The whole place was a circus.
Middleton had been excited at first when the JetVan had driven through the old stone gates and past the rows and rows of grapevines. The new vines were still being trained to the guide wires that ran the length of each row. Once past them, the rows of mature vines stretched out for acres and acres. The Sonoma vineyard had been producing quality grapes since the 1940s. It had been in the same family since that time, and Middleton had simply thrown money at them until they’d cried uncle.
Middleton rarely drank wine, but the idea of a vineyard appealed to him. It brought an old-world vibe to his life that balanced out all that gleaming Silicon Valley high tech.
The JetVan had then driven by the barn and the outbuildings and the main house that had come with the property. The house was done in a Californian mission style, a handsome five-thousand-square-foot structure, and had been refurbished for the family who would oversee the vineyard operations. Middleton himself had little interest in getting dirty or fooling with the minutiae involved in running a vineyard and winery.
They’d kept driving, the road now clearly new construction, back into the heretofore undeveloped part of the property to the plot of land overlooking the small lake. Middleton had picked the spot himself and hadn’t been back since. The eagerness to see his finished home was a palpable thing filling up his chest.
But then they’d come through the wooded area into the clearing and saw the circus, moving trucks stuck in a half-flooded yard, dozens of people milling around, talking in little groups. Workers went back and forth with wheelbarrows. Other workers leaned on shovels, watching. None of this random activity seemed coordinated or useful.
The JetVan parked off to the side, and the driver came around to slide open the door for Middleton and Meredith.
“I thought they’d be finished.” Middleton said it sort of breathlessly as he stepped out of the van, as if he found the spectacle fatiguing and intrusive.
“Just hang back,” Meredith told him. “I’ll find out what’s happening.”
She stepped out of the van, her shoe squishing into the wet ground. “Maybe a leak or something? Damn, okay. Don’t worry. I’ve got this.”
Meredith headed for the crowd, game face set in stone. Middleton didn’t hang back, followed after her more slowly, each step spongy and wet. Each step also brought a growing sense of dread, but he pressed on doggedly.
He didn’t really care about wet shoes. Okay, he cared a little. But he was looking past the confused throng of people at his new house beyond.
It was beautiful. Naturally he’d seen pictures as the construction had progressed, a chunk here and there, but it was different seeing it like this. It was real and right there in front of him.
Gleaming white stone, every angle so sharp you could shave with it. Wide windows stretched along most of the external surface, but they were currently covered by highly polished accordion shutters. A simple command would open or shut them. A set of metal double doors ten feet high guarded the entrance. From above, the house looked like a huge circle, a central hub from which radiated three large wings. The house was a single story except for one area perched atop the center of the hub, accessible by elevator or a narrow spiral staircase. It sat up there like a dome hunched up slightly from the rest of the building, round windows like portholes circling the entirety of it. Francis had deliberately avoided using the words bridge of a starship when talking to the architects. People already thought him eccentric enough. It would be his personal office, his private inner sanctum. But it would also be more than that. It would be the command center from which he would take on the world.
Middleton walked toward the house. A home. His home. It was almost as if he floated, mesmerized. The world went mute, faded into the background. His new home glowed in the light of the setting sun. His own personal sanctuary.
“Hey, you Middleton?”
The world came tumbling back down on top of him.
Middleton blinked, turned to see a big man huffing toward him, sweaty T-shirt, threadbare jeans. A ball cap that said BRUINS. Meredith’s head snapped around, watching the guy with a blend of alarm and annoyance as he approached Middleton. Part of Meredith’s job was to be a buffer between Middleton and the myriad of people clamoring for a piece of his limited schedule.
“I’m Aaron Middleton,” he admitted, wishing briefly he could be someone else.
“Look, the guy in charge said to only unload a few rooms, but that doesn’t make any sense.”
“It doesn’t?”
The guy shrugged. “No point in getting the trucks unstuck just to come back in the morning and get them stuck again.”
“Stuck?” Middleton looked the trucks. The main effort to get them unstuck consisted of men looking down at the tires and shaking their heads.
Meredith was there suddenly, tying to subtly maneuver herself in between the guy and Middleton. “Hi there. Hello. I’m sorry, but we’ve just arrived, and we’re just trying to get a handle on things. You are?”
“Ray.”
“Hi, Ray, I’m Meredith. Just give us a minute to assess the situation, will you?”
“Okay, but we’re burning daylight,” Ray said. “Sooner we get started, sooner we finish.”
“Don’t listen to him!” someone shouted.
All three heads turned to see another man running at them, arms waving.
Ray groaned. “This guy again.”
“You’ve already done enough damage!” The newcomer was a stick figure of a man with sharp tanned features; he wore work khakis and a wide straw gardener’s hat.
“Hey, man, get off my ass,” Ray said. “The guy said to back the trucks up to the house, so we did.”
“Excuse me. Hello. Me again.” Meredith smiled tightly, attempting to gain control of the conversation. “One at a time, okay? Who are you?”
“Mason. I’m the assistant groundskeeper, and this idiot backed over the main waterline for the sprinkler system.”
“The guy told me to back the trucks up,” Ray repeated.
“The guy?” Meredith asked.
“You know.” Roy waved back at the chaos behind him. “The guy.”
“Fussy, slender, organized fellow with nerd glasses?” Meredith said. “Dressed like a Brooks Brothers mannequin?”
“There you go.”
“Fantastic,” Meredith said. “Pete Levin. That’s the guy we need as fast as possible so we can straighten everything out, okay? So find him and—”
“Why were the sprinkler lines above ground?”
Middleton instantly regretted asking the question. The attention shifted from Meredith to him, all eyes like hot lasers. All of them talked at once, Ray and the groundskeeper each telling their versions of the story, Meredith trying to regain control.
There had apparently been a problem with a permit or something, and they’d had to dig up the pipes, and the moving trucks had backed over one of them and now the water was gushing nonstop, and they’d sent for the head groundskeeper, who had the only key to the maintenance shed with the water shutoff valve. Another woman—middle-aged, fashionable, carrying her shoes and splashing as she ran—complained loudly that the movers were dragging mud across tens of thousands of dollars of tile and carpet.
Ray shouted over everyone else at Middleton. “You’re the boss, right? Just tell them to let us unload!”
“No!” The assistant groundskeeper was vehement.
Middleton said, “Uh…”
He felt dizzy, tried to shrink and disappear behind Meredith. Why were they all talking at the same time? What did they expect him to do? It had been nearly a year since he’d had a full-blown attack, had even taken himself off the medication. If these people could all just slow down and calmly explain one at a time, then maybe he could—
He found it hard to breathe. Why was it suddenly so hot? He loosened his tie, trying to make sense of the babble, the voices blending into a muffled drone. Sweat poured down his back and behind his ears.
“Pete!” Meredith waved frantically. “Over here. Thank God.”
Middleton focused, saw the man dart through the crowd, rushing toward them. His hair was slightly mussed—which, for Pete Levin, was a sign of the apocalypse.
He arrived, panting, holding up his iPhone. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Middleton. I wanted to call immediately, of course, but my phone died. There was a problem with the impact study on the land, and they made us dig up the sprinkler pipes—”
“Pete.” Meredith spoke the single syllable with such effortless command, it startled Levin.
His eyes shifted from Middleton to her. “Meredith?”
“I need you to focus, okay?”
The briefest pause. “Of course.”
She kept her eyes on Levin but reached back to take Middleton’s hand. She gave it a quick squeeze. Relief flooded him.
“Get somebody to bring in some planking and lay down a path to the front door,” she told Levin. “Bring in a bed and some chairs, just enough to get through the night. If we can’t move the trucks, then arrange transport for the movers. They can come back in the morning. Contact a cleaning crew and have them stand by. Maybe we’ll need them tonight, maybe in the morning. But they need to be ready. All the rest of this”—she gestured at the flooded yard, the pipes, the throng of people—“get it fixed. Spend money. Make it happen.”
Middleton had been listening to Meredith take charge of the situation, and then there were simply a few missing seconds.
Middleton realized he’d lost track of his surroundings. He drifted through the moment in time, dazed, as if the moment had been lifted from the flow of time and set on a high shelf. His feet were wet and cold. He looked down, saw the water over his ankles. He was gently being pulled along the walkway to the front door of his new home.
Meredith smiled back at him. “It’s okay. Come on.” Her voice sounded like it came from the bottom of a deep well.
He turned his head slowly, looking around dreamily, and caught sight of a small block building the size of a cottage. It was surrounded by new hedges, almost as if the hedges were meant to hide the building, or would eventually when the hedges filled out. He didn’t remember that building from the original designs.
A door opening and closing. The outside racket muffled to almost nothing.
Deep breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth.
The foyer had been designed to make a man feel small. The ceiling vaulted high above them, a gleaming modern chandelier overhead, lengths of metal crisscrossing at odd angles and brilliant globes. Wide hallways led off in three directions toward the three different wings of the dwelling.
Middleton blew out another long sigh and slowly sank into a sitting position on the cold tile floor. His new house felt immense around him. There was a strange reverence, almost like it was some weird temple. Everything was white and futuristic and sterile.
Meredith’s soft fingertips on his back. “Welcome home.”