Chapter 8
Roland insisted on going out to her rental car to bring in her luggage. While he was gone she wandered around the downstairs. The house was neither grand nor intimidating but the signs were everywhere that Dr. Capello had money and lots of it. She’d learned how to spot money from McQueen. His house was beautiful and big but minus obvious ostentation. The really rich people, McQueen had said, are rich enough they don’t have to prove anything. A millionaire will keep a wad of cash in a gold-plated money clip in his Armani suit pocket. A billionaire will show up in jeans with a couple twenties in his faded leather wallet. Now Dr. Capello, she knew, certainly wasn’t a billionaire, but he had enough money he didn’t have to prove anything to anyone. Yet the signs were there. The paintings on the walls weren’t prints but originals with familiar-sounding names inscribed in the bottom right corners—Rex Whistler, Grant Wood, even one O’Keeffe. The furniture was heavy, handcrafted and hand-carved. Nothing from IKEA here. As a child, she hadn’t had the eyes to appreciate the decorative woodwork, the antique mantel clocks, the stained glass transom windows, but her well-trained adult eyes saw it all. She was amazed that a man with Dr. Capello’s wealth had become a doctor when he could easily have lived off his inheritance. Even more amazing that instead of getting married and having biological children, he’d adopted kids out of foster care. McQueen would never have taken in a needy kid. Not unless she was over eighteen and he was sleeping with her.
Roland returned with her suitcase in his right hand and her overnight bag on his left shoulder.
“You okay going upstairs?” he asked.
“I’m fine, I promise,” she said as he led the way. The house was three stories high, and when she’d lived there, all the kids slept on the second floor. Dr. Capello’s office and bedroom took up the entire third floor. They started up the stairs, and Allison clung to the carved banister railing as she followed Roland up.
“I hope Dr. Capello doesn’t have to climb these stairs as sick as he is,” she said.
“He’s been doing it,” Roland said with a touch of awe mingled with annoyance. “Insisting on it. I don’t know how much longer he’ll be able to keep that up. We’ll probably put a bed in the sunroom when he can’t make it to the third floor anymore.”
“It’s been slowly progressing?” she asked when they reached the landing.
“Very slow until recently. Dialysis isn’t working anymore. He’s had too many infections to qualify for a transplant. Last week he threw in the towel. They say kidney failure is one of the most peaceful ways to go. Small blessing. Very small.” He pointed down the hall. “This way.”
The second floor had been the kids’ kingdom during her time here. In her last months here, six kids had divided up four bedrooms and two bathrooms. The girls—Thora, Kendra and Allison—slept on the east side of the house, which Dr. Capello called the sunrise side, and the boys—Roland, Deacon and Oliver—slept on the west side, the sunset side. The boys got the ocean view but the girls got the bigger rooms. A fair trade, Allison remembered thinking.
“Where am I sleeping?” she asked. The second floor looked markedly different than she remembered, which made sense. The kids weren’t kids anymore. No reason for Technicolor paint jobs and skateboards in the hallway, Batman movie posters and swimsuits and towels hanging over the shower rod to dry.
“Over here,” he said, leading her to the corner sunset-side bedroom.
“This is your old room,” she said.
“Yeah, now it’s the guest room.”
“Where do you sleep?” she asked as Roland opened the door and turned on the light.
“For the past couple of weeks, on a chair in Dad’s room.”
Allison walked in and put her bag down on the bed. The room was in a corner of the house with two windows—one facing north to the sparse woods and the other west to the ocean. The ocean-view window was half open to let in the sea breeze, and she was pleased to see a window bench had been added with white cushions and navy blue pillows; a pair of binoculars for bird-watching hung on a hook. She could see herself sitting in that cozy spot and reading all day.
Roland’s old wooden slat bed was gone, replaced with a full-size brass bed with a cream-colored quilt and sea-blue sheets and pillows, a dark blue rug and framed Ansel Adams landscapes on the walls. It was lovely, if a bit generic, like a bed-and-breakfast’s best room.
“Very nice,” she said, hiding her disappointment that so much had changed.
“Thora’s been taking care of the house,” Roland said. “She handled the remodel up here about five years ago. Dents in the walls, scuffs on the floor. There was even barbecue sauce on the ceiling on Deacon’s side of the room.”
“Wait, barbecue sauce?”
“I mean, we hope that’s what it was,” Roland said. “We didn’t ask.”
“I can’t believe this was your room,” she said, sitting on the bed. “It doesn’t smell like feet.”
“That was Deacon’s fault,” Roland said.
“Liar. I remember your running sneakers. Dr. Capello threatened to call in the hazmat team to decontaminate your closet.”
“Dad.”
“What?”
“You keep calling him ‘Dr. Capello.’ He was your dad.”
“He was my dad,” Allison said. “And you were my brother. You still feel like my brother?”
Roland stood in the doorway, not quite out, not quite in. Even as a boy, he’d had a habit of blocking doorways, filling the frames, reaching up and holding on to the top of the molding to stretch his arms and back.
“I don’t know what I feel,” he said.
“He never did officially adopt me like he did with you and Deacon and Thora,” she went on. “I was just a foster kid he took in.”
“You weren’t just anything. He loved you.”
“I know he did. And he was wonderful to me. That’s why I’m here. I owe him at least this much. A lot more probably.”
“He would say you don’t owe him anything.”
“Well, I do. I loved Aunt Frankie, I really did. But she was seventy-five when I moved in. And it was only me and her and her bridge partners on Tuesday and Sunday nights. Then she was gone and that was it for real family. I almost wish I hadn’t been so happy here. Maybe I wouldn’t have missed you all so much.”
Roland had watched her the entire time she’d been speaking. She didn’t look at him, and gazed instead at the moon dancing over the water.
“You aren’t happy, are you?” Roland asked.
“What?”
“Since the second I saw you, I’ve been trying to put my finger on what’s different about you now. I mean, other than you’re older and taller and prettier.”
She let the “prettier” pass without comment.
“And you figured it out?” she asked.
“Think so. You’re sad. You never used to be sad. Even when you first came here, you weren’t sad. Scared, but not sad.”
She walked over to him in the doorway and let him see her face, her dry eyes, the smile she didn’t have to force around him.
“I’m a little sad,” she said. “But don’t worry. Sad’s the weather, not the climate.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, his voice softer, almost a whisper. She could believe then he’d been a monk. Such a voice surely had God’s ear.
“More mad than sad,” she said. “It’s not fair, you know. I should have grown up in this house.” She turned away from Roland and went to the north-facing window.
The windowsill did double duty as a bookshelf. Old books lined the ledge, novels they’d read in school, tattered paperbacks with pencil markings and yellow highlighting on the pages. Flowers for Algernon, The Island of Dr. Moreau, Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. All of Deacon’s twisted sci-fi favorites.
“You think you get used to it, to losing people you love. I lost my mom,” she said. “Lost you all. Lost my...”
“What?”
“My aunt,” she said hastily. “She died a year after I started college.”
Roland nodded but the skeptical look remained.
“You should get used to it,” Allison said. “But you never do.”
“I don’t think you should get used to it,” Roland said. “You’d have to be pretty heartless to get used to something like that.”
“I wish I were heartless some days.”
“Don’t,” he said, and he said it so sternly and sharply she looked up at him in surprise. “Don’t ever wish that.”
He held her gaze and didn’t look away, didn’t let her look away. She couldn’t remember ever seeing him so serious, so solemn.
“You have a good heart,” he said. “A lot of people don’t. You shouldn’t wish a good heart away.”
“You’re such a monk. I was being jaded. Ignore me.”
“Twenty-five is too young to be jaded.”
“I have my reasons.”
Roland waited, sitting on the windowsill. He didn’t need to ask—she didn’t want him to. And yet she suddenly felt the urge to reveal everything.
“I got dumped,” Allison said. “Two days ago.”
Roland’s eyes widened.
“Two days?”
She shrugged. “It happens.”
“How long were you together?”
“Six years.”
Roland looked equal parts amazed and horrified. “Six? That’s longer than a lot of marriages.”
“This was nothing like a marriage.”
“It wasn’t serious?”
“It was very serious,” she said. “Hard to explain. But, if you’re glad to see me, you should be grateful to him. I wouldn’t have been able to come out here if he hadn’t ended things.”
“Well, I am glad.”
She threw a pillow at him.
He caught it deftly and tossed it back onto the bed.
“I mean—I’m not glad you got dumped. That’s brutal. Especially after six years. But definitely glad it brought you here. And you have a free pass to be as jaded and bitter as you want to be.”
“Thank you. I’ll take it,” she said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m on Kentucky time, which means it’s two hours past my bedtime.”
“Tired?”
“A little.”
“Tired tired or tired of me?” he asked.
“Definitely not tired of you. But I am tired. And if I keep talking I’ll talk about things I don’t want to talk about.”
“Then I’ll let you sleep. I’ll crash in Deacon’s room tonight since Dad’s not here. It’s the one right across the hall. If you need anything, knock.”
“Same here.”
They said their good-nights and Allison took a quick shower to get rid of the last of the sand before putting on her pajamas. They were cotton—white shorts and a camisole top—and covered enough skin she wouldn’t feel strange walking around the house in them. She lay in bed and turned off the light—a milk glass lamp with a blue glass shade—and tried to sleep. While her body was exhausted from the time difference and the travel, her mind wouldn’t shut off. Roland a monk. Dr. Capello dying. Kendra and Oliver long gone. McQueen living his new life with his new lady and the baby on the way. Her brain spun like a roulette wheel, and no matter what number it landed on, she lost.
After half an hour, she switched on the lamp again and went to her suitcase to look for a book to read. None of the ones she brought made for good bedtime reading. They were too serious, too scholarly. She needed a comfort read. She got out the copy of A Wrinkle in Time Roland had sent her and started reading it again for the second time that day. She didn’t get very far, two whole pages, when she heard a soft tapping on her door.
“Come in?” Allison said.
“Someone wants to see you,” Roland said, pushing the door open. He was in his pajamas, too. Plaid pants, bare feet, sleeveless T-shirt. He’d shaved, the lack of stubble making him look five years younger. And in his arms he held a cream-colored cat.
“No way,” she said. “Is that Potatoes O’Brien?”
“It’s just Brien now,” Roland said. “We dropped the Potatoes O. I caught him lurking outside your door like a creeper.”
Roland carried the cat over to the bed and sat down with him.
“Can I pet him?” she asked. “Or will he scratch me?”
“Brien doesn’t scratch anybody,” Roland said. “He’s a pacifist. See?” He lifted Brien’s paw and it hung in the air before he dropped it down to his furry belly again. “Pathetic. Grow a spine, man.”
“He’s sweet,” she said, grinning as she petted the old boy, happily sinking her hands into his soft warm fur. “And old. How old is he now?”
“Dad got him for Deacon for his tenth birthday, I think,” Roland said. “He was a kitten so...about eighteen. But the vet says he’s healthy.”
“Hi, Brien,” Allison said. The poor cat blinked sleepily. “You remember me? I remember you.”
“I remember you,” Roland said.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” she said, trying to hide her smile.
As she petted and scratched Brien, Roland looked at her.
“What?” she asked. “Do I have something on my face?”
“You look really young without any makeup on,” he said.
“Well, you look almost sixteen again now that you shaved off your scruff.”
“Don’t take this wrong way, but this all feels really weird to me,” he said, narrowing his eyes at her. “What about you?”
“I was kind of thinking the same thing. One second you’re like a total stranger to me,” she said. “The next, it’s like I never left.”
“Exactly. One second you’re this sophisticated twenty-five-year-old woman in diamond earrings and fancy suede boots. The next, you’re an obnoxious ten-year-old driving me up the wall again.”
“Who do you like better?” she asked.
“I missed the obnoxious kid. I’m enjoying getting to know the lady in suede. You sure you can’t stay longer?”
Allison propped herself up on her pillow and looked at him.
“I’m staying tonight, for old times’ sake. See Dr. Capello tomorrow. But after that, I think I should move on. It doesn’t have anything to do with you, Roland. I want you to know that.” He’d been so kind to her, so brotherly, so honest with her since she’d arrived, she hated to tell him this had to be it.
“I won’t take it personally when you leave.” Roland set Brien down on the floor and the cat sashayed out of the room, tail in the air, off no doubt to find his favorite sleeping spot.
“Never occurred to me Brien would still be around. That makes me happy,” she said, smiling contentedly.
“I saw your light on. Thought I should check on you. But you’re good so... I’ll go and let you sleep.”
“Wasn’t sleeping.” She spun her finger by her ear. “The hamster on the wheel in my brain is refusing to stop running,” she said. “I’m reading to him in the hopes he’ll conk out.” She held up her book, A Wrinkle in Time.
“I remember when we read that together,” he said.
“First night I spent here.” She held the book out to him and waved it. He took the bait.
He jerked his thumb, indicating she should move over to make room. He lay down next to her and propped himself up on the pillow. Unlike her, he hadn’t showered, and she smelled the sea air on his skin, salt and sweat. She wanted to press her nose to his neck and inhale but managed to control herself.
Roland opened the page and read the first sentence.
“‘It was a dark and stormy night,’” he read. After that one sentence, he stopped. He closed the book, sat up and turned around to face her.
“Roland?”
“I lied to you about something,” he said.
“What?” She rolled up. They were knee to knee on the bed, like they were kids again, telling stories and secrets. What had he lied about? Did he know who’d tried to get rid of her thirteen years ago? Did he lie about being a monk? Had he lied about his father’s medical condition? What was it that made his eyes so clouded and his face so solemn?
“I lied when I said I wasn’t glad you got dumped. I am,” he said.
“You are? Why?”
Roland kissed her.