Circle of Bones - Kling Christine - Страница 62
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The floorboard creaked and the voices downstairs ceased. Dig froze. They would send someone upstairs to check it out. Soon. He straightened the paperclip and felt the chill air roll up his sleeve as he straightened his arm to reach for the doorknob. He slipped the shaft of the paper clip into the lock on the old round door knob. The cold air reached the sweat-soaked fabric beneath his underarm and he shivered. He’d handled locks like this a hundred times during his years with the Company. He stilled his breathing, closed his eyes and jiggled the pick. With a soft click, he felt the lock give. He turned the knob, then lifted his foot and froze. They would be able to break in as easily as he did if he confirmed his presence to them. One creak meant it was an old building. Two and you knew you were not alone. Standing there balanced on one foot like a bloody flamingo, he realized he had no idea if the floor would creak again if he stepped into the office.
With a loud whoosh, the heating system started up again, and Dig slipped into the office without a sound, closing and locking the door behind him.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Foggy Bottom
March 28, 2008
3:55 a.m.
Riley sat on the flowered couch in their old family apartment in Paris. A tattered Scrabble board rested on the cushion between her and Mikey. The odd thing was that she was having one of those dreams where she knew she was dreaming, and she kept looking around the apartment thinking, I want to be sure to remember all this when I wake up. It was Mikey’s turn at the game. He arranged his tiles to spell the word beware. She started laughing because she thought it was so melodramatic of him — like something right out of a horror movie. If they were in a movie, she thought, the music would be slow with lots of bass about now. Bum, bum, bum, bum . . . Then Mikey looked up from the board and instead of smiling, his eyes grew wide and his mouth opened in a silent scream. His gaze traveled past her, over her shoulder, at something or someone who stood tall behind her. She started to turn—
Riley lurched up into a sitting position as though someone were pulling at the center front of her nightgown. She gulped air and brushed the sweat-slicked hair off her forehead. Her head swiveled around for several seconds before she remembered where she was. Moonlight streamed through the lace curtains at the window. That’s right. Her father’s townhouse.
She pressed her fingers to her temples as the dream came back to her. She did not ever remember seeing such a look of terror on her brother’s face.
“Oh god, Mikey? What was that all about?” When she spoke, her throat felt raspy and sore from sleeping in the dry, overheated house. Inhaling slowly, she tried to calm herself. “It was only a dream,” she said aloud.
The bedside clock read 4:03. It had been nearly two in the morning by the time she settled into bed. That meant she’d slept only two hours, but now she felt wide awake. She swept aside the covers and swung her feet to the floor. Getting up and moving was the key to throwing off these night terrors. At least this dream hadn’t been about the fire.
She looked at the hardwood floor beneath her bare feet and thought of Mrs. Wright sleeping downstairs. The woman was nowhere near as adept a liar as Diggory. Riley didn’t believe her father had ever left the house. Assuming this was all some ruse by Diggory Priest to get her to Washington, the question was why?
She remembered the argument on the quay in Pointe-a-Pitre and her exact words about how she wanted the truth. Then she’d said, There’s more you and your kind aren’t telling me. And if you won’t tell me ? Was this all a reaction to that half threat? If so, perhaps she would now get the answers she sought.
She eased the door to her father’s room open and found it much darker inside than in the hall. The room’s stuffy air had that sickroom smell of disinfectant and urine. She crossed to the window and drew back the heavy black drapes allowing the moonlight to fall across the floor at the foot of his bed. The covers clung to the outline of his body, and he looked smaller, thinner than she remembered.
On the nightstand, she saw a photograph in a frame, and when she carried it to the window, she was surprised to see that it was a shot of the four of them taken in Paris when she was about sixteen years old. She remembered the day it was taken. Her mother had hired a professional photographer to get a family portrait. Her father traveled a great deal in those days, and her mother had started trying to make them all the uber family whenever he was home. She planned picnics and little family celebrations. That day, her mom was furious that Riley refused to wear the designated photo shoot dress, and instead wore a polo shirt and jeans. Printed on the front of her brother’s T-shirt were the words, “Gravity, what a downer.” Both Riley and Mikey wore goofy grins in the photo. They were that age when anything that irritated their parents was vastly amusing.
Now, with the benefit of years, she saw the sadness in her mother’s eyes. Riley knew that their marriage had gone wrong even before Mikey’s death. Within three years after this photo was taken, Michael was gone and her father returned to Washington without his wife.
She heard the bed creak behind her as he rolled over.
“Maggie? Is that you?”
She turned toward the bed. Because she had been examining the photograph in the bright moonlight, she’d lost her night vision. She had difficulty making him out in the shadows. “Yeah. Hi, Dad. Sorry to wake you.” So this was going to be one of his good times. At least he knew who she was.
“I’m glad you’re here. I’ve been wanting to talk to you about something.”
“Dad, it’s late. Go back to sleep. I was just checking on you.”
“There’s something I have to tell you.”
Here we go, she thought. “Dad, we’ll talk in the morning.”
“It’s about Michael. I was ashamed.”
“Dad, you’re not making sense.”
“He was such an odd child.”
Riley felt her throat tightening. She was too tired for this. Her defenses were down, and she was determined not to let him see her cry. “Dad, I know. Let’s stop talking about this now. It’s the middle of the night. Time for you to go back to sleep.”
“I wanted to make a man of him.” She heard the covers rustling and saw the vague outline of him trying to sit up in bed. “Thought Yale would do that.”
She heard a click and the bedside lamp lit the room. She saw his disheveled white hair, a bony wrist protruding from the sleeve of his maroon satin pajamas, but it was his face that appeared most changed. Where he once had plump pink pouches under his eyes, his skin now sagged in black craters. His cheekbones carved sharp angles above more sunken shadows. He motioned for her to sit in the chair.
“They made me do it.”
He always came back to this story about something he had done, but like the offer of a position at the Taiwan Embassy, it seemed to have been created in the twisted depths of his dementia.
“It’s all history now, Dad. Let the past lie.”
“Please, Elizabeth. Say you forgive me.”
That was it. Her mother was remarried and living in Paris. Now, he forgot even that and he didn’t know his own daughter. Riley went to the bedside and eased her father back down onto the pillow. His shoulders felt so thin, and she wondered if he was eating anything at all. The bubble of emotion welled up her throat again. She swallowed. “Dad, we’ll talk about this tomorrow.”
She smoothed his hair down and trailed her fingers across the paper-like skin of his cheek. His eyes were open wide and as usual, whenever he got upset like this, his lazy eye rolled around the eye socket, looking everywhere but at her.
“Shhh,” she said. “Go to sleep.” She clicked off the light and backed out of the room, closing the door behind her.
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