She wants answers. I will give her immersion.
I stand there until the rain gets lazy and the light in the east starts deciding whether it will make a morning. I leave the room with the lock engaged and the knowledge that every choice I made tonight will pull at a thread tomorrow. It’s the only way I know how to keep a promise: not by saying it, but by building a place where it can survive.
Chapter 19 – Aurora
The car slows at the top of the rise and my stomach drops even though we aren’t moving fast enough to deserve it.
Wind-bent pines flank the road like a line of soldiers who’ve learned to give instead of break. The wrought-iron gates are taller than a person should be able to justify. Someone decided curved initials in the middle would make them less like a warning and more like a crest. The letters don’t soften anything. The little black reader box on the stone pillar blinks once, and the gates swing open on a motor you can’t hear, just the sense of air opening.
Lila presses both hands to the window like a kid. “Rory,” she breathes, fogging the glass. “This is insane. It’s like a movie where the main character finally gets what she deserves.”
I force a smile. “Let’s hope the genre isn’t horror.”
She laughs, unbothered. The laugh sits in my lap like a small warm thing that either calms you or distracts you at the wrong time. I press my palms against my knees under my coat to keep them from sliding. The seat leather does that new-car grip that never feels like it belongs to people like us. The driver, Kellan, has his eyes on the road with that particular attention trained drivers have.
As we pass through, my eyes do what they’ve always done: make a map fast and keep filling it as we go. The grass is cut to an obsessive sameness, but there are two swaths near the hedges where wheels made a path last night. The lamps along the drive look antique but the screws are new, and every other post wears a brass collar at the base slightly wider than style calls for. The cameras are low, in the metal, not at the top where anyone could spot them and feel watched. Good security hates being seen. A single black SUV sits tucked behind a yew hedge near a sidepath, tail angled toward the exit like whoever parked it wanted a clean sprint.
Lila twists to look back at the gate closing behind us, already composing a caption in her head. “I know they saidno posting,but could I at least take a video for my own…”
“No,” I say, gently at first so she doesn’t bristle, then firmer when she starts to pout. “Not even for drafts. They were explicit. No images or descriptions. Not here.”
She sighs and stuffs her phone into her tote with a clatter of lipstick, wallet, and indignation. “Fine. I’ll just use my eyes and my huge, award-winning brain.”
“Do that,” I say. “And keep it on silent.”
The drive curves, the trees give up, and the house appears. It’s Victorian, yes, but not the kind with spiky nonsense. Whoever restored it respected weight. The bluff puts it above the harbor just enough to feel like a lookout point without showing up to be struck by lightning. White trim against a slate roof. A veranda that wraps around the front and side. The glass in the upper windows has that slight old-house wave that makes everything beyond look like it’s exhaling. The sky is pale blue that will go white if you stare at it. A gull slices across the view and corrects into the wind like it knows this air better than we do.
Kellan takes the last turn slowly, letting the tires hum across cobbles. He stops in front of the portico. The front door opens from within before he reaches for his handle. Timing like that isn’t magic. It’s a man behind the door watching a small square on a screen.
A tall man in a grey suit steps into the vestibule pool of shadow where porch meets hall. Not a butler. Concierge suits the role: a polite face for a house that doesn’t want you thinking about who else is inside. He steps forward when Kellan opensour rear door. “Ms. Hale,” the man says. He doesn’t look at Lila until I do. “Ms. Gomez. Welcome to the Residency House.”
It’s not my name that makes the hair on my forearms lift. It’s the way he saidResidency Houselike it’s the only possible name for this place and not a set dressed for a purpose.
Lila slides out first and covers her nerves by smiling at the stained glass above the door. “This light,” she says, turning her cheek to it. The window breaks the winter day into clean pieces of color and throws them across the floor in a way that will make phones lose their minds.
I step onto the stone and let the air touch me. It smells like cedar and clean linen, but there’s also the salt you only get on a bluff like this and the faint chemical hit of cars that aren’t old enough to have developed personalities. I hand Kellan my bag because I’m not going to let the concierge carry it. He steps back when I do. Good training. Or a good note on a clipboard.
“Mr. Ward will join you later,” the concierge says, a polite smile like a passport, eyes not giving me anything. “If you’ll follow me.”
Inside is quieter than the outside suggests. Old houses have noises. This one has been taught not to. Polished wood that doesn’t squeak. Rugs that swallow footsteps without being plush. Walls with muted art that looks like money paid for taste and then told taste to sit down. I can’t tell if I’m hearing another person two rooms over or if I’m hearing the house settle. The part of me that knows doors presses its tongue to the roof of my mouth and says this place is not loud by accident.
We pass a sitting room that is better than it needs to be with two sofas at right angles, one chair that says therapy without actually saying therapy, and a fireplace with a single log burning like a timer no one will notice until it tells you to leave. We pass a library with a ladder that rolls, because rich people love these. The concierge leads us to the central stairs that splitat a landing, two branches curving like arms. “You’re in the East guest wing, second floor,” he says. “Ms. Gomez, you’re in the room adjacent to Ms. Hale’s. Dinner is at your discretion. Simone can prepare anything you need at any hour.” He keeps moving while he talks.
On the landing, Lila leans in. “I swear this is where directors shoot scenes where the heroine looks over a railing while strings play.”
“Stop narrating,” I whisper. It comes out sharp because my shoulders just realized they’re up near my ears and I want them back.
We reach a hallway with four doors on each side. The light is right. Whoever picked the bulbs has been in rooms where people have headaches. A small panel near the first door hums faintly. Brass, not original, the seams too tight to be old. I brush the back of my fingers against it as we pass, and the metal returns a soft vibration. Hidden lock reader. The face shows nothing. If you didn’t know, you’d miss it. Now that I know, I can’t un-know. I file it like I file everything I don’t have use for yet.
The concierge stops at the second door on the right. “Ms. Hale,” he says, opening it. He doesn’t step in. He stands aside. Lila peeks over my shoulder, makes a sound like a gasp that’s trying not to be rude, then catches herself, and steps back like she belongs anywhere.
The room is bigger than my apartment. The bed is made too precisely to be anything but a message. The window faces the harbor, and the light falls across an easel set just off-center so a right-handed person could work without their body shadow cutting the canvas. A side table holds a jar markedlinseed, a tin of brushes arranged by width, palette knives, rags that look new because someone knew rag-as-prop versus rag-as-tool matters to people like me. On the dresser: a ceramic bowl for keys orrings or trust you don’t want to keep in your pocket. The air carries cedar and the fresh linen smell that means these sheets were washed recently and dried inside instead of on a line.
On the bedside table is a white envelope with nothing in the way of decoration except my name in a hand I’ve only seen on a screen-signature. I keep my coat on and walk to it.
“Please let me know if you need anything,” the concierge says, the last thing said before people are left alone in rooms where the walls pay attention. “I’m just down the hall.” He closes the door and leaves.
Lila has made it to the middle of the rug and is turning slowly in the light like she’s making a video with her skin. “Rory,” she says. “There’s an easel in your bedroom. That’s… crazy. Also, my room has a chaise. I might never leave.”
