•••
Thomas’s days fell into a plodding sort of routine after that. He woke each morning to find the schedule empty, the Dobermans standing vigil at his bedside, whale eyed and circumspect. He stretched. He dressed. He went for a run. Sometimes two miles. Sometimes five, looping the house until he had the vast Tudor-style estate memorized from every angle. When that was done, he showered and ate. He spent the remainder of the morning surfing through channels on the guest room television, caught between feeling like he was going insane and feeling like he was getting away with murder.
He’d never been paid so much to do so little.
Each night, he fell asleep on top of his bedspread, a nature documentary washing his room in limpid blue, David Attenborough’s voice lulling him into a trance. In those moments, hovering on the cusp of sleep, he could almost forget he wasn’t at home. He could almost believe his mother was asleep upstairs and his sister was snacking in the adjacent armchair.
He could almost pretend he wasn’t slowly losing his bearings.
Almost.
He was a week into the job when Amelia cornered him in the kitchen. She materialized in the doorway just as he was finishing up a plate of scrambled eggs and toast. Without so much as a glance in his direction, she clicked across the tile and pried open the fridge. A chill eddied into the room as she stood in the refrigerator’s glow and surveyed the contents. Thomas choked down his last bite of toast and wondered if she was waiting for him to say something.
When at last the door swung shut, it was with a slam. Thomas found Vivienne’s mother peering over at him, steely eyed.
“Are you enjoying our facilities?” she asked, her voice chilly.
Wariness scudded through him. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. And then, because his mother had raised him withsomesemblance of manners, he added, “You have a beautiful home.”
Her expression tightened, and he knew immediately he’d said the wrong thing. “And how about the food? Is it to your liking?”
He glanced down at his plate, scraped clean. “The food is fine, ma’am.”
“That’s wonderful.” Her smile was thin. “We want you to be comfortable, of course.”
Out in the yard, there came the sound of a lawn mower engine as the landscaping crew arrived and began unloading their gear off the truck.
Thomas cleared his throat. “Is there a problem?”
“You tell me,” said Amelia, still smiling that wax-statue smile. “I assume you have a perfectly reasonable explanation for why Vivienne hasn’t been to a single studio session at the summer institute?”
Something froze inside him. “There’s been nothing on the schedule.”
“Is that so?” An edge crept into her voice. “I find that strange, seeing as I wrote the schedule myself.”
Thomas said nothing. To speak would be to disagree, and he didn’t get the sense Amelia would take kindly to any opposition. In any case, he had a sinking feeling he knew exactly what—or who—had happened to the schedule.
“We paid good money to ensure her place in the program,” Amelia went on. “I was able to pull some strings, but she can’t afford another absence. Dance is Vivienne’s life. Do you understand?”
“Perfectly, ma’am,” said Thomas, and he meant it. “It won’t happen again.”
“See that it doesn’t,” said Amelia as she left the way she’d come.
He found Vivienne in the family’s solarium, and she wasn’t alone. He could hear the raised voice well before he reached the open door.
“This isn’t a game to me, Vivienne,” a man snapped. “This ismy life.”
Thomas rounded the corner, his anger driving him forward at a clip, and slammed neatly into another body exiting the room at nearly the same speed. They each reared back, startled and infuriated.
The man in front of him was dressed in dark scrubs and sneakers. His face was drawn and several days’ worth of scruff had grown in along his jaw. Shadows sat like hollows beneath his eyes.
“Excuse you,” he snapped, and pushed past Thomas with a parting backward glance.
Thomas didn’t spare him a second thought. He was far too focused on seeking out the object of his ire. He found her seated in a wide rattan chaise, dressed in a puff of pink and applying polish to her toes with laser focus. Vivienne didn’t look up as he approached. Instead, she hyperextended her leg, foot arched, so that he was forced to draw up short or else piledrive directly into her freshly painted nails.
“He seemed nice,” he said, doing his best to exude a sense of civility. “The scrubs give him a real ‘mad scientist’ vibe.”
She wriggled her toes.
