Chapter Twelve
TWELVE
Callahan
“There are worse places to get stuck,” Annie says after a moment, as if she’s finally found the silver lining for which she’s been searching.
“Should we go explore, make sure we didn’t miss anything the first time around?
Or we could each take a separate wing if you want some space.
Mostly I’m kind of hungry, though. I think I saw a charcuterie board for tomorrow’s open house in one of the kitchens’ fridges.
Also, why does this place have three kitchens?
And why does each one have at least two fridges? ”
“To accommodate the four dining rooms,” I say, then glance back at the security panel. “I think we should stay where we are.”
“What? Why?”
“The type of person who owned a house like this probably didn’t cheap out when it came to the safety of their family and property.
My, uh, ex-girlfriend’s dad is in the security system business—he’s the one who helped me pick out the one we have at Virtu, actually.
” Not that we ever really got in the habit of using it, since Graham kept forgetting the PIN and accidentally setting it off, but I found myself alone with Mr. Williams after Thanksgiving one year and wound up spontaneously asking him to consult on our purchase of a new one rather than let the silence between us somehow turn into a conversation about when Nicole and I were finally going to get married and start a family—something neither of us felt particularly in a hurry to do.
Or, well, at least not with each other. “So I picked up a bit about them from him, what features are available and recommended for different spaces. I would bet most of my money that there are motion detectors at various points throughout this place. Especially in hallways. Not worth the risk of setting one off.” I stand and wander over to the small decorative table in the corner—an early twentieth-century American-made piece rented from our shop—and inspect the miniature version of Degas’s The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer set atop it.
It’s one of the many cheap knickknacks scattered around the house to make it look lived in.
By whom, I have no idea, since the contrast between the high-end ultramodern finishes, antique furniture from multiple periods, and museum gift shop trinkets seems like it would speak to a very specific type of person that I can’t say I’ve ever had the pleasure of encountering in real life.
“We’ll have to stay in here,” I reiterate as I place the ballerina back on the table.
Annie groans, then throws herself backward onto the king-size bed.
“Ow,” she whimpers as her body comes into contact with the too-firm mattress, probably chosen by Genevieve’s staging team for its durability and price tag versus comfort.
I can’t help but smile. Not because I take any pleasure in her inadvertently hurting herself, but because it’s such a strange and baffling joy to me, watching Annie O’Neill exist in this world, throwing herself around with the confidence of someone who expects to always land on a soft surface and the intrinsic belief that she’ll be okay even if she doesn’t.
“Give me a second,” I say, “and I think I can solve one of our problems.”
There’s a large doorway in the opposite corner of the room, and I know that through it is a gigantic marble-tiled bathroom to one side and an excessively large, excessively mirrored dressing room to the other.
When I checked the latter earlier in case someone thought the goose would make a nice hat rack, I encountered something bizarre that will actually help us out right about now.
“Where did you get that from?” Annie asks as I return to the bedroom with a large hammered metal bowl filled with oranges.
“It was in the dressing room, on the vanity.”
She blinks slowly as she considers this. “Why?”
The nightstand is taken up by an oversized lamp, so I place the bowl beside Annie on the bed.
“Based on the pears in the living room and the bananas in the game room, I’m going to guess Genevieve’s aware of some direct correlation between how wealthy a person is and how urgently and often they require fresh fruit. ”
I watch as Annie selects one of the oranges, almost fake-looking in its perfection, and lets it rest in her palm as if testing its weight. “Well,” she says, “at least we’ll be able to avoid scurvy while we’re stuck here.”
The corner of my mouth tilts up as I reach for an orange of my own. “Genevieve will have to be here in the morning before the open house, worst-case scenario. I doubt twelve hours is enough to sustain any new nutritional deficiencies.”
“Twelve hours!”
“Mhm.” I press my thumbnail into the waxy rind and a cloud of citrusy sweetness floats out of the incision.
“You’re being surprisingly calm about this whole thing,” Annie notes.
I’m all too aware that not finding the goose here was the worst possible outcome.
Or, rather, the second worst, the first being someone else finding the goose here.
And now, being trapped inside the master bedroom of a Brooklandville mansion, possibly for the entire night, means we’ll be further delayed in tracking it down.
It isn’t that I’m not concerned. It’s that I have a lot of experience recognizing when my only real choice is to settle in and wait.
After all, that’s basically what I’ve been doing for the last year and a half.
Waiting for things to go back to how they were, even knowing they can’t.
“Oh, calm on the outside, sure,” I say, then pop an orange segment into my mouth.
The juice is bright on my tongue, the way something tells me Annie would be and— Wait.
No. That’s not an appropriate thought about someone who is both my blackmailer and short-term colleague.
In a wild attempt to hide my train of thought, I hold up the next segment as if proposing a toast. “Genevieve sprung for seedless. That’s nice. ”
Eating the rest of my orange is a good distraction, but when I finally finish and look up again, I find Annie staring at her still unopened one, like it might disrobe itself if she glares at it hard enough.
“Need help?” I ask.
“No,” she says. “I’m procrastinating. I just…don’t like doing this. The way it makes my fingers feel so oily and yet so dry.”
I hold out my hand, silently requesting she turn it over to me.
The look on her face is one of pleasant surprise, as if she’s still adjusting to my ability to be considerate.
When she transfers the fruit from her palm to mine, some of the warmth of her skin transfers along with it, making this small favor feel somehow even more intimate and my initial treatment of her when she arrived at Virtu even more shameful.
“Mohair,” I say as I pierce the peel with my fingernail.
“What?”
“That’s something I don’t enjoy the texture of. Also cheap fake Christmas trees. They always feel inexplicably grimy.”
“Oh.”
Heat coats my cheeks as I replay the last few seconds in my head, wondering why I said something so stupid.
Except I know why I did; I was trying to relate.
To tell Annie she is not alone in her quirks.
In some perverted hope that she might find mine as endearing as I find hers.
“Here,” I say, handing her back the now-naked orange, the pith carefully stripped away from its segments.
“Thanks,” she says, staring down at it.
“No problem.” And by that, I actually mean I would peel a thousand more if it made her like me half as much as I’m realizing I like her.
We sit in awkward silence as she eats her orange and I, needing something to do with my hands, get to peeling another for myself.
“This is the strangest sleepover I’ve ever had,” Annie jokes, rubbing her hands along the fabric of her dress draped over her thighs to rid them of the citrus oil remnants likely clinging to her fingertips.
“Is this not how they usually go?” I ask. “I never went to any myself, but this is pretty close to how I always imagined a sleepover would be.”
“Wait, really? Are you joking? You never slept over at friends’ houses as a kid?”
“It might surprise you, but I didn’t really have many friends growing up.
” Annie looks at me with intense pity that also seems to say, not that surprised.
“It wasn’t because of my personality,” I say, knowing that’s what she’s thinking.
“Or not just because of that. In school I was widely considered a weird little nerd. Then at home, I was needed to care for my grandfather while my mom was working—she did hair at a local salon during the day and bartended at the Elks Lodge at night. So I didn’t have a lot of free time to socialize with other kids.
Besides, spending all that time with an old man didn’t exactly make me relatable.
Other preteens weren’t usually interested in discussing the latest episode of Antiques Roadshow. ”
“Is that your origin story? How you got interested in the business?” she asks.
That’s how I learned some of the basics about what made things valuable or not.
And how I knew what was worth stealing—or, rather, attempting to steal—from Virtu when Pop-Pop died and I overheard my mom on the phone with her cousin, lamenting that she didn’t know how we would make ends meet without his Social Security check coming each month.
“In a way,” I say, hoping the pause before my answer doesn’t register as cryptic and send Annie’s curiosity on high alert.
“I guess it was a big deal for you when you got to be on the show yourself, then.” The surprise that she knows about my appearance must show on my face, because she immediately explains, “I saw the episode.” Then quickly adds, “Once! I saw it once. When it aired. And never again.”
I decide to ignore the bizarre addendum. “Oh. Yeah. It was. A big deal, I mean. And I had a good time. I’d love to do it again one day. You know, if my professional reputation isn’t in complete tatters over this goose thing.”
“We’ll find it,” Annie says. She sounds and looks so certain. As if she’s decided her ability to throw herself around and expect a soft landing extends to me now too. “In the meantime, though, what should we do?”
I’m sure she doesn’t mean for that question to sound so suggestive.
But my pathetic, horny little brain certainly takes any and all implied suggestions, real or imagined, and runs with them, all the way to the massive soaking tub I spotted in the attached bathroom, and then to the dressing room that’s practically all mirrors…
Frankly, I’m both startled and impressed by the explicitness of my thoughts.
After the whole ordeal with Mindy, when I realized I can’t simply force or fake my way into feeling a connection with someone, I worried I’d never experience that genuine feeling of wanting someone again.
It’s been reassuring to learn that my sexual interest in others does indeed extend beyond Nicole.
In fact, the types of thoughts I’m having about Annie are a new level of lust I wasn’t aware I could reach.
I can only chalk it up to being on my own for so long.
I shake my head slightly, putting a stop to my uncharacteristically salacious fantasies before they become too much more evident.
“I don’t know. What’s on the usual agenda for a sleepover? ”
Annie leans her head against one of the bed’s posters. She gives me a slow, wolfish grin that makes me feel like something is lodged in my throat. It’s irrational, but my first thought is that she’s come up with an additional way to blackmail me.
“Hmm. How about a game of Truth or Dare?”