Page 44

* * *

The kitchen smelled of burnt toast, which meant my father had been in it.

He was at the island with the newspaper — he still has one delivered, on paper, down that driveway, at what I can only assume is enormous inconvenience to somebody — and he looked up when I came in.

"There he is."

"Don't."

"I'm not going to say anything." He held both hands up in surrender.

"You've already said something."

"I said there he is, Sol." He got up and put bread in the toaster without being asked. "How's Esteban?"

"Discharged before dawn. Concussion, stitches, they want him seen again Friday." I sat down. "I'll drive Simona back for her car this afternoon."

"Already done. I sent a car at nine."

"You did?"

"Don't sound so astonished, I'm not a decorative object." He leaned back against the counter. "I've given him the rest of the week off. Paid, obviously. I told him I'd have him arrested if he came up that driveway before Monday." He folded his arms. "Now tell me how he fell in the pond."

And I told him.

Not the version Esteban gave, because Esteban told me it was slippery and then went quiet in a way I have seen from several hundred witnesses. I told him what Simona said in the car. How Steven had asked Esteban the week before. That Esteban told him he didn't like it and didn't want to be in the videos. That he stood in the water anyway.

I watched my father's face while I said it.

My father has spent twenty years cultivating an expression of gentle unhurried acceptance, and he is very good at it. It came off him like a sheet off furniture.

"Esteban said no to Steven?"

"He said no to Simona. He said yes to Steven."

"Why in God's name would he—"

"Because you employ him, Dad."

My father opened his mouth and closed it again.

"I have said," he said slowly, "a thousand times. That man is—"

"Part of the family. I know. He's heard you say it." My voice was flat. "He's heard both of you say it. And then he ran the arithmetic on what happens to a man who tells the fiancé no, and Dad — he got it right. That's the part I can't put down. There is not one thing about his reasoning I can fault."

The toast popped. Neither of us went for it.

My father stood there with his arms folded, and I watched twenty years of carefully constructed serenity fail to produce a single sentence. He was still not saying anything when the door swung open and Lance came through it.

He had his sunglasses on. Indoors. He got three steps into the kitchen with his jaw set, and behind him, at a trot, came Steven with his phone up.

"—and it's literally thirty seconds, it's not even a whole—"

"Steven." Lance turned around. "Put it down."

"It's for the Ascent, it's not—"

"Put the phone down."