Then the phone buzzed in my hand, and a text from Felicia flashed across my screen.
“SKJii SDOI(*&h ddd Kanye i”
Yeah. She was kind of caught in the moment. Good thing the content didn't matter.
“I'm out,” I told the driver, unnecessarily. “I should be back in, like... an hour? Tops?”
The driver, whose name was Jeff, though I didn't want to use it and seem too familiar, gave me a watery smile and a deferential nod. He was old, his silver hair close-cropped to his head. He looked like an ex-Marine and for a moment I wished I could just stay in this car with him, chat and talk, be normal. But the ache in my chest would have given me away. I nodded back to him, shoved my phone in my hoodie pocket, and let myself out of the car.
Brisk March wind whipped around me, cutting through my old clothes as I strolled down the street, trying to look nonchalant. The hood of my sweatshirt sheltered my face from the eyes of others and the worst of the wind, and before I knew it I was approaching Malcolm's house.
It was weird. I felt as though I were approaching the house of someone recently deceased and I had to fight the impulse to walk on by, to not face the sudden, sharp change in circumstances. I watched my feet eat up the pavement as if they belonged to someone else, and when they mounted the front steps I had to bite the inside of my cheek to force myself to keep going.
I reached the door. It stood before me and I realized it was almost the same color as Malcolm's eyes. Stuffing my hand into my hoodie pocket, I drew out the key, looked at it for a second, then pushed it into the lock, turned it, and opened the door.
It gave way beneath my hand without a sound, and I stepped inside and closed it behind me.
The house was empty. That much was obvious. All of Malcolm's things were gone, cleared out to be given away regardless of worth or sentimental value, and I stood in the foyer feeling more melancholy than I though possible. Yeah, the house had been the repository of a crazy person, but it had been his repository. I'd never asked him why he had all that junk, and now it felt like I never would. He'd go to prison and maybe I'd write to him or visit or whatever, but it wouldn't be the same. We'd never be as open as we had out on the waves of the sea, not unless he proved his innocence.
Slowly I walked around the lower floor. The place looked tiny now that it was empty, the same way a dead body looks small after the soul has vacated the premises, and I had to forcibly remind myself that I was here for a purpose rather than just turn around and leave. I should see if the vase was here. The movers probably wouldn't have taken a pile of broken pottery. It had no worth.
Or it was priceless, I thought, and giggled sadly.
I poked around the ground floor, but found nothing, so I moved to the stairwell and climbed up the steps. The house creaked beneath my feet, groaning like an old man complaining about his tired joints. The second floor was more of the same—beautiful wood, creamy walls. A library, a music room, a long narrow game room. I peered in the closets and looked in the fireplace, but there was nothing. My heart beginning to sink, I mounted the stairs to the third floor.
Here the house became more like a home than a mansion. A honeycomb of bedrooms and bathrooms greeted me, and I started at the front, snooping around, looking in every nook and cranny I could find, but nothing greeted me until I entered what had to be the master bedroom.
It was larger than the rest and emptied out onto a terrace. The cloudy sky outside made it dim and dreary, but there was a door to the master bath that I hadn't been able to access from the hallway. I tromped to it and looked around. The light from the terrace barely made it inside, and the high, tiny windows were stained glass, giving me very little to work with. I sighed and tried the wall switch, but nothing happened. I squinted up in the darkness and saw that all the bulbs had been removed from the room.
Malcolm was a serious weirdo. I wished I didn't like him so much. Opening the door as wide as I could, I took stock.
A shower stall. A toilet closet. A bathtub and a linen closet. Nothing to do but start checking behind all the closed doors. I crossed the white tile and opened the linen closet.
And there, sitting on the shelf, was the vase.
That's the thing. It was actually there. At least, I was pretty sure it was the vase, even though there were several key differences in the vase I found and the vase I had expected to find. For one thing, it wasn't broken. For another, it was so dark in the bathroom that I could barely make it out and it didn't quite look like the vase that I had broken—a weird, random pattern seemed to be painted onto it—but when I reached into the closet, my heart hammering a mile a minute, cool porcelain met my fingers. Then I lifted it, tipping it toward me, and something inside it made a clunk sound.#p#分页标题#e#