Penelope’s face goes sheet white.
“No.” She forces a smile. “Just a broom closet.”
The cat rubs his body against the door, tail straight up.
“He must really like brooms,” James says.
Penelope laughs, but he hears the falsity in it, lower than her typical cackle.
She shuffles the deck between her knobby fingers and clears her throat. “Another round?”
Later in the night, James wakes in a sweat. After peeing, he tiptoes into the living room, wincing at every pop of the hardwood floor. The broom closet calls to him. Checking over his shoulder for Penelope, he jumps at a pair of icy-blue eyes. Ptolemy, watching him. No, watching the closet door. James tries the knob.
Locked.
“You can go inside to pee, James.” Nelle’s hands are buried in the sheep’s tufts. “I could stay out here with Clifford forever.”
James squints up at the September sky. He doesn’t want to leave her out here alone. “But it might rain.”
“I don’t mind,” she says, more absorbed with the animal than with him. For the week they have been at Penelope’s, Nelle has spent an hour after lunch every day in the backyard with Clifford. Her ink restricts her from accessing Penelope’s entire property. She can roam the fenced-in yard or the house, but not both.
“I’ll be right back,” he promises.
Nelle pulls a carrot from inside her jacket and guides the sheep across the yard with it, wind ruffling his white wool. “Cliff will keep me company.”
He bleats for the carrot, and she laughs as she feeds it to him. Clifford, it would appear, doesn’t mind nicknames.
James slips through the back screen door. It shouldn’t scare him so much to leave her out here. He left her in Jessie’s apartment all the time. She went to the studio night after night, alone. But that was in the city, and contrary to popular opinion, James feels safer surrounded by people than he does in the middle of nowhere. Imagining her out there, exposed to the cloudy sky, the sea, the hills and all their wildlife, sends a spidery chill down his spine.
On his way back, he opens the fridge for a drink. With a carton of grapefruit juice angled over his glass, he pauses, hearing the front door open. Penelope back from her daily trip to the store? But where is the familiar rustle of grocery bags?
“She’s notaware,” Penelope angrily whispers.
A droplet of juice falls into his glass. James swallows, silent, listening.
“No, I don’t think she will,” she says. “They have a system worked out.”
She’s on the phone, James realizes. He keeps his juice ready to pour, prepared to appear innocent the moment Penelope sees him in the kitchen. Definitely not eavesdropping.
“He’ssmarter than you givehimcredit for,” she says.
The living room floorboards groan. She’s pacing.
Penelope scoffs. “What would you have me do, Wallace? She trusts me.”
James’s fingers slacken. The carton slips from his hand, knocks the glass to the floor.
“Shit, shit, shit.” He snatches it up, but half the juice has already glugged out in a sticky splattering across the linoleum, and the glass shards are an even bigger mess.
WallacefuckingQuill.
James is too confused to be angry. Why is Penelope in cahoots with him? A week ago she acted like she never knew about her great-granddaughter. He glances out the window. Nelle is still chasing Clifford around like he is a floating cloud.
“You good?” Penelope comes into the kitchen, phone dangling in her hand. “James?”
Nothing devious about her. White hair braided back, tasteful sweatpants, fur-lined boots, and a cashmere sweater.
“Sorry,” he says, “about the mess. I lost my grip.”
