Like a scolded child, I leave my apartment and run to the rooftop. It’s not yet noon, but dark clouds have moved in to blanket the city. The wind is rowdy today—my sweater ripples around me, and the legs of my jeans snap like sails in a gale. Lights glimmer from dark windows as my neighbors resist the premature gloom.
With my hands in my pockets, I walk around the roof and survey the city. The neighborhood looks vastly different in daylight—the buildings are not black and gray, but shades of beige and cream and white.
It feels good to stretch my legs and walk, though I can’t quite believe I’ve chosen to come up here. I draw a deep breath and press my hand to my heart, then smile when I find it beating in a regular rhythm. I quicken my pace, exulting in this small but satisfying victory. Somehow I have enlarged the boundaries of my safe place, and that is one heck of a baby step.
A flock of geese cuts through the clouds, heading southward in a perfect V. It’s been so long since I’ve observed anything other than insect life that I stop walking and stare, moved beyond words by their grace and beauty. They fly in perfect rhythm, gliding and stroking to music only they can hear.
Something in me wants to shed my flesh and join them, like the doomed brothers of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Wild Swans. If I could fly away from this place . . . surely things would be easier.
My gaze lowers to the concrete and glass towers around me. My life is not a fairy tale, nor is it as extraordinary as the heroine’s in my father’s novel. Mine is a simple life, hemmed in by fear and the good intentions of those who love me.
I am growing weary of Clara’s interference, but what if she’s right about my father not wanting to see me? Why am I so curious about a man who has never written me a single letter? While Mother lived, I hardly ever thought of him. Uncle Charley was always pleased to serve as my escort when I needed a father figure. After he died, Mother was always able to convince a friend’s son to step in on those rare social occasions when I needed to promenade on someone’s arm. Truthfully, I don’t suppose I’ve ever missed having a father, because I never knew what a father was supposed to do.
Still . . . something in me yearns to know the man whose image I bear. I have studied his photograph on the cover of Shadowed Sanctuary, and I think I can see his eyes in mine. And despite what Clara said, I don’t think a man would part with a million dollars unless motivated by some sort of honest feeling. And he named me as an heir to so many of his copyrights—an act that could mean more than his monetary endowment. I’m no expert about copyright law, but I know he is entrusting me with the fruits of his creativity, allowing me to control and reap benefits from his work. With that responsibility comes the power to prevent his works from ever being published again . . . or ensure that they are published throughout the world.
I lower my head into my hands as all my loneliness and confusion meld together in one upsurge of insatiable yearning. Can’t Clara understand why I want to know him? I may have been dreaming, but I think I’ve heard his voice . . . and I need to believe he loves me. Nothing Clara can say will ever shake me from that need.
Theodore Norquest is my father. And I’ve been obsessed with learning about him because time is growing short and an ocean stands between us.
And life is uncertain.
The wind tugs at my hair. I look up to see the bruised and swollen sky bulging with saturated clouds. Soon it will rain, and I will have to go inside without . . . what?
Why have I come up here? Because I need a place to entertain thoughts I could never consider in my mother’s apartment. I need the freedom to admit that I want to learn about my father. I’m not sure I’m ready to meet him, and I’m not planning a trip to Europe—
Or am I?
A series of possibilities opens before me like the pages of a book. I could contact him . . . on the pretext of claiming my trust fund. He set the stipulations; he probably expects me to reach out. He may think I’m desperate for money, so if I write him, I’ll tell him I intend to donate my trust fund to a charity. I’ll let him know that Mother, who did her best to meet my emotional needs, has also met my financial needs. I can live a perfectly content life without him.
Yet I can’t deny how desperately I want to know him. Though I’ve never experienced the pain of unrequited love, I’ve read about it in books and I have to be feeling something similar. I feel empty, almost nauseous with unsatisfied hunger, and nothing but knowledge of my father can fill the empty place in my heart . . .
My wandering gaze slides across the penthouse atop the building across the street. Lights illuminate the glass house, and I am startled to see movement—the woman walking before the bedroom window. Though it is nearly noon, a robe of purple silk shimmers beneath the cascade of her long hair. She sinks to the edge of her wide bed, sets a stemmed goblet upon the nightstand, then folds her hands and lowers her head.
Is she praying?
I can’t tear my eyes away from the tableau. An inner voice tells me I shouldn’t watch—I am invading this woman’s privacy—but another voice whispers that people who value their privacy shouldn’t live behind transparent walls and ceilings.
She lifts her head and swipes at her cheek with the back of her hand—she is not praying, then, but weeping. I take a wincing breath as the silent movie I am watching shifts from drama to tragedy. Perhaps she is merely gathering her thoughts—no, her head falls again and her shoulders slump in the universal body language of sorrow. I stare, hearing only the sound of my own quickened breaths, until she lifts her head and plucks a tissue from a box to dab at the hollows beneath her eyes.
Her motions are deliberate and careful, probably to protect her makeup. Why? Can she be expecting a client?
I shiver and rub my hands over my arms as the penthouse princess moves to the dressing table, where she pats powder on her nose. Then she brushes her hair and tosses what looks like a practice smile at the mirror. She lowers her hairbrush and hesitates for a moment, then rises and moves to the living room.
She’s going to answer the door. She’s going to continue in the lifestyle that makes her miserable.
I close my eyes as a blush burns my cheek. What am I doing? Am I so desperate for experience that I must siphon it from strangers?
When I open my eyes again, I restrain my gaze to the rooftop. I turn and walk across the pebble-sprinkled tarpaper, taking note of the pots with their skeletal trees, the weathered and rusty chaise longue, the empty paint cans. A pair of pigeons squat near the dilapidated chair while a flock of sparrows fly overhead, their shadows dotting the rooftop at my feet.
I know she weeps.
The voice comes from out of nowhere, startling me with its clarity. It is the voice I heard in my dream, the voice that spoke to me here a few nights ago. The voice has presence enough to startle the pigeons and the sparrows overhead. The flock splinters apart and flutters downward, falling from the sky like shards of a shattered vase. I whirl around and look toward the door, almost certain the building superintendent has crept up behind me, but I am alone on the roof.
I look around, my frustration rising. The first time I heard the voice, I was convinced I was hearing my father. In the deep darkness of my despair, it was easy to believe he had found a way to reach across time and space to assure me of his love.
But this is daylight; this is real. Traffic jounces through the streets below; crowds of pedestrians clog the sidewalks. So what I’ve just heard has to be broadcast noise coming from an open window somewhere in the building.
I listen, half expecting to catch other voices, but I hear nothing but the wind’s whistle and the soft flutter of pigeon wings as the roosting pair flap their way back to their nest.
Despite the cold, a single drop of sweat trickles down my spine and runs to the hollow of my back. I rub my hands over my arms and walk toward the street, hoping to glimpse an open window across the way, perhaps some apartment with an overzealous heating system.
I see the woman in the penthouse. She is standing alone at her window, her eyes wide and expressionless as she stares at . . . nothing. Her guest, if she had one, has gone.
I know she weeps—could the voice have been referring to her? If by some miracle someone did intend to speak to me, how am I supposed to help a weeping woman I don’t even know? I can’t help her. I can’t go to her apartment. She lives across the street, but she might as well live in Europe . . . or London.
I shiver in the thickening darkness, then shake my head. I must have been hearing things. After I saw the woman crying, through some combination of exhaustion, nerves, and the Halcion still in my system, my subconscious concocted another voice. If Clara or Philip had been standing here, they wouldn’t have heard anything.
But the birds heard. Even the sparrows fifty feet away.
No. Something else spooked the sparrows, some movement or sound I didn’t notice. The pigeons startled because I flinched.
I must be more on edge than I realize.
One rock of truth is visible in this sea of confusion, and I grip it with both hands: I must stop taking my mother’s pills.