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I would have laid there looking at that crooked knob for the rest of my life.
“You could have asked me,” I say.
“You’d have said no.”
“Maybe!”
“That’s why I didn’t ask.”
Then he saunters up my front steps, cool as you like, holds my own door open for me, and waits.
Inside, my house is not my house.
The hall is the same. The closet with the sticking door is the same, and the scuff on the baseboard from when we moved in is the same.
Everything else is different.
The room looks like somebody fed my secret Pinterest board to a very rich burglar.
The green sectional is low-slung and tufted, upholstered in velvet. Beside it sits a walnut coffee table shaped like a kidney, with tapered legs and one brass-capped drawer.
Against the far wall is a teak credenza with tambour doors that slide into the sides. A smoked-glass lamp rises from it on a curved brass neck, beside an orange ceramic horse. The art above it is geometric: mustard half-moons crossing rust-colored blocks.
Actual framed art. Not Connor’s signed poster from a poker tournament where he placed eighty-fifth out of ninety.
The Eames chair has a molded walnut shell and black leather cushions so buttery I want to apologize before sitting. A starburst clock hangs over the mantel, a wonderwork of slim brass spokes and tiny black diamonds. Even the curtains are new: nubby oatmeal linen floating half an inch above the floor.
It is warm and weirdly mine.
Except I did not choose a single piece of it for myself.
Worse still, it’s not finished. Men I’ve never seen before pass through the hallway carrying boxes and floral arrangements. Another is on his knees behind the TV doing something with the cables. Somebody is running a vacuum upstairs.
I turn in a slow circle. “You refurnished my house?”
“I wanted no traces of them left in it.” He sweeps a hand around the room. “If there’s anything you don’t like, I’ll have it replaced today.”
“I couldn’t possibly—”
“Say the word and it’s on a truck before noon,” he says over me. “Anything. All of it. There’s no discussion, there’s no invoice, and you don’t need a reason.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I just go wandering through. I open a cabinet to see my yellow tea mugs perfectly in place—and possibly polished?—but Connor’s protein shaker collection is gone.
I keep exploring. Every room is just like the cabinet: mine, but altered. Familiar objects remain where they make sense.
His things have vanished as if they never existed.
Upstairs, the bedroom is almost empty. Fresh white paint dries on the wall where the headboard stood. Two men are measuring the window while another rolls up the old carpet.
Kane stops beside me.
I clear my throat. “I haven’t been back here since… since everything happened.”
“How do you feel?”
“I don’t know,” I admit honestly. “Just… strange.”
Kane reaches inside his coat and takes out a rigid black envelope.
