Chapter 4: The Gate

Iris did not sleep.

She lay in her childhood bed with the lamp on and read the comments under the clip of her own face.

*Gold digger.*

*She said she was drugged, so who gave her the drug?*

*Poor Philip.*

At two in the morning the gate buzzer rang.

She went to the window and looked down at the security screen on the wall.

Dane Fairweather stood outside the iron gate in the rain with no umbrella, holding a large envelope against his chest.

She opened the bedroom door and found Odette at the top of the stairs in a quilted robe.

The old woman held a fireplace poker in both hands.

"Is it Sylvia's man?" she asked.

"It's the man from the bed."

Odette lowered the poker an inch.

"Do you want him shot?"

"No, Grandma."

"Then I'll wait here with this," Odette said, and sat down on the top step with the poker across her knees.

Iris went down alone.

She did not unlock the gate.

She stopped at the front door, with a chain on it and the porch light between them, and pressed the intercom button.

"Why are you here?"

His voice came through the speaker, rough from the cold.

"The police let me go at midnight. They said I shouldn't leave the city."

"That isn't what I asked."

"I wanted to see if you were safe." A pause. "Then I remembered I'm the last person you want to see."

"Yes," Iris said.

"I'll go."

"Wait."

She did not know why she said it.

She looked at him on the screen, soaked to the skin, standing very still with his arms at his sides.

"You said something to me," she said. "In the room. Last night."

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