The landing was dark. The hall below was dark. But there was sound — two voices, low, and then a door, and then something that took me a second to place. Music. Electric guitar, low and slow, bleeding through the study door at the end of the east wing.
I stood at the top of the stairs.
My feet were cold. I'd taken my socks off at some point in the last hour — one of those automatic things, the body making itself comfortable while the mind had other plans. The wood under my feet was cool and the house was quiet except for the music and the low register of voices I could feel more than hear.
I should have gone back to the bedroom. Kept thinking about everything and nothing, and left the rest alone.
I went downstairs.
The hall table was on its side. The vase — the blue and white one that had been on that table for as long as I'd been in this house — was in pieces across the floor. I stepped around them in the dark.
The study door was open three inches.
I put my hand flat on the wood and pushed it wider.
The record player in the corner was running — his grandfather's, the heavy one. Billy was in the leather chair with his legs stretched out and a glass balanced on his knee, his head tipped back. Judah was behind the desk. Not sitting right — sideways in the chair, one arm on the desk, looking at nothing in particular with an odd, mournful expression.
Neither of them saw me immediately.
I never cared for what they do. I never cared for what they know.
The guitar moved through something I almost recognized and didn't. The lamp on the desk was on. The rest of the room was wrapped in shadows.
Then Billy turned his head.
“Hey,” he said. Simple. Not surprised.
Judah's eyes came up.
He looked at me from across the room.
I turned my head back at the hallway to look at the pieces of the white-and-blue vase on the floor.
“Why’s the vase on the floor?” I asked because there was nothing better to ask in that moment.
Billy let out a small laugh. “There’s an old legend about Beaumont hinges and hurricanes. I was testing a theory.”
Judah kept watching me, his eyes moving over my face like he was trying to read something written there. He hadn't answered my question.
“It was my fault,” Billy added more seriously when Judah remained silent. “Came in too hot.”
I was still staring at Judah. He was no longer staring back. His eyes were now on the floor.
“I'll replace it,” Billy said.
“You can't replace it.”
“I'll find something similar.” He uncrossed his ankles and sat up a little, refilling his glass from the bottle on the side table. “You want a drink?”
“She’spregnant,” Judah shot back with a glare at Billy.
Billy raised his hands in surrender. “Right.Right.Forgot.”
I looked at Judah. His collar was open, his jacket gone — his forearms on the desk showing the edges of the ink I'd traced with my fingers in the dark — the burning Garden, the scripture wrapped in thorns. His pale eyes in the lamp light looking at me again.
And nothing else matters.
“You scared me,” I said.
