He crossed to the far end of the kitchen near the pantry wall, where a narrow white door sat almost invisible against the plaster. "The type you would walk past a hundred times without registering." Declan swung it open. There you are, he said. Your own private sanctuary, my chest locked.
The room was barely wide enough for a single bed and a dresser placed end to end. No window, no natural light of any kind. A fluorescent tube overhead and four bare walls. The air smelled like something had been cleaned with industrial product a long time ago and never aired out. This was not a wing.
This was the quarters where household staff had once slept between their shifts. A place designed for service, not for living, certainly not for spending whatever years a man has left. I turned back to face Declan. I was certain, absolutely certain that this was a setup for something else. A bad joke about to resolve into the real room.
His face gave me nothing. closed, expressionless. "It's cozy, don't you think," Ingrid's said, materializing in the doorway behind me.
"And right beside the kitchen, you can grab something in the night without waking us." The words I wanted wouldn't come. My throat had shut. Declan, you promised there would be space. A wing, that was the word you used.
There isn't a single window in this room. He exhaled with the slow, practiced impatience I would spend the next several months learning to recognize. Dad, do you have any idea what real estate costs in Houston? Space is a premium here. This is a multi-million dollar apartment.
You have a roof over your head and a bed to sleep in. Don't be ungrateful. Ungrateful. That word hit like something thrown. I had just handed them $18 million, every dollar I had accumulated across a working life, and he was calling me ungrateful for objecting to a lightless box.
I went inside and lowered myself onto the narrow bed. The mattress offered nothing. I set my suitcase on the floor because there was no other place for it. The door clicked shut and that small sound marked something. My new life had officially begun.
Sleep didn't come that first night. I lay in the dark, listening to the refrigerator cycling through the wall, turning over a single unanswerable question. How did I let this happen? Morning brought the first clear look at the shape of things. I came out hoping to put a pot of coffee on.
Ingrid was already at the island working through a bowl of cottage cheese and sliced fruit. She took me in. I was still wearing my bathrobe. "Walter, we have a rule here," she said.
"No sleepwear in the shared areas. We're expecting people later. Go and get dressed." I apologized and went back to change. When I returned in slacks and a collared shirt, Declan was sitting at the counter, one hand extended toward me.