PART I
CHAPTER 1
Nell
He’s a stranger. He wasn’t before, but he is now.
He stands on the dirt road in front of the house, a suitcase and a travel bag at his feet. The driveway lights and darkness wrap around him like a web. The taxi disappears down the hill, red taillights glowing.
This stranger is not the man I once knew. Though he should be familiar, he’s changed in ways I will never know or understand. He appears even taller than I remember, broad in the shoulders and chest. A thatch of messy dark hair falls over his forehead. His open, black jacket reveals jeans and a T-shirt. His features are sinister in the shadows, hard-edged and inscrutable.
He slides his gaze over the house. His attention lingers on the window of my father’s bedroom, where I’m peering out from behind the curtains. I dart back, my heart catching. I don’t want him to see me, to know I’m watching him.
He turns his attention to the front door. My father walks out of the house. He’s clad in his usual attire of black trousers and a tailored white shirt, his posture ramrod straight like a king.
They meet each other halfway. Though my father has a commanding presence, the stranger eclipses him both in size and the authority of his bearing.
They extend their right hands at the same time. Even from the distance of the second-story window, I see the strength and firmness of their grip. Then they both raise their left arms, like dancers about to begin a pas de deux, and encircle each other in a hard embrace.
The other man fists the back of my father’s shirt. A few seconds pass before they separate. The stranger steps back. My father looks him over. I can almost hear the assessments clicking and snapping together in his razor-sharp brain.
They speak for a moment. The stranger bends to pick up his suitcase and bag. They walk toward the house and come inside.
Before going downstairs, I wait awhile in my attic bedroom. I pace slowly from the dormer window to the poster of Van Gogh’s The Starry Night that hangs on the wall opposite my bed. The spinning colors and wild, turbulent sky are another world, one completely unlike my restrained life.
I hear the men talking but can’t make out their words. The stranger’s voice is deep and somehow ragged, like the inside of a tin can. My father’s voice is measured, quiet. Strange to hear two male voices in our house. Strange to hear any voices in our house.
My shoulders are tight. Leaving my room, I walk to the landing, where the narrow staircase stretches tiredly to the second floor and then to the foyer.
The house is like an exiled queen—majestic at one time but now fallen into disrepair. My mother had been the one to find it after she and my father married. Even then, the three-story Victorian had been falling apart. My mother apparently had grand ideas to restore it, but they never came to fruition.
So the house sits on a weed-choked lot, isolated in the low hills bordering the town. It has peeling paint, loose stair railings, creaking doors, broken shutters, threadbare carpets. I wish it were haunted, but it only looks as if it could—or should—be.
My nervousness intensifies as I walk downstairs. I pause to twist the wooden newel cap at the end of the stair railing. It’s been loose for as long as I can remember, and twisting it is kind of a ritual for me.
The door to my father’s office at the end of the first-floor hallway is open. Their voices float on the shadowed light.
I pause in the doorway, pushing wayward strands of long brown hair away from my face. My father’s office has always been the same. Shelves sagging with books line the walls, and his old oak desk dominates the room. Stacks of papers and folders teeter like building blocks on the desk’s surface and the floor.
A computer sits sidelined on a table near the windows—evidence of my father’s contempt for technology and his occasional, grudging use of email. Everything else about the room is spare and unadorned—no paintings hang on the walls, and the fireplace is dusty and unused despite the cracked leather chairs in front of it. The Persian rug is so worn in places that it shows the scarred wooden floor beneath.
For all of my eighteen years, nothing in this room has changed.
Until now.
The stranger changes the room simply by standing in it. His presence pulls attention away from everything except him. He’s in front of the fireplace, hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket, his shirt stretched across his wide chest.
His features are strong and arresting—thick-lashed dark eyes and cut-glass cheekbones sloping down to a square jaw and a well-shaped mouth. But experience has changed him—lines etch either side of his mouth and radiate from the corners of his eyes, and his black hair is dusted with gray.
He’s like one of the ancient ruins my father loves so much, beautiful for having lived long enough to be etched by the years. Scarred and battle-weary, but still standing resolutely, like he’s defying time itself.
He slants his gaze past my father to where I’m standing in the doorway. No recognition shows on his face, but his perception is assessing and sharp.
My chest knots. I know what he’s seeing—that I’m no longer the spindle-legged little girl with a pageboy haircut who ate up his stories of camels plodding across the Egyptian desert and flocks of children following him and his camera like he was the Pied Piper. I’m older, bigger, quieter. He sees it all in one glance.
But is he as saddened by the sight of me as I am by him?
“Ah, there you are.” Turning to me, my father smiles with his voice. I can’t recall the last time he smiled with his lips. “Nell, you remember Darius, of course.”
I nod, though I remember a version of Darius. I don’t remember this particular man. I remember a strong, warm man with a thousand stories to tell and a smile that made his eyes crinkle. A man who lived a bold, adventurous life and who opened up the possibilities of the world to me.
Until the door slammed shut in front of us both.
“Hello, Uncle Darius.”
He blinks, as if startled, then gives a low, humorless laugh. “No need for that any longer. I’m just Darius, Nell. It’s good to see you again.”
“You too.”
I’m not sure it is, though. Good implies that in the six years since I last saw him, we’ve both lived pleasant lives and have great stories to tell. Mine should be about my fun teenaged activities, friends, school, plans for my future. His should be about his dangerous, exciting adventures traveling the world as a Pulitzer Prize-winning war photographer.
I have no such stories. And his are worse than anything I can imagine.
I shift from one foot to the other, not sure if I should approach him. He’s so different—not nearly as warm and welcoming as he used to be. A guarded power radiates from him. His frame is as solid as a fortress, like he’s prepared to defend himself from even the hint of danger.
Our eyes meet. Awkwardness crackles in the air. When I was younger, I’d have run across the room and leapt into his arms. He’d have captured me in a bear hug and lifted me off the ground. I’d have felt like I was flying.
That was a very long time ago.
“Would you show Darius to the guest room, Nell?” my father asks.
“I can find another place to stay.” Darius glances from me to my father. “No sense in troubling you.”