“We don’t know what Danny will like,” she said.
Despite Nicholas’s spending twenty minutes talking to her through her door, Jessica wouldn’t come out of her room, which was a little worrying. I just figured a mother would want to eat dinner with the son she hadn’t seen in six years, but apparently Patrick was right and it was too much for her. Or she suspected I wasn’t her son.
But as long as her belief held for a couple more hours, it wouldn’t matter either way because I’d be gone.
The rest of us sat down at the elegantly carved dining table that probably cost more than the house I grew up in and ate dinner from plastic containers, with filigreed silver flatware. It was one of the more uncomfortable meals of my life, which is saying something. Mia was the only one unaffected by the undercurrent of tension in the room. She chattered happily, telling me all about her teacher and her best friend, her horseback riding lessons, the puppy she desperately wanted. Trying to fill me in on the bulk of a life that Danny had missed all in one meal.
“I wanted to quit riding because my friend Daisy got thrown and broke her arm, but Mom said I can get a horse of my own when I’m twelve if I keep taking lessons, because that’s how old she was when Granddad got her a horse . . .”
“Gran and Granddad are in Europe right now,” Lex said, “otherwise they would be here to welcome you back.”
“That’s okay,” I said. The fewer relatives around, the better.
“It’ll take us some time to get you on the visitors’ list to see your dad,” Patrick added, “but he knows you’re home, so I’m sure he’ll call soon.”
When Mia finally ran out of things to say, silence descended on the table. I could practically see Patrick, Lex, and Nicholas struggling to think of a topic of conversation that wouldn’t reference something I couldn’t remember or the ordeal I’d been through.
“How’s the sea bass?” Lex finally asked. She’d already asked me a dozen questions about the food, what I liked to eat, could she pass me the salt or get me anything else. Food was a safe topic.
I looked down at the container I was eating from. I hadn’t even known the thing I was eating was sea bass.
“It’s good,” I said.
“Good,” she said, giving me a weak smile.
I glanced at the grandfather clock on the wall. It was almost late enough for me to plead exhaustion and go to bed. The phone rang, and Patrick jumped up and went to the other room to answer it. He came back a moment later.
“Who was it?” Mia asked.
“No one,” he said, at the same time Lex asked, “Who wants dessert?”
When dinner was over, Patrick announced that he’d better leave for his own home in L.A. Since he’d missed the last couple of days at the office, he needed to go in early the next morning to start catching up. He hugged Lex and Mia and then turned to me. He reached for me, hesitated, then laughed at himself and reached for me again. His embrace was quick and stiff. “We’re so glad you’re home, Danny,” he said.
“Me too,” I said, very aware of all the eyes in the room watching us.
He let me go. “I’ll be back tomorrow night. We should catch up.”
“Sure,” I said. I didn’t intend to still be here tomorrow night.
“I’ll walk you out,” Lex said to her brother. As she and Patrick left the room, she said over her shoulder, “Nicky, Mia, will you?”
They nodded and immediately started to clean up, collecting food containers and paper napkins for the trash and silverware for the dishwasher. I guess I got out of cleaning duty on account of having been kidnapped, which left me hovering awkwardly, unsure what to do with myself. For a while I stood in front of one of the floor-to-ceiling windows in the dining room, pretending to care about the view of the darkened lawn and mountains in the distance. Then I decided to go find Lex and tell her I was going to bed.
I walked through a darkened corridor toward the foyer. Lex and Patrick were standing in the doorway, their profiles illuminated by the lights in the fountain outside as they spoke quietly to each other. I stopped in the shadows and watched them. Although I couldn’t hear them, the way they looked at each other indicated an intense conversation. Lex shook her head, and I could tell from her pinched lips that she was crying again. Patrick put his hands on her shoulders and said something that made her take a deep breath and nod. They exchanged a few more words before Lex turned to go, but Patrick caught her by the wrist and pulled her back to him. He cocked his head to one side as he asked her something. She looked at him for a long moment before nodding again and gently removing his hand from her wrist. He kissed her cheek and left, and after she’d closed the door behind him, she leaned against it for a long time. The air felt charged and uneasy, so I slipped away without saying anything to her.
? ? ?
I returned to Danny’s untouched bedroom and locked the door behind me. I didn’t know what to do. I needed something to occupy me until the time I could sneak out, but, truthfully, I was having trouble keeping my eyes open. I’d barely slept the night before, and maintaining the Danny act was draining. The exhaustion had seeped into me, burrowing all the way to my bones. I noticed an alarm clock on the bedside table and grabbed it. I could let myself get a few hours of sleep before I snuck away, I told myself. It would probably be even better. When you’re tired, you make mistakes. I set the alarm for three and turned the sound down as far as it would go. I didn’t want to risk waking anyone else, and I was a light sleeper anyway.
I had nothing of my own to change into for bed, and I wouldn’t have worn Danny’s eerie, mummified clothes even if they weren’t child sized. I was about to shuck my jeans and shirt to sleep in my boxers when there was a knock on the door. I opened it to find Nicholas standing in the hallway.
“I thought you’d need these,” he said, holding out a T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. “Doubt you still fit into whatever’s in the dresser.”
I took the clothes. “Thanks.”
Nicholas kept looking at me. It was the first time he’d made eye contact with me for more than a second or two, and other than that first hug at the airport, it was the closest he’d been to me. A fine crease started between his eyebrows.