“No problem,” he said. “Uh . . . do you need anything else? I’m sure Lex will—”
“What about me?” Lex asked cheerfully as she appeared in the hallway behind Nicholas. She looked like a different person from the fragile girl who had leaned against the door like she couldn’t stand on her own when Patrick left. Her smile was loose and her eyes warm and sleepy. I would have said she was tipsy, but I was pretty sure she’d only had the one glass of wine with dinner. “Oh, good, you lent him some clothes,” she said. “Danny, I was thinking that tomorrow we’d go shopping and get you the essentials you’re missing. Sound good? In the meantime here’s a spare toothbrush and some toothpaste.” She pressed the toiletries into my hand. “Is there anything else you need tonight?”
Maybe a less creepy room to sleep in—there must have been at least a couple of guest rooms in a house this size—but I couldn’t exactly ask for that. Besides, I wasn’t going to be in it much longer. “No, I’m fine.”
“Okay, well, my room’s the fifth one past the stairs if you think of anything,” she said. Nicholas had drifted away at some point, so it was just the two of us. “Don’t worry about waking me, okay? I won’t mind.”
I nodded. “Thanks, Lex.”
“You’re welcome.” She looked at me and smiled, and then . . . something changed. I don’t know exactly how to describe it. It was like the texture of our eye contact became different somehow. It felt like she was really seeing me instead of just looking at me. It made my breath hitch painfully in my chest.
She reached out and hugged me, and this time her arms were solid around me instead of weak and trembling.
“I missed you, Danny,” she said softly, the words warm against my neck. “I’m so happy you’re safe now.”
? ? ?
I lay in bed unable to sleep. The sheets were too crisp, the house too silent. I stared up at the ceiling, where I could just make out the outline of plastic star stickers that had long ago lost their glow.
I couldn’t stop thinking. First, I decided to stay the night. I told myself it was because it made more sense to run tomorrow night, after Lex had bought me some new clothes and other supplies. The truth, which I think I knew even then, was that I had felt . . . something when she looked at me and told me she was happy I was there. That I was safe. I’d believed her, and I hadn’t wanted to give that up so quickly.
And would it really be so bad to stay? For good? The Tates had eaten up my story, and in a way, I was doing them a favor. Danny was long gone, probably dead, and definitely never coming back. Me being here made them happy. And as for me, somehow I had stumbled into the con of a lifetime. A scam with the biggest risks I’d ever taken on but also the biggest rewards. If I could become Danny Tate, I could have a real life here, a better one than the little boy in Saskatchewan had even been able to dream of. Did I really want to just walk away from that? Wasn’t it stupid to go back to living on the streets and group homes when there was a perfectly good bed in a perfectly good mansion filled with a perfectly loving family right here?
Finally, I couldn’t lie there any longer, playing scenarios in my head, preparing lies. It was late; the rest of the family had to be asleep. I climbed out of the bed. If I wasn’t leaving tonight, I needed to learn the layout of the house. The Tates were less likely to get suspicious of me if I seemed at home here.
I padded on bare feet to the end of the hallway and started there. The farthest room was an office, lined with built-in bookcases and dominated by a massive desk. The next room was the bathroom I’d hidden in earlier, then a linen closet, then Danny’s room. Nicholas’s room, I knew, was next to mine. I was surprised to see the light on underneath the door and walked past extra carefully. Mia’s room was next, a night-light plugged into the outlet beside her door. There was one final room on this side of the stairs, a guest room that had probably belonged to a nanny once. Jessica didn’t strike me as the type to change diapers in the middle of the night.
I reached the stairs and ascended to the third floor, where I discovered just one set of locked double doors. The entire level must have been the master suite. I went back down to the second floor and turned left to explore the rooms in the wing on the other side of the stairs. I found two guest rooms, another bathroom, a bedroom I judged to be Patrick’s old room from the band posters on the wall, and then Lex’s room. A light was on inside. It seemed everyone was having trouble sleeping tonight.
I spent another twenty minutes exploring the first floor and the basement, walking from room to room until I had a good handle on the layout. I checked the alarm panel by the front door—it wasn’t activated—and then ventured out of the French doors and onto the back patio. It was overhung with a wooden lattice crawling with ivy and some kind of white flowers, and beyond that was a pool that glowed in the dark like a chlorine moon. I dipped a foot in the water. It felt good, just warm enough in the cool night air. It must have been heated.
I looked back at the house. It was dark; Nicholas and Lex must have finally gone to sleep. Fuck it, I thought. I might only be rich for this one night, so I might as well enjoy the perks while I could. I stripped down to my boxers and slipped into the pool, the shallow end, since I didn’t swim too well. The world went silent beneath the surface of the water. I kicked and twisted and spun and surfaced laughing. Then I floated there, weightless, looking up at the starry sky above me.
When I finally returned to Danny’s room, I fell straight to sleep.
? ? ?
At some point in the night, I woke. I opened my eyes and blinked at the dark figure standing in the doorway. At first all my eyes could pick out was the silhouette against the glow from the hall. Forgetting where I was, I thought that it must be Jason, returning from a raid of the pantry at Short Term 8.
But then I remembered.
“Nicholas?” I murmured.
He silently turned and walked away, closing the door behind him, and the chill that raced up my spine had nothing to do with the aggressive California air-conditioning.
? ? ?
When I woke the next morning, I wasn’t sure it had really happened. The memory felt fuzzy around the edges and hollow in the middle, like a dream.
What was definitely real was the weight in the bed beside me. I scrambled back and threw aside the comforter. Underneath I found Mia curled up, the tip of her thumb lying between her lips. I took a couple of deep breaths to calm the pounding of my heart and then nudged her.
“Hey,” I said. She was lucky I hadn’t hit her when she tried to climb into bed next to me. I must have been exhausted to have slept through it.
She frowned and blinked as she woke. “Morning,” she said blearily.
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
She shrugged and sat up.