This must be the break room, or something. I feel bad for barging in on the guy’s one place to rest when he’s at work. “No. I’m sorry, I was just looking around.”
Wilson gives a nod. “Of course, sir.”
For the first time, I take a real look around the room. It’s small, made even cozier by the large table, which has multiple chairs around it. A large window, out of which Wilson was staring when I burst in, looks out over an herb garden, marked out by an abundant border of flowering geraniums.
At the other side of the room, just past where Wilson has been sitting, is another door.
Wilson sees me looking at it. “It’s always locked, sir.”
“Sorry?”
“Locked, sir. That particular door. And the key destroyed long ago.”
“Where does it lead?”
Wilson gives me a long, speculative look. “It used to lead to the downstairs area, sir.”
The cells. I can just about feel the blood draining from my face, and my hand flies to my neck.
Wilson keeps up the odd, penetrating stare. “You know, sir,” he says slowly, “the late Mr. Castellani was very good to me. He wasn’t always an easy man to work for, but he was very generous with those who were loyal to him. I expect his son will be the same. A good employer. But if you prefer to leave the household…”
It’s my turn to stare at him. “I’m not—I’m not an employee here.”
“No, sir. But—still. You might prefer to leave the household.”
Oh, shit. He’s offering to help me get out of here. Back to my own life, where I can go wherever I like, whenever I like. Away from Redwood Manor.
Away from Alessandro.
“No, thank you,” I tell him. “I’m fine right here.”
“I see.” After another long moment, Wilson gives an oddly grandfatherly smile. “As you wish. Was there anything else I might do for you?”
I’m casting around for a way to leave politely when my eyes fall on the photograph he was looking at when I came in. He picks it up, looking at it fondly, and turns it so I can see. “You caught me in a moment of nostalgia,” he says. “My late wife—my daughters, their husbands, and all my grandchildren.”
There are a lot of them. Wilson and his wife are seated on a park bench in the middle of a crowd of people.
“This was the last family gathering before my wife died, a good quarter of a century ago, now.”
People with large extended families always make me curious. I barely have a family at all. “Where are they all now?” I ask. I take the photograph that he holds out to me, smiling at the antics of some of the kids.
“Oh, they’re back in England,” he says. “After my wife died, I came out here to America. After she passed away, I decided a change of scenery would be for the best. And so I came here, into the late Mr. Castellani’s service. Thanks to him, I’ve been able to put away a something for each of my girls, and their children, too.”
He tells me the name of each of his three daughters, and then all of the grandkids, too: Olivia, Bertie, Beth, Jamie…there are a lot of them. “Beth was always my favorite,” he confides, pointing out one dark-haired baby. “Though she’s a grown woman now, of course.
“Don’t you miss them?” I ask. The look on his face suggests I’ve said something wrong. This is why I try not to talk to people any more than I have to. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“I miss them very much,” he says. “Family is the most important thing in the world. The only thing you can leave behind when you’re gone. But I’m happy I can provide for them by working here. And now, sir, I think I’d better provide some lunch foryou. That’s why you came down, isn’t it?”
“I was going to make it myself.”
“And deprive an old man of his purpose? Please, sir, let me.” And so I sit there as he bustles around making me a cheese sandwich on crusty, artisan bread that he cuts from a freshly-baked loaf in the bread bin at the side of the room.
I even stay there at the table with him and eat it, while I ask more questions about his family back in England. But the whole time, I’m wondering if what he said is actually true, that the door down to the cells can’t be opened.
Because what if itcan?
What if that door was another way for someone to get into a passage that leads not just to the cells below…
