Eerie (4 page)

“What can I get you?”

Grant turned his attention to the tall, pretty barkeep. Black vest. Long blond hair pulled back into a ponytail. The clear fresh eyes of someone who’d just come on shift.

“Johnnie Walker Blue, rocks.”

“That’s seventy-five dollars a shot, just so you know.”

“Then make it a double.”

Halfway through the glass, he sensed the warmth coming, a pleasant bleariness settling in behind his eyes. But strangely, he didn’t feel calmer. Not at all. The only sensation was a shift in the night’s energy. The threat of being hurtled in a new, unforeseen direction.

He was down to his last few sips when Eric climbed into the open chair beside him.

“Just texted you her address.” As if on cue, Grant felt his phone vibrate. “You have a meet-and-greet in one hour. It’s no sure thing. She has to like you. If she doesn’t? That’s not on me. I told her you were an architect named Michael. You were warned she’s expensive. You better pay in full. I gotta tell you … I’m stunned she even went for this.”

Grant slugged back the last of his scotch, stepped down off the stool, and grabbed his coat.

Eric said, “If I get complaints, if you burn this bridge for me—”

“Then you’ll deal with it, won’t you? Thanks for the drink.”

Chapter 5

He parked two blocks away on Crockett Street per the directions Eric had texted him and turned off the Crown Vic.

Rain beaded on the windshield, distorting the lights of passing cars.

Grant glanced at his phone: 9:25.

The knot in his stomach had been tightening with every mile he’d driven since leaving the Four Seasons, and now it felt taut enough to fray.

He locked his gun in the glove compartment.

Opened the door, stepped out into rain that was cold enough to leave a metallic chill where it touched his skin. Grant raised the hood of his North Face jacket, thrust his hands into the pockets, and started down the sidewalk.

It was an affluent quarter in upper Queen Anne—rows of brownstones interspersed with Victorian mansions. Streetlamps ran along the block, and between the rain falling through their illumination and a haze of mist lingering in the alleyways, the neighborhood assumed the eerie gloom of a nineteenth-century London slum.

At the next block, Grant stopped and stared cattycorner across the intersection at a freestanding brownstone. The building was three stories. It occupied a corner. Evergreen hedges rose almost to the windows of the first-level, and though the curtains were drawn, he could see light around the edges. The second and third floors stood completely dark.

Grant waited for a break in traffic and then jogged across the street, dodging a large puddle several inches deep.

He stopped at the wrought iron fence that encircled the property and leveled his gaze on the front door. The scent of wood smoke was faint in the air.

The number on the small, black mailbox beside the door matched the address he’d been given. He unlatched the gate and pushed his way through, moving along the path of flagstones, and then up the stairs. With each step, he noted a strange sensation, a pressure building in his head, his pace involuntarily quickening, as though he were being pulled toward the building.

Then he was standing under the covered stoop, his pulse at full throttle, trying to catch his breath before he knocked.

A small camera pointed down from just above the door’s upper hinge.

This was happening too fast.

His head still hummed from the Johnnie Walker Blue, and he had only the vaguest concept of what he was going to say.

Swallowing the doubt and the fear, he pressed the buzzer.

The muffled thud of footsteps—most likely barefoot—came into range on the other side of the door.

A voice crackled through an intercom under the mailbox.

“Michael, how are you?”

Grant hit the TALK button, leaned in, responded with, “Doing well. Little wet out here.”

“Then let’s get you out of the cold.”

The slide of a chain.

Two deadbolts turning.

Hinges creaking.

A blade of light cut across the stone at Grant’s feet as the heavy wood door swung open.

Top-shelf perfume swept over him.

The light was poor.

She wore a purple silk kimono with a pattern of black vines and flowers that curled down the sleeves. Plunging neckline. Her blond hair had been lifted off her neck and shoulders with a pair of black chopsticks. She stood barefoot in the doorframe, her hand still clutching the knob. Behind her, the darkened room shifted in the firelight.

Grant looked into her face, into her eyes, hoping for some unfamiliar detail, but they all belonged unquestionably to her.

Waves of horror and relief raged through his head.

She tried to shut the door, but he’d anticipated this, the toe of his boot already across the threshold.

“Leave,” she said. “Right now.”

“I just want to talk to you.”

“How dare you.”

“Can I come in?”

“You here to arrest me?”

“No.”

“How’d you find me?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“I want you to leave right now.”

“That’s not gonna happen.”

“What do you want?”

“Just to see you.”

“Congratulations. You’ve seen me. Toodaloo.”

“Why do you hate me?”

“I don’t hate you.” She was still trying to force the door closed.

Grant put his hand up and braced himself against it.

He said, “I didn’t know if you were alive or dead. That’s the truth. Then I find out you’re back in Seattle. You could’ve reached out to me. You could’ve made contact.”

“And why on earth would I do that?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Because I’m your brother?”

“So what?”

“How could you say that?”

“I don’t need you sweeping back into my life for a night. Leveling your judgment. Telling me how I’m destroying my life. How I should fix it. How you’ll help me—”

“I miss you, Paige. I just want to see you. That’s all.”

“You’re melting my heart.”

“Please.”

She looked him up and down.

For a moment, there was nothing but the hush of rainfall on the street. The quiet hum of the globe light above their heads. The thunder of Grant’s heart slamming inside his chest.

She said finally, “All right, but you leave when I say.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re not here to fix me. You understand that?”

“Yes.”

Paige sighed and moved back from the door.

Chapter 6

As Grant stepped inside and pushed the door closed after him, Paige turned and headed up the staircase that launched out of the foyer.

“Where you going?” Grant called after her as the steps creaked under her footfalls.

“To get decent for my brother.”

A live jazz album that sounded like Miles Davis played softly from a Bose system in the living room. He caught the scent of essential oils and candles. The air was further laced with incense and the good, spicy smell of cedar burning in the fireplace.

Straight on, a hallway ran parallel to the staircase before feeding into a kitchen. An archway on the left opened into a formal dining room whose rough-hewn table—covered in envelopes and paperwork—appeared to serve the purpose of a desk rather than a place where people actually sat down to eat.

Grant hung his coat on the rack and walked through the archway on his right into the living room. There were candles everywhere. A leather couch against the far wall facing the hearth. A bookcase. Bottles and glassware glimmered in the back corner in the light of the flames—a wet bar. Along the mantle, sprigs of garland peppered with white Christmas lights made for the only decorations in an otherwise seasonally indifferent room.

As orphans, they had gone without, but even in the leanest of times, Paige could always bring a touch of class to whatever miserable living situation they found themselves in. Wild flowers poking out of a glass Coke bottle, the walls of a motel room draped with birthday streamers cut from newspaper; it amazed him what she could do with nothing. Now, he saw the maturation of her gift in the design choices she’d made. The house was old, probably pushing a hundred years, but she had accentuated the early twentieth-century crown molding and sconces with contemporary decor. The living room furniture was upholstered in black leather and sat low to the ground. Beyond the rear doorway, white-lacquered kitchen cabinets gleamed beneath recessed lighting. The only things that hadn’t been renovated were the floors and staircase—dark walnut worn smooth from a century of use. Grant wondered what kind of money she made to be able to afford such a place. But that was Paige. Whatever she did, she threw herself into it, and as much as Grant hated the life choices she’d made, damn if he wasn’t a little bit impressed.

One of the lower steps creaked. Grant returned to the foyer as Paige appeared around the corner, now dressed in something far warmer and modest—a plaid pajama top and bottom. She had let her hair down, and it fell a few inches past her shoulders. At thirty-six, those once pure and shimmering platinum locks were showing streaks of dishwater.

She’d definitely aged in the five years since their last disastrous rendezvous—a botched intervention attempt in a Motel 6 on the outskirts of Phoenix, last in a fifteen-year string of attempts to save her life. Seemed like ever since Paige had turned sixteen and dropped out of high school, she’d been on a mission to kill herself. Frankly, he was shocked that she hadn’t finished the job by now. Despite their estrangement, the threat of that next-of-kin notification phone call was a fear that never left him.

Paige had been so scantily-clad when she first answered the door that Grant hadn’t allowed himself to really look at her. Some things, a brother shouldn’t see. But now, as she cruised toward him in wool-lined slippers into the firelight, it struck him how thin she was. Borderline emaciation. The long-sleeved pajama top seemed to swallow her, and her face tapered from her cheekbones down toward her chin at angles so sharp they didn’t seem natural—the shape of her skull shining through.

Using for sure.

“Place is incredible,” Grant said.

“The rent certainly is.”

It occurred to him that he’d missed his chance to inspect her arms for needle-marks when she’d been wearing the short-sleeved kimono.

Bad detective.

“How long you been in town?” he asked.

“A year.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“But I’ve only been in this place two months.”

Grant stepped toward the small fireplace and held his hands to the heat.

“Want a drink?” she asked.

“Love one.”

She padded over to the wet bar, moving like someone with barely the strength to stand—a nursing home shuffle.

“Still a scotch man?”

“For life.”

He watched her reach for a bottle of Macallan. The lowlight stopped him from determining the age.

“Neat? Rocks?” she asked.

“What year?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Jesus. Then neat.”

She made a generous pour. Brought it over. Out of habit, he lifted the glass and inhaled. It was a gorgeous nose but flattened by the occasion.

“Seriously,” she said. “How’d you find me?”

“Dumb luck.”

“Facebook?”

“Yep.”

“My profile is only a pair of eyes.”

“But they’re your eyes.”

Grant sipped the whiskey.

Miles Davis was blistering through a trumpet solo.

The fire popping.

He looked down at his sister, a good six inches shorter than he was.

No idea what to say.

He raised his glass. “Some of the best I’ve had.”

Paige just stared at him and nodded.

Grant looked around the room as if it were his first time seeing it.

“No tree?”

She shook her head. “Think I waited too long. You have to do that kind of stuff early in the season. Before you lose the motivation.”

It was Grant’s turn to nod.

“This is weird,” she said

“I know.”

Another sip. His cheeks flushing.

“Do you visit Dad?” she asked.

“Not enough. Every few weeks.”

“I went once when I first moved back from Phoenix. That’s all I could bear. You think I’d be used to seeing him like that by now.”

“I was just there this afternoon. They had Christmas ornaments up. Slit your wrists depressing.”

He flinched inside. Shouldn’t have put it that way.

Grant could feel the scotch already beginning to soften his knees. He moved toward the couch. A mattress and blanket had been shoved underneath it. Did she fuck her clients down here by the fireside? Right on this floor where he was standing? He pushed the thought away.

“I want you to know that I thought about contacting you,” Paige said as he lowered himself onto the cushion.

“Wish you had.”

Grant sipped his drink and watched the fire.

Through the window at his back, he could hear the rain falling on the hedges.

“I do have one favor to ask,” Grant said.

She grimaced.

“Relax, it’s not a big deal. I just haven’t eaten since lunch and this whiskey is going to my head in a hurry.”

“You want me to make you something?”

“How about I make
us
something. Are you hungry?”

She smiled, and for a split second, it was like a window into the Paige of old. A break in the armor. “You mean like your world famous grilled cheese?”

“I have a confession to make. It’s not actually world famous.”

Chapter 7

The square of butter sizzled as Grant guided it around the pan with a wooden spatula. Paige sat on a barstool at the kitchen island, skillets and copper sauce pans of every size dangling above her head from a hanging pot rack.

“Mild cheddar or Jack?” Grant asked.

“You don’t remember?”

“American cheese it is.”

Grant opened the door to the fridge. Not exactly a wellspring of food—just a half-empty jug of skim milk two weeks past expiration, the usual condiments, three cardboard pizza boxes, a colony of leftover Chinese cartons, and yes, a stack of plastic-wrapped slices.