Chapter 23
Four days later, Ptolemy reveals himself during a heated game of rummy.
A white ragdoll with blue eyes pointed in different directions, he waddles out from under the couch and leaps onto the coffee table, scattering the cards.
Nelle fawns over him. James mourns the ruined game.
Penelope cackles, scooping Ptolemy into her arms like a baby.
He only allows it for a moment before he squirms away and retreats to a corner of the couch.
“Does this mean he likes us now?” James asks, gathering the cards.
“Tolerates you,” Penelope corrects. “Now that he’s met you, he will decide if he likes you.”
“How will we know?” Nelle asks.
“You’ll wake up with him on your chest, staring at you like you committed a crime.”
“Seriously?”
Penelope nods grimly.
“Sleep with the door shut,” James says. “Noted.”
“If you do that,” Penelope adds, “then he will never like you.”
Nelle leans back, eye level with the cat. “Is that true, Tom?”
He hisses, mouth pink and fanged.
Penelope takes the cards from James. “He hates nicknames. Trust me, I’ve tried them all.”
“You have a very particular cat,” James says.
“What can I say?” She pats Ptolemy’s round head three times and he blinks, blinks, blinks. “He gets it from his mommy.”
Ptolemy meows, then jumps off the couch. He circles the coffee table once before walking away, brushing his duster of a tail against a door James assumed was a closet.
“Is that Ptolemy’s bedroom?” Nelle asks.
Penelope’s face goes sheet white.
“No.” She forces a smile. “Just a broom closet.”
The cat rubs his body against the door, tail straight up.
“He must really like brooms,” James says.
Penelope laughs, but he hears the falsity in it, lower than her typical cackle.
She shuffles the deck between her knobby fingers and clears her throat. “Another round?”
Later in the night, James wakes in a sweat.
After peeing, he tiptoes into the living room, wincing at every pop of the hardwood floor.
The broom closet calls to him. Checking over his shoulder for Penelope, he jumps at a pair of icy-blue eyes.
Ptolemy, watching him. No, watching the closet door. James tries the knob.
Locked.
“You can go inside to pee, James.” Nelle’s hands are buried in the sheep’s tufts. “I could stay out here with Clifford forever.”
James squints up at the September sky. He doesn’t want to leave her out here alone. “But it might rain.”
“I don’t mind,” she says, more absorbed with the animal than with him.
For the week they have been at Penelope’s, Nelle has spent an hour after lunch every day in the backyard with Clifford.
Her ink restricts her from accessing Penelope’s entire property.
She can roam the fenced-in yard or the house, but not both.
“I’ll be right back,” he promises.
Nelle pulls a carrot from inside her jacket and guides the sheep across the yard with it, wind ruffling his white wool. “Cliff will keep me company.”
He bleats for the carrot, and she laughs as she feeds it to him. Clifford, it would appear, doesn’t mind nicknames.
James slips through the back screen door.
It shouldn’t scare him so much to leave her out here.
He left her in Jessie’s apartment all the time.
She went to the studio night after night, alone.
But that was in the city, and contrary to popular opinion, James feels safer surrounded by people than he does in the middle of nowhere.
Imagining her out there, exposed to the cloudy sky, the sea, the hills and all their wildlife, sends a spidery chill down his spine.
On his way back, he opens the fridge for a drink. With a carton of grapefruit juice angled over his glass, he pauses, hearing the front door open. Penelope back from her daily trip to the store? But where is the familiar rustle of grocery bags?
“She’s not aware,” Penelope angrily whispers.
A droplet of juice falls into his glass. James swallows, silent, listening.
“No, I don’t think she will,” she says. “They have a system worked out.”
She’s on the phone, James realizes. He keeps his juice ready to pour, prepared to appear innocent the moment Penelope sees him in the kitchen. Definitely not eavesdropping.
“He’s smarter than you give him credit for,” she says.
The living room floorboards groan. She’s pacing.
Penelope scoffs. “What would you have me do, Wallace? She trusts me.”
James’s fingers slacken. The carton slips from his hand, knocks the glass to the floor.
“Shit, shit, shit.” He snatches it up, but half the juice has already glugged out in a sticky splattering across the linoleum, and the glass shards are an even bigger mess.
Wallace fucking Quill.
James is too confused to be angry. Why is Penelope in cahoots with him? A week ago she acted like she never knew about her great-granddaughter. He glances out the window. Nelle is still chasing Clifford around like he is a floating cloud.
“You good?” Penelope comes into the kitchen, phone dangling in her hand. “James?”
Nothing devious about her. White hair braided back, tasteful sweatpants, fur-lined boots, and a cashmere sweater.
“Sorry,” he says, “about the mess. I lost my grip.”
“I’ll say.” Penelope hesitates. “No worries, I’ll clean it up.”
This is my chance to see inside the broom closet. “I can do it.”
“No.” Her tone is final. “Go outside with Nelle. I’ll take care of this.”
James considers insisting, but if she is working with Quill, he doesn’t want to mess with her. She could be as dangerous as her grandson.
Out of politeness, he offers again, “I really can clean it up.”
Penelope shakes her head. “You’re my guests. I’ll take care of it.”
James wipes his sweaty palms on his pants and hurries outside. He beelines toward Nelle, and she must see the shock and fear on his face because she leaves Clifford, even as he bleats at her.
“What is it?” She grabs his arm.
Maybe she doesn’t have to know. She can live in peace, believing that Penelope cares for her, that her great-grandmother is honest, trustworthy.
“James, talk to me.” She gives him a nudge. “What’s wrong?”
Inside the squat house, Penelope’s white head bobs past the window, sweeping.
“I was in the kitchen just now, and I overheard Penelope on the phone . . .” He recounts what he heard, as close to verbatim as he can remember. At Quill’s name, Nelle’s face goes ashen.
“You’re sure that’s what you heard?” She watches the house over his shoulder.
“Without a doubt.”
“Maybe Penelope knows another Wallace?”
“Then why would she need to bring up that you trust her?”
“She said my name?”
“Well, no, but—”
“It could be completely misconstrued,” Nelle says, hope visibly flickering.
“I don’t think so,” James says. “I think Penelope’s working with Quill. The last thing I want is for you to distrust her, but I know what I heard. I like Penelope, I do, but I won’t let anything happen to you, Nelle. I can’t.”
Clutching his shirt, Nelle watches Clifford mope along the fence line.
“Tonight,” she says, looking back at James. “Tonight, let’s break into the broom closet.”
Nelle’s chest winds up like a jack-in-the-box, her heartbeat ticking like a crank. Any second, she will explode, either in tears or projectile vomit.
James jiggles a hairpin in the lock. His brows are furrowed, tongue poked between lips.
Then, with a slip of his fingers, he drops the pin.
Nelle squeaks, her nerves getting the better of her, but James keeps his cool.
With a glance down the hall to ensure Penelope’s not coming, he goes back to work.
“Where’d you learn to do this?” Nelle whispers.
“Scouts,” he says. “Not an actual sanctioned lesson, but one of the older guys knew how to do it and showed me on a camping trip.” He fiddles with the lock. “Been a while, though, so I’m a little . . .”
Click. So soft, Nelle nearly misses the sound.
“Rusty.” James pockets the hairpin. “You ready?”
It’s 12:00 a.m. Penelope should be well into her deep sleep cycle by now, and she has no reason to suspect them.
Nevertheless, Nelle feels like she is standing at the lip of a crumbling ninety-foot cliff, wondering if the view is worth the risk.
She twists the glass knob, and the door opens, thankfully, without a creak.
The room beyond swims in darkness. She paws at the wall until she finds the switch, flips it on, and lets her vision adjust.
Amber light flickers through the room. A tasseled shade on the mantel, an iron lantern hung above a blue velvet chaise, a green banker’s lamp with a pull chain on the desk. All wired to the switch that Nelle’s finger lingers on.
The room hums to her. Not audibly, but her blood sizzles, her bones rattle.
Looking at this room is like looking at the sun, only she can’t stop.
Books crowd the walls, stacked on every flat surface, wedged like bricks in the fireplace.
Leather bound, paperback, hardcover, manuscripts both typewritten and scrawled out longhand.
Do you feel that? she almost asks James, but she knows this soft buzz, these whispering books, are for her alone.
“Definitely not a sex dungeon,” James says.
“What’s a sex dungeon?” Nelle hesitates at the doorway. The room feels sacred, untouched. She thinks twice before stepping in and defiling it.
Then a throat clears behind them, and she has no more time to think.
“That’s what you thought it was?” Penelope crosses her arms over her nightgown, her hair in a silk cap.
Nelle can approach this in two ways, and she hopes James will play along. She can either use Penelope’s conversation with Quill as her excuse for breaking into the room, or she can play dumb. Maybe she can’t explain why she distrusts her great-grandmother, but she knows how to distract Penelope.
Just tell her the truth.
“I know it’s late,” Nelle says, “but . . . there’s something I want to talk to you about. Secrets I’ve been keeping from you about who I am. What I am.” She reaches back to find James’s hand.