Roland laughed. At least one of them could laugh about it.
“If it helps, you’re in our pictures,” Roland said. “Lots of them. They’re up in Dad’s office.”
“You’re sweet,” she said, then laughed tiredly.
“What’s funny?”
“Oh, thinking about the things we let rich men get away with. McQueen’s girlfriends knew about me. I mean, they didn’t know my name, where I lived, but they all knew he had someone on the side. He warned them. And they let him get away with it. Never would have happened if he’d been a mailman or a mechanic.”
“Look at Dad,” Roland said. “You think a normal man, a poor guy, would do what he did? He could literally walk into a foster home, snap his fingers and walk out with a kid.” He raised his hand and snapped his fingers like a diner rudely summoning a waiter. “When a rich man does it, it’s philanthropy. When a poor man does it, they call the cops on him.”
“Dr. Capello helped people. McQueen helped himself,” Allison said. “Must be nice, though.”
“Being that rich?” Roland said.
“Yeah, so rich you can snap your fingers and get someone to come home with you just like that,” she said. “Think it would work for us?”
Roland looked at her before raising his hand and snapping his fingers in the air twice. Allison grinned and crooked her finger at him. He wrapped a strong arm around her waist and pulled her away from the deck railing, leading her by the hand into the sunroom.
“Hey,” he said, once they were back inside the house. “What do you know? It does work.”
“Roland Capello,” she said, running her hands up his bare arms to his shoulders. “You really are the nicest boy in the world.”
“Am I? Back at the monastery it’s compline. I should be at night prayers.” Allison looked into his eyes. He didn’t have bedroom eyes, not like McQueen did. Roland had hallway eyes—labyrinthine hallways made of marble and lit by torches resting in iron sconces. She could wander those shadowy hallways forever and never once feel lost.
“You are nice,” she said, sliding her fingers slowly down his broad chest and over his tight stomach. He shivered at her soft touch and she smiled at his shivering. Her Roland, a monk. A sweet, gentle, tenderhearted monk and who’d been with two girls in his entire thirty years. She would have to teach him a few of the things McQueen had taught her.
“Very, very nice. But guess what?”
“What?” he asked as he brushed his hands through her hair.
Allison dropped down onto her knees, but not to pray.
“I’m nice, too.”
Chapter 11
Allison awoke the next morning and found herself alone in the bed. The sheets were cool next to her. Roland had been gone for some time now. Bracing herself to meet the sunlight, she opened her eyes and saw a note lying on the pillow next to hers.
Good morning, sunshine—
I’ll be at the hospital all morning with Dad. Deacon and Thora will probably be back by noon. Make yourself at home.
Thank you for last night. If you want a kept man, I promise my rates are very reasonable.
Love,
Roland
P.S. There are no secrets in this house. Be prepared for Hurricane Deacon. Once he finds out, we will not hear the end of it.
P.S. #2. I wasn’t kidding about you being in our pictures. Go look in Dad’s office on his desk.
She smiled at the letter. She was glad there didn’t seem to be any lingering awkwardness in his words. Roland had never been the dramatic sort. And Deacon? Oh, she could handle Deacon. She kind of liked the thought of being teased for sleeping with Roland. She’d never been teased over a guy before. Her one serious adult relationship had been with McQueen, and he’d been a secret.
After her shower she made herself a small breakfast of yogurt and toast. Apart from Brien, who was asleep on the sunroom sofa, she was alone in the house. For a few minutes she wandered around downstairs, letting the memories of her time here wash over her. Loud family dinners in the dining room. Playing charades in the sunroom after sunset. Dr. Capello helping her with her science project in the kitchen. They’d made a volcano, a mini Mount Hood. Happy memories, all of them. She found more happy memories on the second floor. Thora doing her hair for her—a French braid one day, pigtails the next. Deacon and Roland swinging her in a blanket while she yelled, “Faster! Faster!” She and Kendra reading on the deck while out in the ocean, the boys trying to impress them with their pitiful attempts at surfing.
Allison walked from bedroom to bedroom, growing younger as the memories teased her into smiling, tickled her into laughing. Warm memories, sunlit memories. Memories that made it almost impossible for her to reconcile the beauty she’d found in this house with the ugly way it all ended. She’d known nothing but love here, nothing but kindness. But someone must have left a door open a crack and evil had snuck in when no one was looking.
Allison climbed the stairs to the third floor, where she knew Dr. Capello’s office waited. These were the stairs, the ones they’d said she’d fallen down, which meant she’d been on the third floor for some reason. Yet, she couldn’t think of why she’d be up here. This floor had been mostly off-limits to the kids since Dr. Capello kept his office there—medical records, computers and other expensive equipment. But if they were sick and had to stay home from school, Dr. Capello would let them upstairs to spend the day with him. He had a couch in his office and Allison remembered dozing off a fever under a blanket, waking to read or watch his small portable TV while he worked on whatever it was he did back then.
Was that why she’d been up here that day? Had she been sick? It was summer, so there would have been no school to miss. Maybe she snuck up here? Did someone lure her upstairs for the sole purpose of pushing her down? Or had she fallen completely by accident and the phone call to her aunt was something entirely unrelated? If it weren’t for that call, Allison would be sure the fall was an accident. But she couldn’t pretend it hadn’t happened. She’d been betrayed twice in this house—first by whoever had hurt her, and then by Dr. Capello when he let her go without a fight. Allison stared down the steps, trying to trigger a memory—anything about that moment, that day, that week.
Nothing. If she had any memories of that time, they were locked up in a vault in her brain, and she’d long ago lost the combination.
Allison gave up trying to remember. She turned from the stairs and wandered down the hallway, opening the door to Dr. Capello’s office.
She smiled as she stepped inside. Dr. Capello had truly snagged the best room in the house. It was spacious and airy, with bright white walls and windows looking out on the ocean. Her favorite was the massive bay window with the padded window bench perfect for a child to lie on for reading or napping or watching the waves. Dr. Capello had a beautiful old boat of a desk, weathered gray wood with a three-masted ship carved onto the back and sides.
A map hung behind the desk, over a decorative fireplace. At least in Allison’s memory it had been a map, the old-fashioned ink and parchment sort with dragons lurking along the far edges. But her grown-up eyes now saw it for what it was—a skull. A map of the skull with parts of the brain labeled like countries. At the very core of the skull, there she saw the pen-and-ink dragons. How strange. Why would there be dragons inside the human brain? She’d heard of the “lizard brain” but never the dragon brain. She’d have to ask Dr. Capello about it.