Slow Burn(68)

    “When will I see you again?” she asked.

    “Don’t know,” said Griffin.

    “Griffin, you promised you would keep Dixie and me safe.”

    He stopped moving. “I picked up a phone yesterday. I don’t know how long I’ll have it, but I’ll give you my number. If you need me, you call.”

    “Thank you,” she said.

    He looked at her. “Don’t call unless there’s trouble, okay?”

    “Griffin,” I said. He was being a little harsh with her.

    “You freaked Leigh out,” he said. “I’m not cool with people who hurt her. You got that?”

* * *

    “You really think we’ll be safe here?” I whispered. There was no reason to whisper, but the empty house seemed to demand it.

    “It fits with hiding in plain sight, doesn’t it?” Griffin’s voice was soft as well.

    This Nantucket house belonged to my father. I hadn’t been sure that it wouldn’t have been sold since his death, but it was still sitting empty, and the key was hiding in the place it always had been.

    The spacious living room was furnished, but all the couches and chairs had been covered in white sheets. They squatted like oddly shaped ghosts against the wood floor.

    I tried the light switch. The light came on. “The electricity’s still working,” I said in a regular voice. Somehow, the light meant that I didn’t have to whisper. “I wonder about the water.”

    I scampered into the kitchen, also massive, and tried the faucet. Nothing happened. I wrinkled up my nose.

    “We can probably turn it on,” said Griffin. “I’ll look outside.” He disappeared back out of the house.

    The refrigerator was unplugged and sitting open. There was nothing inside it. I stuck my nose inside to smell. It didn’t smell bad. I plugged it in. It hummed to life immediately, a comforting, civilized sound.

    I began opening the cupboards. There wasn’t much there, but I did find some cans. Crushed tomatoes, chicken noodle soup, corned beef hash. I set the corned beef hash on the counter and hunted down a can opener.

    Griffin came back in. “Try the water now.”

    The faucet sputtered and coughed at first. Then a stream of brownish water came through. Then the water ran clear.

    I grinned. “Awesome.”

    He picked up the can on the counter. “What’s this?”

    “Breakfast,” I said. “It would be better if I had eggs to scramble, but this will have to do.”

    “Sounds great,” he said. “I’m starving.”

    There was a breakfast nook in the corner of the kitchen, just a small table with three wicker chairs. The dining room was bigger, but I’d never eaten in there, even though I used to come here every summer. Griffin settled down in one of the chairs. “So your dad owns this house?”

    I got out a skillet and put it on the stove. Luckily the stove was still plugged in. There was an old can of Pam on top of the stove. I sprayed the skillet and set it on the burner. “Yeah. He never made it out here, though. Or at least, very rarely.”

    “That’s too bad,” said Griffin. “It’s a nice house.”

    “I came,” I said. “My nannies would bring me. And I got to come alone after I was eighteen. Not last year, obviously.”

    “All alone in this big place?” he asked.

    “Well, I used to bring people,” I said. “But it wasn’t that much fun. I always wanted to have an honest-to-God family vacation.”

    He groaned. “Oh, you don’t know what you’re asking, doll.”

    “You don’t like family vacations?”

    “The worst,” he said. “My sister would get on my nerves on the drive down. My mom would scream constantly at the top of her lungs. All I would want to do is get away from them. They wouldn’t let me.”

    “I guess that’s how my dad felt,” I said. “Only I couldn’t stop him from getting away from me.” I used the can opener to open the corned beef hash.

    “I’m sure he wanted to be with you.”