Another of Daniel’s brilliant ideas, and how well has this one worked out? Justin’s a wreck, you’re six feet deep in denial, I’m drinking like my father, Lexie almost died, and most of the time we all hate one another’s guts. All because of this fucking house.”
Abby’s head came up and she stared at him. “That’s not Daniel’s fault. He just wanted-”
“Wanted what, Abby? What? Why do you think he gave us all shares in the house to start with?”
“Because,” Abby said, low and dangerous, “he cares about us. Because, right or wrong, he figured this was the best way to make sure all five of us were happy.”
I expected Rafe to laugh out loud at that, too, but he didn’t. “You know,” he said after a moment, staring down into his glass, “I thought that too, at first. I really did. That he was doing it because he loved us.” The vicious edge had fallen out of his voice; all that was left was a simple, tired melancholy. “It made me happy, thinking that. There was a time when I would’ve done anything for Daniel. Anything.”
“And then you saw the light,” Abby said. Her voice was hard and brittle, but she couldn’t keep the shake out of it. She was more upset than I’d ever seen her, more upset even than when I’d brought up the note in the jacket. “Someone who gives his best friends most of a seven-figure house is obviously doing it for purely selfish reasons. Paranoid much?”
“I thought about that. I’ve thought about this a lot, the last few weeks. I didn’t want to-God… But I couldn’t help it. Like picking at a scab.” Rafe looked up at Abby, shaking his hair out of his face; the booze was soaking in and his eyes were bloodshot and puffy, as if he’d been crying. “Say we’d all ended up in different colleges, Abby. Say we’d never met. What do you think we’d be doing now?”
“I don’t have the foggiest clue what you’re talking about.”
“We’d be OK, the four of us. Maybe we would’ve had a tough first few months, maybe it would’ve taken us a while to get to know people, but we’d have done it. I know none of us were the outgoing type, but we’d have learned. That’s what people do, in college: they learn to function in the big scary world. By now we’d have friends, social lives-”
“I wouldn’t,” Justin said, quietly and definitely. “I wouldn’t be OK. Not without you guys.”
“Yes you would, Justin. You would. You’d have a boyfriend-you too, Abby. Not just someone who shares a bed with you occasionally, when the day’s been too much to take. A boyfriend. A partner.” He gave me a sad little smile. “You, silly thing, I’m not so sure. But you’d be having a lot of fun, either way.”
“Thanks for sorting out our love lives,” Abby said coldly, “you patronizing prick. The fact that Justin doesn’t have a fella doesn’t make Daniel the Antichrist.”
Rafe didn’t rise to that, and for some reason that frightened me. “No,” he said. “But think about this for a second. If we’d never met, what do you think Daniel would be doing now?”
Abby gave him a blank stare. “Climbing the Matterhorn. Running for office. Living right here. How the hell do I know?”
“Can you see him going to the Freshers’ Ball? Joining college societies? Chatting up some girl in American Poetry class? Seriously, Abby. I’m asking. Can you?”
“I don’t know. It’s all if, Rafe. If doesn’t mean anything. I’ve got no idea what would have happened if everything had gone differently, because I’m not bloody clairvoyant, and neither are you.”
“Maybe not,” Rafe said, “but I know this much. Daniel would never, no matter what, never have learned how to deal with the outside world. I don’t know if he was born this way or if he was dropped on his head as a baby or what, but he’s just not capable of living a normal human life.”
“There’s nothing wrong with Daniel,” Abby said, cold fine syllables like chips of ice splintering. “Nothing.”
“There is, Abby. I love him-yes, I do, I still do-but there’s always been something wrong with him. Always. You have to know that.”
“He’s right,” Justin said, softly. “There has. I never told you, but back when we first met, back in first year-”
“Shut up,” Abby snapped viciously, whirling on him. “You shut your mouth. What makes you any different? If Daniel’s fucked up, then you’re just as fucked up as he is, and you, Rafe-”
“No,” Rafe said. He stared down at his finger tracing patterns in the condensation on his glass. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. The rest of us-when we want to, we can hold conversations with other people, for God’s sake. I picked up a girl, the other night. Your tutorial brats love you. Justin flirts with that blond guy who works in the library-you do, Justin, I’ve seen you; Lexie had a laugh with the people in that awful cafe. We can connect with the rest of the world, if we put in the effort. But Daniel… There are only four people on the planet who don’t think he’s a full-on freak show, and all four of them are in this room. We’d have been OK without him, one way or another, but he wouldn’t have been OK without us. If it weren’t for us, Daniel would be lonelier than God.”
“So?” Abby demanded, after a long second. “So what?”
“So,” Rafe said, “if you ask me, that’s why he gave us shares in the house. Not to make our lives all sunshiny. To have company, here in his private universe. To keep us, for good.”
“You,” Abby said. She was breathless. “You nasty-minded little piece of work. Where you get the sheer brass neck-”
“It was never us he was protecting, Abby. Never. It was this: his own ready-made little world. Tell me this: why did you ride in to the cop shop with Daniel, this morning? Why didn’t you want him to be alone with Lexie?”
“I didn’t want to be anywhere near you. The way you’ve been acting, you make me sick-”
“Bullshit. What do you think he was going to do to Lexie, if she even hinted that she might still sell up, or talk to the cops? You keep saying I could have told her any time, but what do you think Daniel would have done to me, if he thought I was going to step out of line? He had a plan, Abby. He told me he had a plan to cover all eventualities. What the hell do you think his plan was?”
Justin gasped, a terrified, childlike sound. The light in the room had changed; the air had tilted, pressure shifting, all those little eddies gathering themselves together and whirling around some huge focal point.
Daniel filled the doorway, tall and unmoving, hands in the pockets of his long dark coat. “All I ever wanted,” he said quietly, “was here in this house.”
24
'Daniel,” Abby said, and I saw her whole body loosen with relief. 'Thank God.”
Rafe eased back, slowly, on the sofa. 'Cute entrance,” he said coldly. 'How long have you been listening at the door?”
Daniel didn’t move. “What have you told her?”
“She was remembering anyway,” Justin said. His voice was shaking. “Didn’t you hear? In the police station? If we didn’t tell her the rest, she was going to ring them and-”
“Ah,” Daniel said. His eyes went to me, one small expressionless flick, and then away again. “I should have guessed. How much did you tell her?”
“She was upset, Daniel,” said Abby. “Stuff was coming back to her, she was having a hard time dealing with it, she needed to know. We told her what happened. Not who… you know. Did it. But the rest.”
“It was a highly educational conversation,” Rafe said. “All round.”
Daniel took this in with a brief nod. “All right,” he said. “Here’s what we’re going to do. Everyone’s emotions are running high”-Rafe rolled his eyes and made a disgusted noise; Daniel ignored him-“and I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by continuing this discussion right now. Let’s leave it for a few days, really leave it, while the dust settles and we take in what’s happened. Then we can talk about it again.”
Once I and my mike were out of the house. Before I could say anything, Rafe asked, “Why?” Something in the roll of his head, the slow lift of his eyelids, as he turned to stare at Daniel: it hit me, with a vague shapeless warning, just how drunk he was.
I saw Daniel realize the same thing. “If you’d prefer not to resurrect it,” he said coolly, “believe me, that’s fine with me. I’d be delighted never to have to think about this again.”
'No. Why leave it?”
“I told you. Because I don’t think any of us are in any state to discuss this rationally. It’s been an excruciatingly
