Chapter 22
Chapter
Twenty-Two
CALEB
The balcony railing was warm under my ankles.
It always got that way in the afternoon when the sun crept over the back of the house and hit the courtyard below.
With its weathered amber stone, iron furniture, and window boxes planted with purple flowers, the courtyard looked exactly like every photograph ever taken of the French countryside.
Probably because it was in the French countryside.
I’d discovered the balcony the first morning, when I’d dragged my chair outside, propped my heels on the metal, and watched the sun move across the sky like I had nowhere else to be.
Which I didn’t. Because I was in France, a country I hadn’t asked to visit, sitting in a house I hadn’t asked to stay in, eating food I hadn’t asked for that tasted so goddamn good it made me want to throw the dishes over the balcony.
According to the little television in my room, Burgundy was experiencing a heat wave for early December.
At least, that was my best guess. The French was rapid-fire and incomprehensible on every channel.
I’d found one American movie with French subtitles.
The wall-mounted flatscreen I’d spotted downstairs probably had English-speaking channels, but I wasn’t about to go find out.
So I was limited to French weather reports and ten-year-old action movies with poorly dubbed dialogue.
I stretched out my legs and rested my calves where the sun had baked the railing until it was almost too hot to touch. The heat penetrated my pants.
Jesse’s pants. Every morning, clean clothes appeared in the bathroom. Whatever I’d left in the hamper the night before vanished while I slept. Well-made and comfortable, the clothes fit as well as the sweater I’d swiped from Jesse’s closet the morning of my first shift.
Ahead of me, rolling fields stretched to the horizon.
A castle turret peeked above the hazy edge.
I stretched an arm out and stuck my thumb over the turret, and the landscape suddenly looked a lot like Vermont.
My parents had taken me skiing there a few times, back when they were still pretending we were a respectable, All-American family.
If I squinted, I could pretend I was in New England instead of three thousand miles from everything I knew.
Except I couldn’t really pretend. Because back home, nobody had wanted me dead.
No gift.
No control.
Fresh anger stirred in my chest, where it had simmered for a week now. Every time I got a little too comfortable, I stoked that shit all over again, keeping the embers alive. It was better than letting myself feel other things.
A knock sounded at the door.
I didn’t move.
“Lunch,” Jesse said, his voice low and careful through the wood. He never changed it. Never yelled or pleaded. Like me, he’d committed to an emotion and decided to run with it. So several times a day, I got Polite, Careful Jesse like I was a wounded animal he was afraid to spook.
The soft clink of dishes drifted through the door. Then silence. Then his footsteps retreated down the hall.
Jaw tight, I waited for the sound to fade.
He’d given me a house tour the night we arrived, both of us tired from the overseas flight and the hour-long drive in a sleek black sedan that had been mysteriously waiting for us at another secluded airfield.
“You’re welcome to use any bedroom you want,” he’d said, showing me around.
I’d given the place a cursory once-over, taking in the big rooms and high ceilings.
The walls covered in paintings. A dining room with furniture that looked like the Founding Fathers might have signed important papers around it.
A library. A garden. A big living room Jesse called “the salon.”
“Make yourself at home,” he’d said. “I want you to be comfortable.”
I’d chosen a bedroom on the second floor and closed the door.
And for the past seven days, I’d emerged only to use the bathroom across the hall.
My door was never locked. I’d checked that first night, half-hoping to discover I’d been imprisoned just so I’d have a reason to smash something.
But nope, the porcelain knob had turned, and I’d stepped into the darkened hallway. The house had been quiet. Jesse hadn’t come running. And the next morning, he’d delivered golden pancakes, fluffy eggs, and coffee with his soft, polite knock and careful voice.
I wasn’t sure how he knew I had no intention of eating with him. Although, he’d probably gotten the hint when I ignored his ass all the way across the Atlantic.
That first morning, he’d tucked a note under the plate:
I’d love to talk when you’re ready.
- Jesse
I’d left the paper crumpled on the tray. That evening, he’d delivered a laptop along with roasted chicken, fingerling potatoes, and chocolate chip cookies warm from the oven.
No internet, though. I had the run of the house, but the world wide web was a bridge too far. Which tracked. Jesse had managed information from the start, parceling it out in whatever quantities he deemed appropriate.
A chirping sound jerked me from my thoughts. In the courtyard below, a small brown bird hopped across the stones. After a second, it fluttered to the balcony and perched on the railing. One round black eye fastened on me.
“I don’t speak French,” I said.
The bird didn’t budge.
The memory of Jesse’s voice ran through my head. “Fifty years. Maybe forty.” My parents might be dead by the time I returned to the States. But that was probably the point.
My stomach growled. The bird flew away, swooping across the courtyard before disappearing over the roof.
With a sigh, I stood and fetched the lunch tray from the hall.
As usual, Jesse had arranged everything like a spread in a lifestyle magazine.
Two sub sandwiches bulged with cold cuts, tomatoes, and three varieties of cheese.
A glass dish held a mountain of macaroni salad.
Dessert looked like strawberry shortcake but was probably something French.
He never served me brownies. He wasn’t stupid.
I ate everything. Then I looked at the door.
It wasn’t locked.
After another few seconds of staring, I grabbed my borrowed hoodie from the bed and left the room.
Ten minutes later, I’d explored most of the second floor, turning up four empty bedrooms, a linen closet the size of my parents’ dining room, and what appeared to be a master suite at the far end of the hall. I didn’t try that door.
The floorboards creaked under me. I moved slowly, not entirely sure why I was being careful. Jesse knew I was here. There was no one to hide from. Paintings covered the walls. Most were landscapes and bowls of fruit, but a few portraits showed men and women with stern faces and regal postures.
I stuffed my hands in my pockets and kept moving. A pair of narrow double doors stood open, revealing a library with bookcases that stretched to a ceiling painted with golden constellations. Leather chairs and sofas surrounded a square table stacked with books.
I backed out and continued to the end of the hall, where a wide staircase led both up and down. Jesse was probably in the kitchen.
I started climbing.
When I reached the landing, I stopped and stared down another long hallway. But this one was twice the width of the one outside my bedroom. Sunlight streamed through big windows that lined one side. The view was better up here, several more castle turrets visible beyond the rolling fields.
The shafts of sunlight stopped halfway across the floor, the beams falling short of the artwork hanging on the opposite wall.
Which probably explained the corridor’s width.
I was no fine art collector, but I’d kept my baseball cards in those little plastic sleeves inside a binder. Sunlight could fade shit fast.
I moved down the wall of paintings, taking in more dour faces and curly wigs. Near the end, tucked in a shadowed corner, two smaller paintings hung side by side. I almost walked past them. Then something stopped me.
Both depicted the same dark-haired, dark-eyed young man.
Or it appeared that way at first. The longer I looked, the more differences surfaced.
The jaw in the painting on the left was narrower.
The mouth thinner. The men were brothers, maybe.
Or father and son. The painting on the left was faded, tiny cracks mapping the canvas.
Layers of white lace circled the man’s throat.
The painting on the right was obviously more recent, with vibrant colors and a different style of clothing. But both men had the same dark eyes and hair.
I looked at the older painting. Jesse was born in 1896, but the man on the canvas predated that by at least a century.
“It’s not me.”
I spun around, a startled sound stuck in my throat.
Jesse stood steps away in a pair of worn-looking jeans and a tight black sweater with the sleeves pushed up his forearms. Faint lines fanning from the corners of his eyes made him look more like a college professor than the student he usually resembled.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
I pressed a hand to my sternum, where my heart still tried to burst from my chest. “Really?”
Something like irritation moved through his eyes, there and quickly gone. “You’ve ignored me for a week straight, Caleb. I thought it was more of the same.”
I opened my mouth. Closed it. My face heated. “I guess you have a point.”
His gaze went to the older painting, and I looked at it over my shoulder.
“Who is it?” I asked.
Jesse was silent. When I turned back to him, he stared at the painting for another beat before focusing on me.
“It’s a long story,” he said. “I’ll tell you if you’re willing to listen.” He glanced around the sun-drenched gallery. “But I’d rather not do it here.”
He’d lost weight. Not much, but enough to make his cheekbones sharper. Faint hollows marked the skin under his eyes.
Something within me loosened.
“And you’ll tell me the truth?” The question came out before I’d decided to ask it.
A determined glint appeared in his eyes. “That’s the only thing I’ll tell you from now on,” he said. “I vow it.”
Coming from anyone else, the old-fashioned words would have sounded silly. But not from him. On his lips, they sounded right.
I probably shouldn’t have believed him. Believing Jesse van der Meer was a bad habit I needed to break.
“Where do you want to go?” I asked.