Page 30 of Passion and Privilege

The music seemed to grow louder as I moved further into the house, leading me to the foot of the grand staircase. I took a few tentative steps upstairs, hoping squatters hadn’t moved into the place.

Suddenly a dark-haired teenage girl appeared at the top of the stairs. She was dancing with abandon, seemingly lost in her own world. She was singing along at the top of her lungs, completely oblivious to my presence. “You need to calm down, you’re being too loud,” she sang dramatically, twirling around in time with the music.

I swallowed a laugh and hesitated at the bottom of the stairs. “Excuse me?” I finally called out over the music.

She yelped and spun around so fast she stumbled over her own feet, nearly tumbling down the stairs in surprise. She screamed, and her hands clamped over her mouth in shock.

Startled, I let out a scream of my own. Then she screamed. The whole time, Taylor Swift was still blaring in the background, creating a chaotic scene of fear and pop music.

Timothy came running down the hallway. His face contorted in a mix of confusion and concern. “What the hell is going on?”

I pointed awkwardly at the gyrating teenager, who had frozen mid-dance, her eyes wide with embarrassment. Timothy’s stern expression turned on me before he shook his head. “Turn it down!” he shouted.

The girl pulled out her phone and the music died. Timothy looked like he was going to strangle one of us.

“Catherine, meet Paisley,” he said, exhaling as if a weight had been lifted. “My daughter. I thought someone was getting killed in here with all that screaming.”

Paisley turned a deep shade of red. Without uttering a word, she darted away, disappearing down the hall three seconds before I heard a door slam shut. The sudden silence left me standing there, feeling very foolish.

I didn’t know what to say. Timothy looked pissed. “I didn’t know you were here,” I murmured. “I was bringing some trim by. I thought you were still in New York.”

“No. I brought her home.”

“I see. I heard the music and thought it was you or Bennet.”

He rolled his eyes. “No. She has this thing for dance parties. I was in my office with my headphones on. I don’t know how I heard you shrieking over that other shrieking.”

I winced as the words left his lips. He was back to his sourpuss self. He wasn’t happy. “I probably should have kept my mouth shut. It’s just, she startled me and then...” I gestured lamely toward the direction Paisley had vanished.

Timothy rubbed his temples, his irritation obvious. “Well, we’ve all had our intros now.”

“I can go,” I said. “I didn’t know you were here.”

“No, stay,” he muttered. “It’s fine. I’ll be working. Now that you’ve seen Paisley, she’ll probably hide in her room all day. That’s what they do. They’re like groundhogs. If they pop their heads up and see their shadows, or in this case an adult human, they retreat. It’ll be another six hours before she emerges.”

I almost laughed, but he was so serious about it, I didn’t dare. I cleared my throat. “Okay. I plan on working on the third floor. I’ll stay out of your way.”

“Fine,” he said. He turned on his heel and retreated to his office.

A few moments passed before I heard the sound of a door closing somewhere in the distance, followed by an eerie silence. I sighed and looked around, feeling awkwardly out of place.

“Okay, then.” With a shake of my head, I pushed away the awkwardness and turned to gather my tools.

My booted feet echoed in the empty foyer as I made my way through the house. I checked a few things before going back to grab the trim and haul it up to the third floor. The stairs in this house were going to give me buns of steel. I tried to be as silent as possible. I didn’t want to attract any attention. I had just made it to the third-floor landing when Taylor Swift’s voice blasted through the house once again.

As I moved into the room meant to be my workspace, I laid out my tools meticulously. I turned on my playlist on my phone, keeping it nice and low and barely audible over the Taylor Swift concert happening elsewhere in the massive house.

A sense of peace washed over me as I started working. I forgot about everything else as I got moving.

Chapter Fourteen

Catherine

I WAS WORKING IN THE upper bedroom, enjoying the sunshine pouring through the windows. It was on the third floor of the tower. It was my favorite space in the house, with its grand ceiling-height windows and a cozy book corner complete with a window seat. Actually, I had a hard time naming my favorite place. I loved the kitchen. The library was amazing. And this bedroom was awesome.

The crew and I had made significant progress on the woodwork restoration. The second floor was well underway. The crew was going to be moving up to the third floor soon. I was working on the finer details before the rest of the crew came in to work on the rest of the rooms. The third floor was almost completely untouched by renovations. Clearly, when the family lived in the house, the first and second floor were where they spent their time.

As I worked, my mind kept going back to the encounter with Paisley. I felt a pang of guilt, knowing I had unintentionally scared Timothy’s daughter. She was a surly teenager. We had all been there and done that. For some reason, I felt the need to apologize. I didn’t want her to dislike me. It shouldn’t matter, but to me, it did. I left my stuff where it was and went back down to the second floor.