Permanent. Below the surface, the grief was still present. The absence where Marion had been wasn't going anywhere. But whatever softness I'd carried toward my son, whatever I'd believed that connection still was had come apart completely. Something different moved in to fill that space.
Cold and still and certain. Not the kind of fury that explodes and destroys, the kind that goes quiet and makes plans. If they had decided I was an addled, gutted old man, then that was the performance I'd deliver. I'd commit to it so thoroughly they'd never once wonder if they'd read me wrong. It started with small things.
I'd head in the direction of the bathroom and then drift back, blinking like the errand had already escaped me. I'd look straight at Ingrid and let her name slip away surface Marion's instead. Marion is that you? I'd say my eyes going loose and vacant. She'd cut a look toward Declan, pitching her voice low enough to carry.
He's deteriorating. He actually thinks I'm her. It gives me the creeps. At the same time, I'd send a glass of water off the counter and then sit watching the puddle expand across the floor as though the behavior of liquid was entirely new information. I'd plant myself in front of a television, locked on static, and remain there for hours, expression empty, focused on absolutely nothing.
Declan watched me do it. In the beginning, his doubt was visible, written plainly in his face. He'd pass his hand across my field of vision. The way a physician checks whether someone still responds, still processes. Dad, you still with me?
I'd offer him a smile with no feeling behind it and wander off into some story about the weather in Roanoke from 20 odd years back. Over time, it took hold. Conversations stopped being lowered when I entered the room. Their weariness evaporated. As far as they were concerned, Walter Dunore, the engineer, the builder, had vacated the premises.
Whatever moved through their penthouse now was an inconvenience, a fixture, something that had served its purpose and been kept past its useful date. The sloppiness followed as a matter of course. Papers left spread open laptop screens turned toward me without a thought their business discussed at full volume while I sat 5 feet away and made a theater of struggling with a zipper pull. They believed they were watching a man come apart in real time. They were watching a man record everything.
Every time they smirked at something I'd supposedly fumbled. I was filing away another access code. Every knowing look they exchanged over my so-called confusion was one more name, one more date, one more figure added to a mind that had not faltered once. A mind that was in fact growing more precise by the day. I was letting their arrogance ripen until it turned.
It always turns. Pride makes sure of it. When they finally gave me my opening, I meant to be exactly where I needed to be with everything in hand. These nights weren't grief anymore. They were work hours.
The old engineer had found a new set of blueprints, and the structure he was designing was justice. The clock beside the bed read 2:14 a.m. Those red digits hung in the darkness of my windowless room like an indictment. My chest felt stale. My throat scraped raw, and the ceiling above me was one I could have described from memory.
Trying to map out whatever shape my future could still take, I realized I was thirsty. I eased myself upright with care. The mattress groaned beneath me, and I went still, immediately, listening for any movement from further down the hall. Nothing. The penthouse held only the dim, formless hum of the city, finding its way in through the ventilation.