Chapter 5
five
Evie
Five seconds of silence, and then his face rearranges itself into someone easy and unbothered.
For a split second I see the man who walked into his own kitchen expecting one thing before he finds another. His lips parted, his weight shifting backward, and his eyes, those green eyes that I've been telling myself I don't think about, land on me with hunger before they land on anything else.
Then it's gone.
I watch it happen. The way his jaw sets, his shoulders realigning, his whole posture reorganizing itself into something easy and unbothered.
I've seen my father do this a thousand times, walking into a room full of donors he despises and becoming the man who's thrilled to see every single one of them.
I don't have a name for what Remy does with his face. I just know the machinery of it, the speed, and watching him assemble it feels like looking in a mirror I didn't ask for.
I give him the same courtesy. Shoulders back, chin level, the smile that makes people feel welcome without giving them anything real.
"Darcy's upstairs." My voice comes out steady, pleasant, exactly the right cadance.
"She wanted étouffée, so we talked an Uber driver into a grocery run on the way from the airport.
Your kitchen had the pots and the spices, I started the roux base and the andouille.
" I turn back to the stove, grab the spoon, and adjust the heat under the pot.
"Darcy offered to help, but she nearly set your kitchen on fire making toast, so I sent her upstairs before she could do real damage. I hope that's okay."
He moves into the kitchen and sets his keys on the counter, placed, not dropped. "How long have you been here?"
"Since about three." I turn back to the stove because the roux needs attention. "She said you wouldn't mind."
"I don't mind."
Three words. Neutral. Delivered to the back of my head while I stir.
Something pops and hisses behind me, next to me.
The andouille in the second pan has been sitting in rendered fat without anyone turning it.
I reach for the spatula but his hand gets there first, his arm extending past me, and for one full breath he is close enough that I can smell him.
Not cologne. Soap and warm skin underneath it, and my fingers tighten on the spoon.
He flips the sausage with a quick motion and steps back. The space between us returns.
I know exactly how many days it's been because I counted them, and I hate that I counted them, that I filed that particular self-loathing somewhere between useful information and open wound about two weeks ago.
The garlic on the cutting board isn't going to dry out that quickly, but my hands are gripping this spoon like it's the only solid thing in the room.
I'm here because my best friend needed me to come, and being needed is the engine that runs my entire life that I haven't figured out how to turn it off yet.
From upstairs, the music cuts out. Then footsteps on the stairs, fast and careless, the sound of someone who has never once worried about the noise she makes.
"Oh my god, is that the roux? Evie, tell me you didn't let it burn, I will literally never recover.
" Darcy rounds the corner into the kitchen at full speed, bare feet slapping hardwood, and the entire room changes.
She throws one arm around Remy's waist and stretches up on her toes to look into the pot with the other hand braced on my shoulder.
The tension doesn't break. It just gets buried under Darcy's voice, which is fine.
Buried is something I know how to work with.
"Okay, it smells amazing, you're a genius, I take back everything I said about you being boring in the kitchen.
" Darcy releases both of us and grabs the spoon from my hand to stir the pot herself, which defeats the purpose of sending her upstairs in the first place.
"Oh my God, wait, Tripp, you haven't seen the house yet.
I mean, you LIVE here, but you haven't seen it through my eyes, which is the only way that counts. Evie, come on, I need a witness."
I lower the heat under both pans and cover the roux. "Darcy, the étouffée is going to—"
"It'll be fine for ten minutes, come ON." She grabs my wrist and pulls, and I have just enough time to set the spoon on the counter before she tows me out.
Darcy doesn't walk through a house. She narrates it.
"Okay, so the ground floor is basically a museum for a person who doesn't own anything personal, which, Tripp, I love you but this is deeply concerning.
" She sweeps her arm across the living room with the authority of someone who's been here six hours and already has a thesis.
"The art is fine. It's FINE. It's the kind of art you buy when you want walls to not be empty but you don't actually want to look at anything. "
She's not wrong. I follow her through the space while Remy trails behind us, hands in his pockets, and I let Darcy's commentary do what it does best, which is fill every corner of a room so thoroughly that nobody notices what I'm doing with my eyes.
"Evie, back me up. Is this not the saddest living room you've ever seen?"
"It's clean," I offer, because it's the kindest true thing I can say.
"CLEAN. She said clean. Tripp, even Evie thinks your house is depressing and Evie is the nicest person alive."
"I said clean." But Darcy is already moving and my correction lands on empty air.
The walls are curated. Tasteful abstracts in muted frames, pieces a decorator selects from a catalog because they coordinate with the furniture without demanding attention.
No photographs. No shelves with books that have cracked spines.
I run my fingers along the back of the couch as I pass, and the cushion is cool, undented.
No evidence that anyone who lives here has ever sat on it long enough to leave an impression.
The kitchen we just left was the warmest room in the house, and that's only because I'm cooking food in it.
This isn't a home. It's staged.
I've been in houses like this before, donor residences where everything exists to project a version of the person who lives there. But those spaces are full, purposeful, designed to impress. This one is designed to disappear.
"The garage is the only room with any personality, come on." Darcy grabs my wrist and pulls me toward a door off the hallway, and I hear Remy's footsteps follow without hurrying.
The garage sits in half-light, cooler than the rest of the house, and it smells like motor oil and old exhaust. Darcy hits the light switch and fluorescents stutter on overhead, catching the deep metallic red of a motorcycle parked against the far wall, gold accents on the frame gleaming even under harsh lighting.
The kind of beautiful that belongs to expensive dangerous things, and Darcy is already circling it with her hands up like she's afraid to touch it.
"Tripp. TRIPP. Is that an MV Agusta? When did you get this? This is, oh my God, this is like a forty-thousand-dollar bike. What the hell kind of private security are you doing?"
"The kind that pays well." Easy, the answer already shaped before the question finished.
I look at the bike and then I look away. Filed.
Back inside, upstairs. The second floor is quieter.
Darcy pushes open the study door and the room is spare.
A desk and a lamp and built-in shelves that are half empty.
But there's a framed photograph on the desk, and when I step close enough to see it, something pulls tight in my chest before I understand why.
The man in the photo has Remy's jaw. Stronger through the brow, older, but the resemblance is immediate and undeniable, from the edges of LeBlanc gatherings when I was young, from portraits in hallways I walked through with Darcy.
Almost like recognizing a place you drove past as a child without stopping.
I don't pick it up or lean closer. I look for exactly as long as a polite guest would look at a photograph on someone's desk, and then I straighten and turn toward the bookshelves.
Back in the hallway, Darcy's hand lands on the bedroom door handle. "What's in here?"
"My room." Remy's voice is light but the sentence is complete. No follow-up, no invitation.
Darcy reads it instantly. "Fine, keep your secrets." She's already moving toward the stairs at the end of the hall. "There's one more thing you have to see. Evie. EVIE. You're going to die."
I follow her up the narrow staircase to the roof, and I don't look back at the closed door.
The rooftop stops me.
Not literally. But my feet slow on the last step and the evening air hits cool and alive with the smell of green things growing.
Terracotta pots line the edges, herbs and flowering plants I can't all name, something with purple blooms climbing a small trellis near the railing.
The fog line sits low across the western sky.
The light has gone gold and soft, and everything up here looks tended, wanted.
Nothing downstairs matches this. The staged walls, the empty shelves, the packed-to-leave sparseness of every room below, and then this.
A garden on the roof that someone waters.
I step toward the nearest pot and touch a leaf, small and waxy between my fingers, alive in a house full of things that are only pretending to be.
"I told you so." Darcy leans over the railing, pointing at the fog line. "Look at that. Tripp, how long have you been hiding a rooftop garden from everyone? This is the best part of your entire house and you just let it sit up here being beautiful without sharing with anyone?"
"You've been here six hours, Darce. You found it without my help."
Remy is standing near the door behind me. It's like I can feel his attention land on the back of my neck, steady and specific as a hand.