I tried to pick up the heavy teapot, but my hands were shaking so hard I only succeeded in making it clatter against the cup. “Here, let me do that,” he said as he leaned over and poured. “Jeanne, our housekeeper, makes the best tea. Or so I’ve heard. I’m more a coffee man myself.”
I blanched at his small talk. “Okay, stop. Just stop right there.” My teeth were chattering: I couldn’t tell if it was my shattered nerves or the dawning fear that something was very wrong. “Vincent . . . whoever you are.” I’m in his house and I don’t even know his last name, I realized in a flash before continuing. “Your friend just died a little while ago, and you are talking to me about”—my voice broke—“about coffee?”
A defensive expression registered on his face, but he remained silent.
“Oh my God,” I said softly, and began crying again. “What is wrong with you?”
The room was silent. I could hear the seconds ticking away on an enormous grandfather clock in the corner. My breathing calmed, and I wiped my eyes, attempting to compose myself.
“It’s true. I’m not very good at showing my emotions,” Vincent conceded finally.
“Not showing your emotions is one thing. But running off after your friend is demolished by a subway train?”
In a low, carefully measured tone he said, “If we had stayed, we would have had to talk to the police. They would have questioned both of us, as they must have done with the witnesses who stayed. I wanted to avoid that”—he paused—“at all costs.”
Vincent’s cold shell was back, or else I had just begun noticing it again. Numbness spread up my arms and throughout my body as I realized what he was saying. “So you’re”—I choked—“you’re what? A criminal?”
His dark, brooding eyes were drawing me toward him while my mind was telling me to run away. Far away.
“What are you? Wanted? Wanted for what? Did you steal all the paintings in this room?” I realized I was yelling and lowered my voice. “Or is it something worse?”
Vincent cleared his throat to buy time. “Let’s just say that I’m not the kind of guy your mother would want you hanging around with.”
“My mom’s dead. My dad, too.” The words escaped my lips before I could stop them.
Vincent closed his eyes and pressed his hands to his forehead as if he were in pain. “Recently?”
“Yes.”
He nodded solemnly, as if it all made sense.
“I’m sorry, Kate.”
However bad a person he is, he cares about me. The thought crossed my mind so abruptly that I couldn’t stop it from triggering a reaction. My eyes filled with tears. I picked up the cup of tea and raised it to my lips.
The hot liquid slid from my throat to my stomach, and its calming effect was immediate. My thoughts felt clearer. And weirdly enough, I felt more in control of the situation. He knows who I am now, even if I don’t know the first thing about him.
My revelation seemed to have shaken him. Vincent’s either struggling to hold himself together, I thought, or to hold something back. I decided to take advantage of this apparent moment of weakness to figure something out. “Vincent, if you’re in such a . . . dangerous situation, why in the world would you try to be friends with me?”
“I told you, Kate, I had seen you around the neighborhood”—he weighed his words carefully—“and you seemed like someone I would want to know. It was probably a bad idea. But I obviously wasn’t thinking.”
As he spoke, his voice turned from warm to icicle cold. I couldn’t tell if he was angry with himself for getting me involved in whatever mess he was in—or with me for bringing it up. It didn’t matter. The effect of his sudden frostiness was the same: I shuddered, feeling like someone had walked over my grave. “I’m ready to go,” I said, standing suddenly.
He rose to his feet and nodded. “Yes, I’ll take you home.”
“No, that’s okay. I know the way. I’d . . . rather you not.” The words came from the rational part of me. The part that was urging me to get out of the house as fast as possible. But another part of me regretted it as soon as I spoke them.
“As you wish,” he said, and leading me back through the grand entrance hall, he opened the door to the courtyard.
“Are you sure you’ll be all right?” he insisted as he blocked the doorway, waiting for an answer before he would let me leave. I ducked under his arm to squeeze by, passing inches from his skin.
My mistake was inhaling as I did. He smelled like oak and grass and wood fires. He smelled like memories. Like years and years of memories.
“You look weak again.” His hard shell cracked open just enough to show a glimpse of concern.
“I’m fine,” I replied, attempting to sound sure of myself, and then seeing him standing there, calm and composed, I rephrased my answer. “I’m fine, but you shouldn’t be. You just lost a friend in a horrible accident and you’re standing there like nothing happened. I don’t care who you are or what you’ve done to make you run away like that. But for it not to affect you . . . you’ve got to be seriously messed up.”