The mansion
Chapter 6
S O P H I A
"Clara," I say, staring through the passenger window.my bad feelings suddenly present again "Can I please wait in the car?
My aunt doesn't even look up from her notes.
"Absolutely not."
"I could guard the car. Someone should guard the car."I try to convince her
"The car is in a private driveway with a security gate and two guards. It doesn't need guarding."
"I could..."
"Sophi."
I press my lips together and look back out the window.
The thing is, I had thought I was prepared.
I had spent twenty minutes in the car mentally rehearsing being normal and professional and completely unbothered.
I had told myself it was just a house. Rich people had big houses.
I knew that. I go to a school with marble floors and a caviar lunch counter.
I am practically desensitized.And then we had turned through the gate and the driveway had begun and I had stopped being desensitized almost immediately.
Tall palms stand at perfect intervals on either side of the road YES a freaking road because it is a road, not a driveway, a private palm-lined road that stretches so far ahead that the house at the end of it isn't even visible for the first full minute of driving.
Their fronds move gently in the late afternoon breeze, casting long shadows across the pale stone below.
And then the trees thin and the house appears and my jaw despite every effort I make to keep it in place drops.
House is not even the right word.
Palace isn't quite right either, though it is closer.
White stone and tall arched windows and a facade that stretches so wide it seems to exceed the limits of reasonable architecture , Italien inspired, or something older and more considered, with pillars flanking the entrance, ornate details carved into the stonework above every window,
and a slate roof with dormers that catch the golden afternoon light and hold it.
Every window is lit from within, warm amber against the white stone, as though the building itself were alive and inhabited and entirely aware of exactly what it looks like.
In front of the entrance, a stone fountain rises from the center of a circular drive, water catching the light as it falls, surrounded by carefully shaped hedgerows and flower beds full of white roses and lavender and something purple I don't know the name of.
Two large palms frame the front steps. The whole thing sways, very slightly, in the breeze.
I count the cars parked along the drive.
"Clara," I tray again. "Are you sure we're at the right place?"
"Yes," she says. "It's the Calloways' home."
Even she sounds slightly awed.
"This is not a home," I say. "Homes don't have fountains."
"Some homes have fountains."
"Not fountains like that."
She finally looks up from her notes. And takes in the view then Pauses."Okay," she admits. "It's a very large home."
A man in a dark jacket appears at my aunt's door before she's even reached for the handle, opening it with the practiced efficiency of someone who has been doing this for a long time and has made the whole thing invisible.
I get out on my own side and stand in the warm afternoon air and simply look.
"Come on," my aunt says, already moving toward the entrance steps full of energy "You're no help to me standing in the driveway."She pauses just long enough to glance back.
"And I heard their son is around your age. Maybe you'll make a connection."She says it in the light, slightly too casual tone that means she had been planning to say it since before we left the apartment.
"Clara..."
But she has already reached the front steps, and the door is already opening, and I have no choice but to follow.
The entrance hall is everything the outside had promised.
I step through the door and stop moving.
The ceiling is I don't have wordes for it.
Tall enough that the chandelier hanging from its center feels like it is floating rather than suspended with crystal and gold, casting light that fractures across the pale walls and makes the whole room seem to glow from the inside.
A round table stands directly beneath it, centered precisely in the marble floor, bearing a flower arrangement so large and so elaborate that I momentarily forget what ordinary flowers usually look like.
And the staircase.
A grand sweeping curve , wide enough for five people to walk side by side rising from the center of the hall to the upper floor, its banister wrought iron twisted into patterns that look hand-formed. Every step white marble. A runner of deep navy held in place by brass rods runs up the center.
"Please wait here," says the man who has shown us in, and disappears through a door to the left.
"Oh, my Jesu ," she murmurs beside me. Not unprofessionally. Just honestly.
"Right?" I say.
"The light in here," she says, already pulling out her small notebook. "The way it falls remarkable"
"Clara!"A warm voice comes from the far end of the hall and then second later a woman appears through the archway at the back, moving toward us with a bright smile.
Late forties, I think. Dark hair, mostly, with something lighter threaded through it. Dressed elegant but nit to much at the same time ."Miss Calloway," my aunt says warmly, extending her hand. "It's wonderful to be here. May I introduce my niece, Sophi she'll be assisting me today."
"Oh, please," the woman says, taking my hand in both of hers. "Call me Ginevra. Both of you."
The accent is there but lighter than her son's, softened by what sounds like years away from wherever it had started, but unmistakably present.
"We don't stand on formality here."
"It's lovely to meet you," I say, and mean it. She looks at me for a brief moment with the same assessing quality her son has but where his is guarded and cold, hers is simply curious.
"Come," she says, gesturing for us to follow. "We'll talk in the winter garden the light is better there at this hour."
I can see the pools from here, with lounge chairs arranged along its edge and a pool house set slightly apart from the main building.
Beyond that, the dark surface of what looks like a basketball court.
And beyond that, trees, and what might be a tennis court, and more gardens, and the strong impression that this property simply keeps going in every direction indefinitely.
"You have a pool house," I say, before I can stop myself.
Ginevra smiles.
"My son practically lives in it,"she says, with the specific tone of a mother who has both accepted and very mildly resigned herself to this fact.
"He's here today?" my aunt asks, settling onto one of the rattan sofas with her notebook already open.
"He is" Ginevra says. "He was apparently too unwell to attend school. "
The word apparently carries the weight of a full opinion. "Curiously well enough, however, to be in the pool since nine this morning. "
My aunt looks at me. I look at my aunt.
"Sophia," she says, in her most innocent voice, "while Ginevra and I go through the initial concept, perhaps you could..."
"No" I interrupt her knowing exactly what would come next .
" you could pop over to the pool house and take the preliminary measurements from Lorenzo? It would save us time later. "She finishes her sentence completely ignoring me.
"I really don't think it's a good idea "
"She prepared the measurement sheet herself" my aunt says proudly to Ginevra, "She's very organized. "
"I'm really not""I told Lorenzo about today," Ginevra says gently, pouring tea from a pot that has appeared with absolute silence at some point in the last thirty seconds.
"He's expecting a visit. " A small pause.
"He simply doesn't know it will be from someone his own age."
Something in her expression suggests she is enjoying this very slightly.
"You don't have to, of course" she adds.
"If you'd prefer not to." I open my mouth.
Close it. Look at my aunt, who is doing a flawless sign with her eyes that I should definitely go.
So I sight and manage a small "Okay" and pick up the tote bag with the measurement kit and the printed instruction sheet that suddenly feels like the least useful document I have ever held.
"Wonderful" my aunt says.
"I hate you" I tell her quietly, passing behind the sofa.
" you don't" she says pleasantly.
I can hear them before I see them.
The music gets louder with every step , a heavy bass line I can feel in my chest before I can make out the actual song and then I round the corner of the main house and the pool comes into view and I stop walking for just a second to take it all in.
The photographs online had not done it justice.
Two connected sections of deep blue water, the surface catching the afternoon light and throwing it back in bright fractured pieces.
Lounge chairs line the far edge, white umbrellas, a low table with drinks.
The pool house sits slightly to the right more glass than wall, modern and clean against the older grandeur of the main building with a covered terrace running along its front where the music is coming from.
I scan the terrace.Lorenzo isn't there.
Okay. Maybe he's inside. Maybe I can just leave the sheet with someone and leave.
"Hey. "
Shit.One of them spotted me. Already sitting up broad-shouldered, dark haired, with the easy grin of someone who has never once in his life been uncomfortable approaching a stranger. He says something to the others in a low voice and two heads turn.
"Well, "the first one says, loud enough to carry over the music, "who do we have here? "
"Hi"I begin a bit to loud "sorry to interrupt. I'm looking for Lorenzo. His mother sent me. "
"His mother, "one of the others repeats, in a tone that suggests this is the most entertaining thing he's heard all day. "That's a new one. "One of the girls leans back in her chair with a slow, deliberate smile.
"Looks like she took a wrong turn, "she says. "The staff entrance is in the back."
The laughter that follows is easy and unhurried
"Hilarious, "I say flatly and look around again for Lorenzo. "He's in the pool house. "