Chapter 12
Allison read the article beginning to end twice, and by the time she finished, she had to wipe a tear off her face. She’d never known any of that about Dr. Capello’s family or the history of The Dragon.
It sounded like Dr. Capello, calling himself the lucky one, though she would have argued with him if she could. She’d been miserable in that group home before a man in blue pajamas had brought her to this magical house. If her luck hadn’t run out, she could have stayed here her whole life. Maybe she would have been in all the pictures on the desk.
Allison left the office and walked down the third-floor hallway, seeing the house now with new eyes. Daisy Courtney had walked this same hall Allison walked. Did the floor creak under Daisy’s every footfall as it did for Allison? Did Daisy bathe in the same pedestal bathtub Allison had that very morning? Allison couldn’t picture it. To her this was The Dragon, a children’s home. Impossible to imagine two very ill and troubled people haunting these hallways and dying in these rooms. What room had Daisy died in? What room had Victor? Allison didn’t want to know. She could understand why Dr. Capello hadn’t told her the history of the house and his family. Madness, violence, miscarriages, poison water and a weeping woman walking the beach at all hours hardly made for a cozy bedtime tale for children. Even as a grown woman, the story disturbed her deeply.
On the third floor there were only two other doors. The first was the door to Dr. Capello’s bedroom, which must have been the library in Victor and Daisy’s day. Built-in oak bookcases lined the walls and a bench sat in the bay window, a perfect spot for reading. As a child she’d paid no attention to Dr. Capello’s books. These weren’t storybooks—no pictures or conversations, as Alice in Wonderland would have complained. These were medical books, many of them clearly valuable antiques. She ran her fingers over the red and black leather bindings, took random tomes off the shelves and examined the elegant pen and ink drawings of human organs and veins, muscles and bones and parts of the brain. They smelled like heaven—or like old books, which was her version of heaven. Dr. Capello had a vast collection of books on child psychology, brain development, personality and behavior disorders. One would have thought he was a psychologist and not a neurosurgeon based on his bookshelf. But the article on the wall had made clear Dr. Capello believed most behavioral issues had medical causes. Made sense to study both physiology and psychology, she supposed.
The bed stood in the arched alcove by the big window like it always had and next to it sat a leather armchair covered in an old blue afghan. Allison felt a deep and troubling tenderness as she took the afghan off the chair and folded it neatly. This was where Roland slept when he was on night watch with his ailing father. A book about famous inventors lay on the side table. She picked it up and turned to a dog-eared page. “All that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combated, suppressed—only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle.” The quote was from Nikola Tesla, and it must have resonated with Dr. Capello as he’d underlined it in blue pen.
Allison placed the book back on the table where she’d found it. She pictured Roland reading it to his father at night. She wished Roland were here so she could kiss him again. Bad thought. Dangerous thought. She didn’t need to feel this intensity of affection for Roland so quickly. She was leaving today, after all.
Wasn’t she?
Allison left the question behind her as she walked into the hallway and shut the door to the bedroom behind her. Directly across from Dr. Capello’s bedroom was the door to the attic. From the very first time she’d seen the house, with the square sort of turret sticking up from the top, she’d wondered what delights were in that room, but the attic had been mostly off-limits back then. Roland had said in his letter to her that he’d found her copy of A Wrinkle in Time up there. Maybe more of her old things were up there. She reached out for the doorknob, but the second her finger touched it, a jolt of electric shock ran through her arm. Nothing too painful, and yet she stood there in a daze as if it had stopped her heart. She remembered something. What was it? Something about the attic. Something she needed to know.
Closing her eyes, Allison touched the doorknob again. The static shock had dissipated, but when she tried to turn the knob she found it locked. Odd. It had made sense to lock up the attic when they were children, but there were no children in the house anymore.
Allison tried the door one more time. It was an old house; doors swelled and hinges rusted. No, it was definitely locked. A key lock, too, which meant somewhere there had to be a key. Allison stepped away from the door, intending to check the key hooks in the kitchen, when she felt her phone vibrating in her back jeans pocket.
When she saw who was calling she almost didn’t answer, but she longed to hear a familiar voice.
“Yes, McQueen?” she said as she started down the stairs. She tried not to sound annoyed when she answered, but she didn’t try very hard.
“Where the hell are you?”
The worry in his voice caught her by surprise.
“What? Where am I?” she asked as she walked down to the second floor. “Where are you?”
“I’m home where I belong. You aren’t. I sent a painter over to your place and your neighbor told the guy you’d packed up and left on a long trip.”
“Well, there’s your answer,” Allison said. “I packed up and left on a long trip.”
“You didn’t tell me you were leaving.”
“I don’t have to tell you anything anymore.”
“I’m trying to do you a favor here,” he said.
“I told you I would take care of getting the place painted,” she said. “Not my fault if you refused to hear a word I said.”
She went down the second set of steps and walked into the sunroom. If she had to have this conversation, she would do it in a room with an ocean view to distract her.
“I heard. And I told you I’d take care of it,” he said.
“I haven’t changed the locks,” Allison said with a sigh. “Give the painter your key.”
“I gave you my key,” he said. “It’s in the box.”
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m in Oregon. I’m not going to fly back for a housepainter.”
“Oregon? What are you doing there?”
“Visiting the Capellos.”
McQueen fell silent for a few seconds. Allison braced herself.
“Allison...”
“I opened Pandora’s padded envelope.”
“This isn’t funny.”
“No, it isn’t,” she said. “It’s not funny at all. The reason Roland contacted me is because Dr. Capello is dying. He thought I might want to see him before it was too late. I did, so here I am. The end.”
“Not the end. Not even close. Someone in that house tried to kill you. You shouldn’t be there.”
“It was thirteen years ago.”
“So was my divorce. You don’t catch me at my ex-wife’s house, do you?”
“First of all, your ex-wife wouldn’t let you in her house. Second, none of this is any of your business, McQueen.”
“We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“No.”
“Cricket—”
“I told you not to call me that anymore. And shouldn’t you be out buying nursery furniture or something instead of interrogating me?”
“I have plenty of time to interrogate you and buy nursery furniture.”
“I’m a little busy, however, so I’m going to go.”
“Busy? Doing what?”
“Sitting on a couch staring at the ocean. I’m swamped.”
“Are you going to stay mad at me forever?” he asked.
“Forever? It’s been three days. And as a matter of fact, I’m not mad. However...I don’t think we need to be talking to each other. Do you?”
“I think if you’re in a house with someone who wants to kill you, we probably should stay on the line.”
“I’m alone in the house,” she said. “And I feel very safe here. Roland gave me quite the welcome home last night.”
“Big party?”
“We slept together,” she said.
That admission had the desired effect of silencing McQueen for a good long time. She spent those beautiful seconds grinning and watching the waves dance up the beach. They seemed happy today, happy for her.
“You had sex with Roland?”
“Twice.”
“You had sex with your brother?”
“It gets better. Or worse, depending on how Catholic you are. He’s a monk.”
“Monk? Black robes and bad haircuts? That kind of monk?”
“He wears jeans and flannels and he has very nice hair. But yes, he is a monk. He left his abbey a few months ago to take care of his dad.”
“You had sex with your ex-brother who is now a monk.”
“It was surprisingly good,” Allison said. “You would never have known he was a monk.”
“Did you do that just to hurt me?” he asked.
McQueen was silent again for long enough Allison stopped enjoying it.
“No,” she said. “Not just to hurt you.”
“Dammit, Allison.”
“McQueen, you really give yourself too much credit. You called me. I didn’t call you. You ended things. I didn’t.”
“Six years. You can’t ask me to stop worrying about you overnight after six years.”
“You don’t have to worry about me,” she said with an exaggerated groan.
“I don’t? You’re in a house where you almost died and you don’t know who did it or why, and I’m not supposed to worry?”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“I’m not sure that you do.”
“McQueen, need I remind you I was nineteen when we had sex the first time. You treated me like an adult when I was still a kid. Now I am actually an adult, and you’re treating me like a child. If your next sentence isn’t an apology, I’m hanging up and this is the last call of yours I’m ever taking.”
Knowing McQueen and his congenital inability to apologize, she fully expected this to be the last time they’d speak. Seemed McQueen was still capable of surprising her.
“You’re right,” he said at last. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for taking you to bed too young. I’m sorry for making you put your life on hold for me. And I’m sorry for treating you like a child when I know you’re as smart and capable as they come.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Apology accepted.”
“But one more thing, please?”
“Are you going to say something sexist and patronizing again?”
“Probably. But give me this one.”
“Fine. Go on.”
“Please, Allison, please be careful.”
The pleading tone in his voice wriggled through the chinks in her armor. Since her aunt died, he’d been the closest thing to family she’d had. He’d helped her buy a car. During a hard winter, he’d rented her a hotel room when the pipes in her old building froze. When Allison contracted pneumonia her senior year in college, he’d made sure she had the best medical care money could buy. If they’d still been together when this had happened, he would have paid her way out to see Dr. Capello, paid for her hotel room and paid for her way back. While he was never there for her when she wanted him, he was always there for her when she really needed him.
“It’s just...” she said, no longer angry. “I think I’m starting to remember things.”
“What?” he asked. “Remember what?”
“Remember things I need to remember. Something important. I’m almost there, I think, like when you’re trying to remember a word and it’s on the tip of your tongue? It’s like that.”
“Do you want to remember?”
“One of my old drawings is still on the fridge. Maybe if I knew what happened, why I had to leave... I don’t know—”
“If you knew why you had to leave, you could stay?”
“I’m not thinking that far ahead.”
“You’re a terrible faker,” he said.
“Okay, maybe I am thinking that far ahead. Might be nice to spend Christmas with someone.”
“We always celebrated Christmas together.”
“On the twenty-seventh,” she said. “Never on Christmas Day. You were always with your kids on Christmas Day.”
“Cricket, I—”
“I know. You’re sorry. But you shouldn’t be. Not about that. Christmas is for family, and I was never part of your family.”
“And Roland is?”
“He used to be.”
“So you’re planning on staying there awhile, then?”
“Long enough to see Dr. Capello.”
“All right,” he said. “Have it your way. But if you decide to stay longer, check in with me every now and then so I know you’re alive.”
“If you insist.”
“I insist,” he said. “And let me know if anything weird happens, okay?”
Allison heard something outside. She looked up and saw someone standing on the deck. A man in black. All black. Black jeans, black boots, black sleeveless T-shirt, black hair and black tattoos all the way up and down his arms.
“McQueen, I’ve gotta go.”
“What’s up?”
“Something weird happened.”