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I place my palm on the door, wondering what she’s doing inside. It’s quiet in there, not a single sound to indicate where she might be.
Is she peering out the window? Or is she lying in bed, her hair fanned out on the pillow the way it is in my memory?
The knob catches my attention. It’s one of those old-fashioned types with the skeleton key. When my mother first brought me to live here and I was too young for grownup conversations, I’d peek through the hole. See things I shouldn’t have. But it wasn’t until Uncle Bryan caught me and dragged me inside to watch Charlie Baker’s torture and execution that I learned that the saying “Curiosity killed the cat” was true.
When it was over, Uncle Bryan took me out for chocolate ice cream. I stared at it until it started to melt, my stomach in knots, my small hands shaking.
He gazed at me long and hard, the way he had Charlie Baker before he slashed his cheeks with a dagger. “Charlie saw what he shouldn’t have. The next time I catchyousnooping, I will beat you to within an inch of your life. Is that clear?”
I shrank into my seat. “Yes sir.”
“Eat your ice cream,” he said.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Did I ask if you were? Eat it, boy,” he demanded. “I don’t like to waste money.”
I did. The chocolate went down as easily as tar would have, sticky and gross, and I heaved the entire time. But I ate it because I knew that this treat was as much a punishment as anything else could have been. A lesson in what my uncles were capable of doing when someone disobeyed.
That was the last time I ever ate ice cream. It was also the last time I was tempted to peek through a keyhole.
Until now.
Dropping to a knee, I bend down farther, leveling my sight with the hole. As I focus, I realize I’m looking straight into another eye.
There’s a slap against the door and I immediately draw back, as if she could hurt me through the wood.
“I see you, Rowan Kane!” Lou hollers angrily. “I’d know that eye anywhere. Let me the fuck out of here.”
“When you’re ready to talk, I’ll let you out.”
Another slam against the door. “You want to talk? Talk?! I will never be ready to talk to you. Ever! Do you hear me, you son of a bitch? I never want to talk to you.”
“Then you’ll never be let out. Simple as that,” I say flatly.
Suddenly, she goes quiet as a mouse. As quiet as it was when I got here.
“Boss,” Phil interrupts. “I’ve just been informed dinner is ready and your guest is waiting.”
“Thank you, Phil.” I glance at the door once again and shake my head. She’s not going to make it easy. Luckily, if there’s one thing life with my uncles has prepared me for, it’s that nothing ever is.
I head down to the dining room. When I enter, Lou’s mother lifts her gaze from her dinner plate.
“Diana,” I greet and sit beside her, at the head of the table, where my meal already awaits.
“Mr. Kane. It’s so nice of you to finally come. You are aware it’s bad manners to keep a lady waiting?”
I drop my napkin onto my lap and look at her. She’s wearing one of my mother’s dresses. Just as I thought, it fits her perfectly. “I want to apologize for your involvement in this. It didn’t occur to me that you’d be in the vehicle when—”
“When you kidnapped my daughter?” She grabs her knife and fork and begins to gingerly cut into her filet. “Of course the mother of the bride would be in the car with her.”
“I don’t attend many weddings.”
“It’s my understanding that you don’t attend any at all. Not even your own.” Elegantly, she places the cut of meat in her mouth.
I clear my throat. “Axle said your scans were normal. And that you were very cooperative with them.”
“Didn’t try to run away a single time.” She brings the glass of red wine to her nose and inhales. She shuts her lids as if in doing so, she can better take in the aroma of the expensive stuff. Then she tastes it. “Heavenly.”
