CHAPTER15
Colin lay in his bed, listening to Sojourn House’s quiet night sounds. Somewhere above a toilet flushed. From the bedroom next to his, the child murmured in his sleep. The floor creaked softly. Wind rustled the trees outside his window. Colin felt as though he was hearing it all for the first time. As though he had left for the dinner one person and came back another. So much had happened. If someone had asked him earlier, he would have said nothing could top the experience he had known at the dinner table, revealing the secrets he had prepared over a hundred hard and lonely days. And yet here he was, the words spoken in the car outside the academy’s entrance echoing through his dark room. There was no room left over for anything else.
Through losing a twin, Mira had been brought to the same hollow experience that shaped him. Despite the love her adopted family showed, despite everything. The bond he had sensed that very first moment, when she had sat down beside him at the pool, the feeling so strong it seemed as though he had known her for years and years. It all had a reason now.The logic that Colin normally prized as the paramount element in his world, it meant nothing in the face of this incredible fact.
Colin assumed he was too excited to sleep, too filled with a day crammed with incredible events. But it felt as though one moment he breathed in, and the next, the sun shone through his window.
Then he realized someone was knocking at his door. “Just a moment!”
He picked up the previous night’s shirt and trousers from his floor, pulled them on, fumbled with the buttons, then opened the door. Mrs. Fitzgerald stood in the doorway, tall and formidable. “You have a telephone call.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
She did not move. “It is almost nine o’clock, Mr. Eames. Is this the sort of behavior I am to expect from you?”
He dry scrubbed his face. “I don’t understand. Nine o’clock?”
She inspected him a moment longer, then wheeled about. “My office, sir. The instant your call is complete.”
An hour and a half later, Ethan pulled into the academy forecourt. Mira was seated up front. Ethan used the electric controls to slide open the rear door and greeted Colin with, “Did we get you in trouble, making you miss school?”
He climbed in, set his backpack holding the laptop on the floor by his feet, and was still looking for the door’s controls when it slid shut. “I start classes at UNCW next week. Everything is changing.”
“You can say that again. Hi, Colin.”
“Hi.”
“Did you sleep okay?”
“Until nine. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before.”
“Not me, baby. I could sleep all day.”
“Mira is our Energizer Bunny. She goes and goes, then collapses.”
Colin asked, “Don’t you have school?”
“Spring break. And no guard duty until three.” She reached back and poked his leg. “You cost me a sleep-in.”
“Ow.”
“I’ll give you ow.” She poked him again.
“Stop, Mira. No bruising the boy genius.”
And just like that, it was another easy day. They might be heading into a meeting that would decide his fate for years to come. But in that moment, it was Mira and her father and him. Together.
They drove downtown and entered the Murchinson Building’s parking garage. Mira acted like a female balloon, bouncing about with them for an instant and then dancing away and then bouncing back again. They took the parking elevator to the lobby, signed in, and took another elevator to the ninth floor. Roland stood just inside the glass doors fronting the elevator lobby. He shut his phone and smiled as he pushed the door open. “How’s my special girl?”
“Excited.”
“That makes two of us. Good morning, Colin. Ready for round two?”
They entered the nicest conference room Colin had ever seen. One wall was floor-to-ceiling glass and overlooked the Cape Fear River. Another was lined with bookshelves holding hundreds of books. Half had two-tone leather bindings with gold lettering. The others were a deep rich blue. Roland watched Colin walk over and trace his finger down the ribbed back of one. “North Carolina statutes and case law. Federal is to your right. Are you interested in the law, Colin?”
“No.” He liked how Roland spoke the word. With weight and respect. Thelaw.“But I love books.”
“Do you have a photographic memory?”
