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“Exactly. Can we talk about it?”
“Might as well.” Mariana peers over my shoulder. For who? Nina to come waltzing down the hall? Or for Tristan?
“So, Tristan and Nina had a son?” I ask, not wanting to waste any time.
“Yes, his name was James.”
Was.
“A long time ago, about a year before I was hired. In fact, it’s why I was hired. To help clean the house while ...”
“While what?”
“While things fell apart. James was seventeen years old when he went missing. Left for school one morning and never came back.” Her brow creases. “Didn’t you google Tristan before you accepted the job?”
“I did, but I didn’t see anything about a missing son.”
“You would have if you’d dug deep enough. It’s been a really long time. Old news, I guess.”
“They really haven’t seen or heard from him since?”
“Nope. The case has gone completely cold. It’s as if James disappeared into thin air. It’s ...” She shudders. “A horrible, horrible thing. Every parent’s nightmare.”
I wonder if Mariana has kids, and she continues.
“Nina ... she ...”
“She what?”
Mariana hesitates as if she’s weighing how much to tell me.
“What? Tell me.”
“It was just really hard for everybody. While Tristan coped by getting lost in his work, Nina obsessed over it.”
I recall the dedication Tristan wrote in one of his books:
Dedicated to my darling wife, Nina, who holds everything together while I live vicariously in a world of fiction.
“They were going to divorce, but she went a bit nuts—actually, they were going to divorce several times before James even went missing, or so the rumors say. But they kept reconciling. For James, I think. For the sake of the family.”
Mariana continues. “After he went missing, Nina ran her own rogue investigation. She turned James’s bedroom into her own little control center. She would spend every day—all day—in there, and even sleep in there. Tristan tried to get her help—therapy, a psychiatrist, the works—but she denied it. She was ... she was a tough-as-nails kind of woman.”
Mariana shakes her head. “Nina lost her son, yes, but she also totally let go of her husband, even though they stayed together. The whole thing is so sad. Anyway, the room?” She jerks her chin to the closed door. “It’s an exact replica of James’s room when he left that morning and never came back. She had it built and decorated to match it exactly. The shirt that’s lying on the bedspread? Did you see it?”
I nod.
“That shirt was on his bed when he left. It’s in the exact location where he left it.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. And she set up multiple outdoor security cameras too. There are like, three, outside that point only to that room.”
I suck in a breath.
Mariana laughs. “Don’t worry. Tristan doesn’t even turn them on. Like I said, every detail of this house was her idea.”
A moment passes as we both stare at the closed door.
