I lean closer to Baptiste and speak in a low voice. “Do you mind staying with her?”
He nods, then gives me a swift kiss on the cheek, sweet and reassuring, before scooting to the seat closest to my grandmother. He places a steadying hand on the arm of her chair, like he’s bracing for round two.
A warmth settles into my chest. She’s in good hands.
Marching back toward the entrance, I weave around a resident loudly trying to upsell a lavender sachet and dodge two others who are arguing about whether a straight beats three of a kind. The receptionist is sitting behind his desk, posture relaxed, fingers laced together as though nothing unusual is happening twenty feet away.
“Hi again.” I prop my elbows on the counter. “It’s chaos out there, huh?”
“Yeah.” He chuckles. “They may be old, but they’ve got plenty of spunk. I’ll admit, these folks can be a little intense.”
“Right.” I tilt my head, keeping my tone light. Curious, not confrontational. “It’s new though, right? When I first came around here, it wasn’t this wild. If I understand correctly, a price hike is the source of all this?”
“Yeah.” He straightens, smoothing an invisible crease on his sleeve as his smile turns professional. “But they also receive exceptional care here, and exceptional care has a price, ma’am. Not to mention the exciting new activities they get to take part in, like ceramics and painting.”
My eyebrows draw together at his well-rehearsed speech, the words sliding off him like he’s repeated them a hundred times already. His gaze shifts, and mine follows, drifting past the desk to the corner of the room where a small black camera is fixed high on the wall. Its red light is blinking steadily. “Right. I guess that makes sense,” I finally say. “Thanks for your help.”
I stride back into the bedlam that is the common room, past the poker table that’s gearing up for what sounds like a rematch, past my grandmother who’s laughing a little too heartily now that Baptiste is beside her, and the gut feeling that there’s something fishy happening here weighs heavier on my chest than ever before.
And I’m determined to figure out exactly what it is.
26
Harper
After parking at the end of my street, Baptiste walks me to my door like the gentleman he is. We’re holding hands, our fingers loosely intertwined. His thumb caresses my knuckles in slow, absent strokes that usually have a calming effect.
But not tonight.
The whole ride back, I couldn’t stop thinking about my interaction with the receptionist at Golden Age. His rehearsed answers. The way his tone shifted from conversational to corporate speak. That camera watching from the corner. My brain keeps replaying the scene, like the clues are trying to spell something out, and I’m stubbornly refusing to see the message.
“Wait,” I say, stopping in my tracks.
Baptiste halts with me. “What’s wrong?”
“Have you ever seen any ceramics or amateur paintings at Golden Age?” I ask.
His eyes find mine. “What?”
“Have you seen any used as decorations? On a table or something?”
“I don’t think so.” He frowns now, the crease between his brows appearing. “Why?”
The pieces click together so sharply it almost makes me dizzy. “Don’t you think it’s kind of weird?” I blurt, words tumbling out faster now. “The residents are supposed to have all these new activities to engage in, but we never see the end product. They should be all over the place. On shelves. On walls. The residents would show us what they made. Heck, they’d try to sell it to us.”
He coughs out a chuckle. “You’re not wrong.”
My heart beats faster, like it’s catching up with my brain, knowing I’m on the right track. “And Grandma never mentioned attending those new classes.”
We slip through the front door of my building and take the stairs, our footsteps echoing softly in the stairwell.
“That’s definitely strange,” he says behind me.
I grip the railing a little tighter. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
“But you didn’t spot any inconsistencies on the paperwork, right?” he asks, his voice serious now.
“No,” I admit, turning around to face him. “But maybe we can have another look.”
