Taire sometimes tried to count the meals to see how long Father kept her in the dark room, but she always lost count after two weeks. Every time he sent her there, it felt like forever.
Father never spoke of the time she spent there, and the servants pretended like the dark room didn’t exist. When Taire was sent there, it was like she didn’t exist. Sometimes, after she had been locked in for a while, she wondered if they would ever forget about her. Every food tray was a relief, something that brought her one meal closer to freedom.
Then came the wonderful day when the door would be unlocked, and her nanny would take her to the golden room, where she would give her a long bath, and wash her hair, and dress her in her prettiest clothes. It took some time for Taire’s eyes to adjust to the light, and she was often stiff and sore from sleeping on the hard floor of the dark room. But the bath helped, and once her eyes adjusted to the light, she felt very peaceful.
Before her nanny took her down to the dining room, she would always tell her the same thing: Show your father you can be good this time. And Taire would be very good, for days and weeks and months, even when the doctors came, before freedom made her forget again and she had to stay in the dark room again.
Taire understood why she needed to be punished—Father wanted her to have time to think and remember how much he did for her, so she would control herself—but the last time she did something wrong everything had changed. She still wasn’t sure what her mistake was, because she had been out of the dark room for only a few weeks, and she had been thinking all the time about what she was doing and not losing control. Then Father had come to her, had walked right into the golden room where they were always happy together, but he had shouted at her. Taire had never before seen her father so angry. She had never once heard him raise his voice to her or anyone.
“You worthless, stupid girl. Get up.” When Taire had scrambled to her feet, Father had grabbed the clothes her nanny had laid out for her and flung them at her. “What are you waiting for? Get dressed.”
In her terror she had fumbled, unable to make the buttons go in the holes, but all Father had done was drag her from the room with her clothes hanging open. One of his men stood waiting in the hall, and Father had pushed Taire at him.
“Take her,” Father said, his voice harsh. “I don’t care what you do, just get rid of her.”
Taire had cried out, fighting the man’s grip on her arms as she pleaded to stay. “Father, what did I do? Father, please, don’t send me away. I’ll be good.”
He had strode away without looking back, and the man had taken her down the back stairs.
“Don’t you give me any shit, kid,” he said when she’d tried to pull free in the garage. He’d dragged her over to one of Father’s cars, the one the men used at night.
Taire didn’t realize he meant to put her inside until he opened the door. “I can’t go with you.” She’d never left the house. She wasn’t allowed to, not even on the window balconies. “Let me go.”
“We’re gonna take a little ride out to the woods,” the man said. “You’ll like it. It’s real pretty out there. You might see some deer.” Then he licked his lips and stared at her front. “So be nice.”
As he tried to push her into the car, his jacket fell open and Taire saw the holster and gun he wore. He was one of Father’s guards. The only people they took away never came back.
Taire didn’t want to think about what she had done then. She hadn’t meant to; she hadn’t even been thinking about it. She’d been a good girl and controlled it because that was the biggest mistake, something Father told her she could never do again or she would have to leave him forever.
When it stopped—when she stopped—she looked down and saw the dirt and blood all over her clothes. The man lay across the garage his body all wrong, his face smashed flat. Father’s car was ruined, too.
She’d done this. All of this.
Taire heard men shouting on the other side of the door leading into the house, and backed away into the door leading to the street outside. She’d pressed the button to make it go up, but it was bent in the middle and stopped halfway, and she’d had to crawl under it.
She didn’t remember much after that. She’d run from Father’s house, following the sidewalks and banging into people. They’d yelled at her, and one woman had hit Taire with her purse. She hadn’t stopped until she reached the big park and found a place to hide in the bushes. She’d crawled into them and stayed there for a long, long time.
Taire had never tried to go back alone. She knew what she had done was a terrible thing, and if she tried to see Father by herself he would send her away, or maybe even put her in the dark room and forget about her. She had to make up for what she had done to the man and his car, and the only way she knew was to bring him what he wanted most in the world.
He didn’t think she knew anything about the time before she had come to live with him, but she had found the hidden journal when she had been playing in the golden room. She’d read it, every page of it, and learned all about the secrets he had been keeping. She’d always sensed she wasn’t the first one in his heart, but the journal told her exactly who was. All she had to do was give back to Father what he had lost.
His beloved one.
Taire held the book against her heart, hugging it like a bandage over the pain throbbing inside. His beloved one was the key to everything, and bringing her back was the only way for Taire to go home. When she did, then Father would be happy again. He’d know how much Taire loved him, and he would let her stay, and they would be a family. No one else could do this for him except Taire, because even Father didn’t know what his beloved one looked like now.
Only Taire did.
Rowan got back to the restaurant an hour before opening, and hauled her purchases upstairs to put them away. Along with the books she’d bought at Stallworth’s, she’d picked up some boxes of cereal, milk, eggs, bananas, some multigrain bread and a huge jar of peanut butter with which to make sandwiches. She also found some nutritional protein bars she liked that didn’t taste like ground-up vitamins; they’d come in handy when she took her mid-shift break.
I’d better not let Dansant see the peanut butter, or he might fire me.
She showered, changed, and sat down to watch the evening news for as long as she could stay awake, which was about five minutes’ worth. Sometime after midnight she woke to an infomercial for a set of vegetable peelers and shut it off. Her stomach persuaded her to have a banana before she went to bed, and then it wanted a peanut butter sandwich. By the time Rowan had quieted the beast she was wide-awake.
This is what I get for working nights.
She started reading one of her new books, a study on the blood rituals of ancient South American cultures. The author, an anthropologist who had spent several years working at a number of archaeological sites, had photographed a series of unusual carvings at one ancient temple that seemed to indicate vampirism had been introduced to one society about the time the Europeans began arriving in the New World. Rowan tried to focus, but even the ghastly description of how high priests had once drunk blood from still-beating hearts they had carved out of the chests of living victims couldn’t hold her attention.
Finally she slammed the book shut and shoved it away. Meriden had really done a number on her head, and pretending like he hadn’t was stupid.
What did I say that pissed him off? Something about how fast he was moving. Maybe he’d expected her to fall all over him instead. She’d spent the better part of the day with him and the man was still a complete question mark.
She heard footsteps climbing the stairs, and got up and walked over to the door to listen. Keys jangled, a lock turned, and the door across from hers opened and closed.
So he was home for the night. She opened her door to glance downstairs, and saw that the kitchen was empty and dark. Everyone had left, and it was just her and her unfriendly neighbor.
He’s probably tired, she thought as she looked at his door. He’ll want to shower and go to bed, and I should let him. Whatever happened in the park is his problem, not mine.
She was tiptoeing around him again, this time in her head.
Rowan stepped out onto the landing, and as soon as she closed her door Meriden’s opened. He didn’t come out, but propped an arm against the frame and looked at her. If he’d worn a sign around his neck, Rowan imagined it would have read, ABANDON HOPE, ALL YE WHO FUCK WITH ME.
“SWAT is on their way,” she said casually, “but they’ll probably get hung up in the late traffic over in the theater district.”
He turned away from her and went back inside his apartment. He didn’t bother to close the door, however, and Rowan considered that the equivalent of an invitation to follow him.
Meriden’s apartment was slightly larger than hers, but her view was better. From the look of the interior, which was half-Spartan, half-machine-shop-leftovers, he’d had the Army Corps of Engineers in to decorate the place. But the surfaces were clean and uncluttered, and there was the same sort of defined order she’d noticed at his garage.
He watched her look. “Curiosity satisfied?”
“Totally.” She was going to burn in hell for all the lies she told. “You just get off work?”
“Yeah.” He opened the fridge, took out two beers, and handed her one. “Sit down.”
Her choices were the couch, which looked too comfortable, and a loveseat, which she didn’t want to try out at all. She pulled out one of the chairs of his dining set, which looked like he’d stolen it from a hunting lodge, turned it around, and straddled the red-and-black plaid cushion.
Meriden didn’t sit. He leaned, this time with his back against the kitchen counter.
Rowan figured she had the time it would take her to drink the beer before he kicked her out, which might be enough. “Today, in the park, what did I say to piss you off?”
He shook his head, drank a little, and looked at a crack in the floor tile.