Chapter 13: The Study

Miles's POV

Clara came out of the Harbor Inn after fifty minutes with her phone in her fist.

She got into the car and shut the door.

She told me what her mother had said in one flat sentence, and then she looked out the windshield and waited.

"Next door to your father," I said.

"Yes."

"There are two men in that house."

"I know how many men are in that house, Miles."

I turned the key.

I did not drive to the Doyles' street.

I drove to my own.

The gate at number sixteen was open, and the gravel was raked.

I had grown up on that gravel, being told not to run on it.

"Stay here," I said.

"No."

"Clara."

"You told me once I never came in the front door." She unbuckled her belt. "I'd like to see what it looks like."

I did not argue.

My mother opened the door herself.

She looked at my face, and then at Clara beside me, and she stepped back without a word and let us in.

My father was in his study with the lamp on, reading a file, with his glasses pushed up on his forehead.

He did not stand.

"I told you what happens if you come back through that door."

"I'm not here for a meal," I said.

"Lydia has run away," I said. "She left a note on Tom Doyle's pillow. She's asking not to be found by you."

He turned a page.

"She's an unwell young woman. She will be looked after."

"By whom?"

"By people who are paid to."

"You've been paying her rent," Clara said.

It was the first thing she had said in that house in seven years.

My father looked up at her over the file.

"The foundation pays a stipend to every employee of the gallery it funds. That's what a stipend is."

"She told her mother a man told her what to say," Clara said. "She said he lives next door to my father."

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