I clutched my phone and sprinted back upstairs, through the master bedroom to the walk-in closet, where my suitcase stood tucked and waiting in the corner.
Chapter Three
When I arrived in New York at eighteen, I understood for the first time that there are some places in this world with presence. Watching the landscape change through the window on the train up from the city, I saw the gulf between where I was coming from—a strip-mall suburb in East Texas—and the Hudson Valley, where the wide, open sky didn’t just exist but confronted you. Where the dark Catskills rising in the distance made you feel small and the unrelenting river had a heartbeat, a voice that whispered you might be here now, but it had been here long before and would be long after.
Whitney was only a short train ride up from New York City, but that first time, it felt like entering a new world, one in which my life would truly begin. The day was full of firsts: my first plane ride, first train ride, hell, first time setting foot outside the great state of Texas. Unlike Heller, a Reagan-era boom town whose history was charted only by the slow evolution of fast-food signs, the towns that made up the Hudson Valley were suffused with a past so rich it was nearly tangible. The towns held the former homes or headquarters of George Washington and FDR, Vanderbilts and Rockefellers, sites from the American Revolutionary War. And they thrummed with green beauty—so much that they’d given rise, I’d read, to the first true school of American painters. This, I’d thought, was where the kind of life that made history books happened.
Now, after eight years away, my awareness was finer-tuned. I understood what made the Hudson Valley beautiful, what kept the history pristine, towns quaint, land wild: money. Old money and new. Families with far-reaching Dutch heritages, New York City financiers and real estate tycoons, renowned artists, Hollywood actors—all of them had homes here, lives here. Often second lives, hidden chapters that could unfold in the dark, in a place fewer people were watching.
I drove my rental car down a residential street lined with trees and dappled with sunshine, stifling a yawn. Cross-country flights were exhausting. At this point, I couldn’t remember what I’d packed yesterday. I’d moved through my closet in a fugue state, pulling clothes off hangers and stuffing them in my suitcase. It had seemed critical to pack quickly, to purchase a seat on the next available flight and push myself out the door before Cal called or anything else intervened to change my mind.
Speaking of. I glanced at my phone, to the text I’d sent Cal and his response.
Me: Hey, decided to go to New York for a few days. Wanted to see if my old stomping grounds inspired me. See you when we’re both back.
Calvin: You should have told me! Could’ve had my assistant book your travel. Hope you solve your writer’s block. Call you later.
I’d bought myself a week, max, before Cal was back from his trip to some hedge fund they were looking to buy in Silicon Valley. Given the timeline, I’d have to work fast. I glanced at the bag from the airport gift shop that held my slapdash supplies: a laughably bright-purple notebook from the Lisa Frank line, all they’d had left; a slim packet of pens, thankfully normal; and a portable cell-phone charger. I assumed this was the full battery of things I’d need for an investigation. Jamie Knight would probably shake his head at me.
According to my phone, cutting through this neighborhood was the shortest route to the River Estate, a swanky hotel I’d only dreamed of staying in when I was an undergrad. But I had a whole new lifestyle now, thanks to Cal’s money.
Your money, I corrected, but only out of habit.
Most of the houses were large and set back from the road, hidden behind walls of trees. But up ahead, one of the mansions revealed itself, the first to forgo a privacy gate. I felt my foot lift off the gas, and the car slowed to a stop.
It was the architecture that haunted me. A particular style of Tudor I hadn’t found anywhere else. The roof climbing into vaunted triangles, sharp as knifepoints, stabbing the air. The stone facade covered with a lattice of brown bars, fitting around the house like a cage. The shades in the windows drawn tight, so no one could see in or out. The lawn so wide, so far to run; the bushes so neat, so full of hidden thorns to snag your stockings, to slow you, to hold you down until that dark shadow towered over you and you were reclaimed.