toward me. She just left it sitting there between us, small and ordinary looking, a plain metal key on a blue keyring, and looked at me with the expression she used when she had already made up her mind about something.

"It's a guest room," she said. "It's been empty for eight months. My parents use it twice a year when they visit and the rest of the time it just sits there collecting dust and reminding me that I need to buy better curtains."

"Nadia..."

"I'm not doing you a favour," she said. "I'm solving a problem. The room needs someone in it and you need somewhere to be that isn't that house. Those two things fit together very neatly."

"It's not that simple."

"Why not?"

I opened my mouth and closed it again. The key sat on the table between us catching the morning light and I looked at it and thought about my bags in the rain and the wet cardboard box and my mother's photographs and the way my father had cut his food without looking up while Vivienne said the things she said.

"Just think about it," Nadia said finally. "That's all I'm asking. Don't say no right now. Take the day and think about it and call me tonight."

She folded my hand around the key before I could object and then stood up and started clearing the cups from the table.

I looked down at the key in my palm.

"Okay," I said quietly. "I'll think about it."

***

The morning was cold and grey and I moved through my errands with the key sitting in my jacket pocket.

I thought about it on the bus. I thought about it while walking to the post office and the dry cleaner and the pharmacy where I picked up the prescription that Margaret had added to my list without asking whether I had time to pick it up. I thought about what it would mean to leave and what it would mean to stay.

Standing on my own meant making serious decisions for myself, decisions that were far bigger than cleaning the house and attending to guests. And I didn't want to inconvenience Nadia in anyway, she probably didn't want to rent out the guest room but because of the situation I'm in she's forced to consider it and I don't want that.

That was the part I kept thinking about, not just leaving but having somewhere real to land, something I had built instead of something I had been handed out of pity.

If I took Nadia's room I would be exchanging one place where I owed something for another, and I was tired of owing things to people, tired of existing in spaces on someone else's terms.

I was still thinking about it when my phone rang.

It was Mrs. Reine, the head maid.

"The family needs wine for this evening," she said the moment I picked up the call. "Good wine. The Barolo from the merchant on Crestfield, the 2018 if they have it. Tell them it's for the Harrington account."

"How many bottles?"

"Six. And don't take long, there are things to prepare before the evening."

I put my phone away and changed direction.

The merchant on Crestfield took longer than it should have because the 2018 was in the back and the boy who went to find it appeared to have got lost somewhere in the process and I stood at the counter for nearly twenty minutes watching the clock and doing the calculation of how late I was going to be and whether that would be held against me tonight or filed away for later.

The bottles were heavy in their bag and I shifted them against my hip as I came back up the front porch that was when I noticed the car.

I stopped for a moment on the porch and looked at it properly. A black silver tire demon, it looked really expensive.

It was parked in front of the house.

I had a weird fascination for cars, back when my mother was alive and my father was still acting like my father, he bought a lot of toy cars for me and took me to car races and car shops because he noticed I loved cars.

I adjusted the bag and went inside.

The entrance hall was quieter than I expected for an evening that apparently required six bottles of good wine, and I could hear the low sound of conversation coming from the dining room.

I pushed the dining room door open.

"I'm so sorry for being late, at first they didn't have the—"

I stopped on my track.

The table was set for dinner. Properly set, the good china, the candles already lit. They were all seated. Margaret, Vivienne, my father.

And one other person.

They all looked up at the same moment.

Vivienne's expression moved through several things very quickly and settled on something that looked like she was sick or something, her jaw tight, her eyes going to the guest and then back to me with a calculation in them I did not immediately understand.

Margaret's expression was pure cold irritation.

My father looked at me with no expression on his face.

I was processing all of this when I finally noticed the fourth person at the table properly.

He was sitting across from my father, turned slightly in his chair from looking toward the door when it opened, he looked tall, even while seated, the kind of presence that reorganized a room without doing anything in particular.

I recognised that sharp jaw line and muscular build from anywhere.

It was the umbrella guy from the other day.

What was he doing here?

His eyes met mine across the dining room table and something in them shifted.

"Hello, Celeste.”he said with a smirk playing on his face.