Page 203 of Dark King Daddy

I could have listened to her all afternoon. She had stopped noticing the cold. There was dust on one knee of her trousers and a pencil tucked behind her ear, and she looked happier than she had in the expensive dress she wore to our wedding.

So was I.

We looked down into the entrance hall. The light reached the landing, then faded beneath the stair.

“Could you bring it down there?” I asked.

“The light?”

“Along that wall. A narrow opening above it. So when someone comes through the door, they see the brick instead of a dark corner.”

She looked at the wall. Then up at the ceiling.

“A rooflight?”

“Perhaps. I don’t know what’s above us.”

“I do.”

She took out her drawings, found the section she wanted and spread it on a covered workbench. I stood beside her while she traced the roof structure with her finger.

“Here?” she asked.

“A little further over.”

She moved her finger. I nodded.

“We’d need to check the structure and the sightline from outside.” She made a note. “But that could work.”

I waited for her to return to the tour.

Instead she held out the pencil.

“Show me.”

“Ksenia.”

“A sketch. On the back. You won’t ruin anything.”

I took it.

For a moment I stood with the pencil in my hand and felt ridiculous. I could sign away a building without hesitating. Drawing one line on a piece of scrap paper made me feel twelve years old.

My father had opened my school notebook at the dinner table. He had looked at the floor plan I’d copied from a book, then asked whether I wanted to spend my life drawing buildings for other men to own.

I had never answered him.

“There isn’t an exam,” Ksenia said softly.

I looked at her. She was waiting beside me, entirely willing to give me the time.

I drew the wall. The opening above it. A few lines to show where the light would fall.

The proportions were wrong. I rubbed out the top line and tried again.

She leaned closer.

“Yes,” she said. “I see it.”