Dr. Addison turns a red-rimmed gaze on me. “Let her through,” he says in a voice that’s somehow gentle and authoritative all at once.
The officer frowns, but lets go of my arm. When I reach Jules’s dad, he looks down to see the confusion on my face. I find myself stammering, babbling. “Jules wasn’t able to talk to you since—how do you know who I am?”
Dr. Addison shakes his head. “I saw what you did for him. How you looked at him.” He pauses, and then adds, “And I’ve seen the wanted posters with you together.”
His eyes are so much like his son’s.
“I’m Mia,” I whisper. “And I’m in love with your son.”
I can’t saywas. Iwasin love. I can’t do it.
A hand creeps into mine, and I curl my fingers through Evie’s.
“Time to move,” says one of the EMTs. “Sir, you can come with us. Everyone else has to stay back.”
Dr. Addison speaks before I get a chance. “They’re coming too,” he informs them, his low, gentle voice soft and aching with sadness. “They’re family.”
IT’S RAINING AS THE CAR PULLS UP TODR.ADDISON’S COTTAGE,droplets running down the windows and dressing the world beyond in gray. The driver offers to escort me to the door with an umbrella, but I wave it away. The water is bracing, and strangely alien at the same time. If I didn’t know I was in another world from the neatly manicured lawn, the healthy, soaring oak trees lining the streets, or the hired car that arrived at my hotel to bring me here today, the rain would do the trick.
Evie’s back at the hotel. She offered to come with me, to hold my hand if I needed it or just offer moral support, but I wanted to come alone.
He always told me I’d fit right in here. That his dad would love me. That it wouldn’t matter that I was a thief and a liar and a criminal. But now, trudging up the front walk by myself, I’m not so sure. Maybe it was just that I’d fit withhim, wherever he went, as long as we went together.
I swallow hard, coming to a stop before the door, abruptlywishing Ihadtaken up the offer of the umbrella. My hair’s plastered to my forehead, and my careful attempts at makeup are no doubt dripping down my face. But I raise a hand to knock anyway.
The door opens before I can.
Dr. Addison is there on the other side, and for a moment I’m so struck by the similarities between him and his son that my heart seizes painfully, and I’m robbed of speech.
“Mia,” he says softly, his eyes warm. If he notices my apprehension, he gives no sign—he just steps out onto the rainy walk and wraps me in a hug.
I’m Mia.The first words I ever spoke to this man, in that dark, bloodstained cavern in the underground of Prague, were all he needed to hear.And I’m in love with your son.
He was the one who arranged for Evie and me to come back with him to Oxford. He got us our hotel room, hired the driver, made sure we had everything we could want, like fresh clothes and room service.
But for all I would’ve once thought I’d died and gone to heaven in such luxury, without Jules it all feels … hollow.
Dr. Addison ushers me inside, showing me where I can take off my wet shoes, and offering me a warm sweater when he notices me shivering a little in the damp. The hoodie he returns with is filled with a familiar scent, if a little faded. It’s one of Jules’s, no doubt.
My throat closes as I clutch it close to me.
We talk a little—he asks about the hotel, and after my sister, and shares the news that not only has the IA dissolved Evie’s contract, they actually raided the club that had her, liberating half a dozen other underage girls.
His is an old cottage-style house, and though it’s not spacious, there are little touches here and there that give it a strange sort of grandeur. Portraits hang at random intervals all over the walls—some are paintings, faded with age, and others are photographs, more recent. The staircase is old and winding, with an ancient carved wooden banister thicker than my waist.
Dr. Addison sees me looking at it, and offers a tiny smile. “He broke his collarbone sliding down that banister when he was seven,” he tells me, eyes crinkling with the memory.
When I first met Jules, I never would’ve thought him capable of sliding down a banister. Now, I can picture it with perfect clarity.
His father’s watching me, and when I look up, he tilts his head to the side with obvious understanding. “Here’s me talking your ear off, when that’s not why you came. I hope you’ll come often, Mia—you’ll always be welcome here, no matter what. But for now—would you like to see him?”
Wordlessly, I nod, my heart stuttering. Reliving the moment on the way up to the streets of Prague, when one of the EMTs suddenly lifted her head, eyes wide.
I can still hear her voice: “He’s got a pulse!”
Dr. Addison leads me through the house, explaining that Jules’s bedroom was upstairs, but that it seemed impractical to get him up there, so they made a place for him in the parlor. Whatever a parlor is.
We arrive at a room with long, curtained windows lining one wall, a piano in one corner, and a bed at the far end. Once my eyes see that, they fix there. Dimly, I hear Dr. Addison say, “I’ll give you some time,” as he closes the door gently behind me.
