“Oh,” said Lucien, and silence fell again. I had a feeling he wasn’t going to be introducing any more topics of conversation tonight.
“Well, at least he’s never bit you,” Roger said, coming back into the conversation with a voice that was determinedly upbeat. He extended his wrist across the table, so we could all see a small, circular scar on his palm. “My stepbrother,” he said. “Very hungry kid.”
“That’s nothing,” said Lucien, rolling up his sleeve and showing us a faint scar on his forearm. “When I was eight, Hadley trained her horse to kick me. She always denied it, but our groom told me the truth.”
Roger reached across to my plate to steal a strawberry, and Lucien excused himself, laying his napkin on the table, where it was immediately refolded by a waiter. “Sorry,” I said once Lucien was gone, realizing we hadn’t had an opportunity to talk yet, just the two of us. “About inviting him, I mean.”
“No, it’s fine,” Roger said. “He’s nice.”
“He is,” I said. “I just …” I hadn’t told Roger about what it had been like, staying in our house by myself. I didn’t think I’d even fully realized how it had made me feel until I’d seen something I recognized in Lucien’s expression. “I think he seemed lonely, that’s all.”
“It’s been fun,” said Roger, giving me a faint smile that immediately disappeared. He shook his head. “Hadley had mentioned she had a brother, but no details, really. She hadn’t told me what her house was like, or this town. It’s weird.” He drummed his fingers on the polished surface of the table, then continued, “Being here, it makes me feel like I didn’t actually know her at all.”
“Oh,” I said. I looked at Roger’s face to try and gauge what that meant for him. “But you still want to try to see her tomorrow, right?”
“Yes,” he said, then nodded. “I do. I mean, we’ve come this far, right?”
Lucien returned to the table then but didn’t sit back down. “Ready to go?” he asked.
“Don’t we need to pay?” I asked, looking around for one of the many waiters who’d been hovering around us all night but now were nowhere to be seen.
Lucien simply shook his head. “Taken care of,” he said, pulling my chair out for me. I stumbled a little as I stood, not having expected this.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I said, but Lucien just smiled.
“It was my pleasure,” he said. “Thanks for the invite. It’s no fun to eat alone.” I saw Roger open his mouth to protest, but Lucien shook his head again. “Seriously,” he said. “I appreciated the company.”
As we headed out of the restaurant, we passed some of the same people still waiting for a table, and they glared at us as we left. We stepped into the hot, humid night that hadn’t seemed to have cooled down from when we’d gone in. After California weather—desert weather—in which temperatures dropped sharply at night, this just felt odd to me, like something was unfinished. Like there was a switch that someone had forgotten to pull.
Lucien directed us back to Hummingbird Valley, and I kept looking over at Roger, who was unusually quiet. He looked pretty worn out. But whether it was the driving, or the prospect of seeing Hadley, I wasn’t sure.
“Did you guys see the topiaries as you came in?” Lucien asked as we drove down his street, pointing outside the window to the figures we’d seen before, looking less ominous now that it was fully dark out and they were lit up by the huge moon. More like they were sentinels guarding the estates that stood just behind them.
“We did,” I said. “They’re amazing.”
“They’re a tradition,” he said, leaning forward a little, between my seat and Roger’s. “You should see this place at Christmas.”
Roger signaled, and we pulled up the World’s Longest Driveway. The house was all lit up as it came into view, and I turned back to Lucien. “It looks like someone else is here,” I said, and noticed Roger’s hands tighten on the steering wheel.
Lucien shook his head. “Timers.”
I nodded and looked at the huge house, all those rooms, and thought about what it must be like to be alone in it. Roger pulled around in front, put the car in park, and turned to Lucien, extending his hand. “You showed us your town,” he said. “Thanks for that.”
“Sure,” said Lucien, shaking Roger’s hand. I noticed the fixed smile from earlier had returned. “I guess I’ll see you guys tomorrow.” I nodded and smiled. He unbuckled his seat belt and opened the door, but then turned back to us. “Listen,” he said. “Y’all want to stay here tonight? We have tons of rooms, nobody’s using the guesthouses.” At this plural, I saw Roger’s lips twitch in a small smile, probably imperceptible to anyone but me.
“We can’t do that,” I said automatically. “Thank you, though.”
“Seriously,” Lucien said. “They’re always set up and ready for guests. And nobody’s using them. It doesn’t make any sense to drive all the way back into town and get a hotel for the night.”
Roger and I glanced at each other, and I had a feeling we were both thinking the same thing. That it would help, money-wise, not to have to spend anything on a hotel tonight.
“Would that be weird for Hadley, though?” Roger asked, turning to Lucien. “I mean, her ex-boyfriend, staying in her house …” It registered that Roger hadn’t had any problem with the “ex” part of that phrase this time.
“She doesn’t have to know,” said Lucien. “And so what if she has a problem with it? You guys are my guests, and I can invite people to stay if I want.”
I glanced at Roger, who raised his eyebrows and nodded slightly. “If you’re sure,” I said. “But you’ve really done too much already.”
“Not at all,” Lucien said, closing the door, his smile relaxing into what I’d seen most of the night. “I’m happy to be able to do it. Now, what you’re going to want to do is drive around the back.” He directed Roger on a road that took us around the back of the house, and I rolled down my window, even though the air-conditioning was on, to try to get a closer look in the dark. The grounds seemed to continue on for miles, and they were gorgeously landscaped. And there were more shaped topiaries, like the ones we’d seen on the side of the road. But there were lots of them here, scattered around—and they were amazing. I saw a bear peeking out from behind a tree, a few dogs, and what looked like a crane, before we made another turn and lost sight of those grounds. “Those are incredible,” I said.
“You like them?” Lucien asked, leaning forward. “Really?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “Are they done by the same person who did the ones on the road?”
“No,” he said. “Someone different.”
“I thought so,” I said. “Those were better.”
“I missed them,” Roger said. “I was, you know, driving.”
“I can show you guys tomorrow if you like. Roger, you’re going to make a left here.”
I understood why Roger had corrected me as we’d driven in—this really was an estate. I had totally lost sight of the main house by now, and we were driving on a paved path through what just seemed like woods. “You sure like to give your guests a lot of privacy,” I said, as we continued on without seeing anything.
“It’s not too much farther,” Lucien said. “And there are Jeeps at both houses, in case you want to get around but don’t want to use your car.” I let this sink in for a second, just how different this way of living was from anything else I’d even heard of, let alone experienced. “Here we are,” he said, and Roger pulled to a stop in front of what would have been considered a normal-size house in Raven Rock. It was two stories and seemed more cabinlike than the main house. It was made of dark wood, with a peaked roof, glass windows that went from floor to ceiling, and a wraparound porch.
“Yeah,” said Roger with a short laugh, killing the engine, “I think this will do.” We got out of the car, and Lucien grabbed my suitcase from the back before I could get to it, then unlocked the guesthouse and let us in.
Inside, it was cozy but very decorated. Everything seemed to match, and since it was a guesthouse, there were no personalized touches anywhere. But it was a real house, with a functioning kitchen, one bedroom downstairs, and two upstairs. Lucien showed us where the snacks were and how to use the air-conditioning unit, while I mostly just looked around, trying to take it all in.
“So I think that’s it. Just give me a call if you have any questions,” he said, writing down his cell number on the pristine whiteboard on the fridge. “And I guess I’ll see y’all tomorrow morning. If you want to come by the main house, breakfast is normally around nine.”
“This is great, man,” Roger said, looking as shell-shocked as I felt. “Thanks.”
“Sure,” he said, and was heading for the door when I spotted a thin silver laptop sitting on the kitchen table.
“Lucien,” I said. “Is that yours, or …?”
He turned back to look at it, and shook his head. “It’s the house’s,” he said. “But feel free to use it.” He made a vague gesture upward. “We’ve got Wi-Fi.”
“I’ll drive you back to the house,” said Roger, grabbing the keys.
“It’s okay,” Lucien said. “I’ll just grab one of the Jeeps, if that’s cool. See you tomorrow.” He lifted one hand in a wave and shut the door behind him.
In the silence that followed, I looked around, still a little stunned, then turned to Roger. “Remind me again how we got here?”
“I don’t know,” he said with a yawn. “I think you invited him to dinner.” He headed up the stairs, and I followed.
I grabbed my suitcase from where it had been left on the landing and gestured to the room closest to me. “I’ll take this one?”
“Sounds good,” Roger said, yawning again. He slung his duffel bag over his shoulder and headed for the bedroom a little ways down the hall. “I’m spent. ’Night, Hillary.”
I smiled at that. “’Night, Edmund.” I watched him disappear into his room and then headed for my own. Roger might have been exhausted—driving all day probably had something to do with it—but I was feeling strangely restless. I changed into gray sweat-pants with
COLORADO COLLEGE
printed in blue on one leg, and a navy tank top, marveling at how even Bronwyn’s loungewear was nicer than anything of mine. I headed downstairs, figuring that maybe I would go online, or watch the flat-screen, or make some popcorn. But when I saw the moonlight flooding in through the windows, I knew the only place I wanted to be was outside.
I stepped barefoot out into the still warm night and sat on the porch steps. I leaned back on my hands and looked up. The only light was coming from inside the house. There were no streetlights or city lights visible, and as a result, the stars just took over the sky. There was a riot of them, incredibly clear and seemingly closer than usual. The moon was almost full and seemed twice as big as normal. It provided so much light that the path back to the main house was still visible.
As I stared at the stars, I realized that there were always this many of them. It was only when the other lights were removed that I could see what had been there all along.
I don’t know how long I sat there, staring up at the sky, but it must have been a while, because I began to feel my neck developing a crick. As I stretched and stood up, I noticed a pair of headlights rounding the curve in the road, heading toward the guesthouse. As the car got closer, I saw it was an open Jeep painted white, with Lucien in the driver’s seat. He was steering with one hand, the other arm thrown over the back of the bench seat next to him. The Jeep drove past the guesthouse, then screeched to a stop and reversed until the car was in front of me.
“Hey,” he said, his expression surprised. Then he smiled at me. “Want to go for a ride?”
I looked at him, and the car idling. My first instinct was to say no. It was late, we were going to have to get up early, I wasn’t wearing a bra, and I didn’t have any shoes on. But I hesitated for only a second before heading down the stairs. Maybe this was a chance to find out where my sense of adventure was. “Sure,” I said. I pulled open the passenger door and climbed in. “Let’s go.”
I said, blue moon of Kentucky, keep on shining.
—Elvis Presley
We bounced along the road in silence. The Jeep was certainly bumpier than a car, and I held tightly to the roll bar above my head. There was something great, though, about being in an open-air vehicle and seeing all those stars above us as we moved along underneath them.
“Couldn’t sleep?” I asked after a moment.
“Nah,” he said. He rested the hand that wasn’t on the wheel on the roll bar. He seemed to drive exclusively with one hand, but was totally in control of the car. Which wasn’t surprising, since he’d told us at dinner that he’d learned to drive on the property when he was ten. “I don’t know. There’s just something about being in an empty house….”
“I know,” I said automatically. He looked over at me, eyebrows raised in surprise. I thought about backing down, muttering some half-baked explanation and pretending I hadn’t said anything. But I had said something. I took a breath. “I, um, was alone in my house for all of May. So I know what it’s like.”
“For a month?” Lucien asked, and I nodded. “Where was your family?”
The question should have been expected. But it hit me hard, as I had been wondering pretty much the same thing for the past three months. “Well,” I said, looking out at the grounds and not at him, “my brother was …” I hadn’t told anyone that Charlie was in rehab, sticking to my mother’s story. My mother had never even said the word aloud to me, always just calling it “the facility.” “He went to North Carolina,” I said, hoping Lucien wouldn’t ask why and forcing myself to keep going. Like the sharks that died when they stopped swimming, I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep talking if I stopped to hear what I was saying. “And my mother had to go to Connecticut to get our new house set up. And my father … my father died.” I pressed my lips together hard after saying that, feeling my chin trembling after just saying the word.
“I am so sorry,” Lucien said. And like before, he seemed to really mean what he said.
“Thank you,” I said, meaning that, too. “I’m just trying to …”
“Get through it?”
“Something like that,” I said, and we drove on in silence. “It was a car accident,” I added after a moment, just so Lucien wouldn’t ask and the
how
wouldn’t hang between us.