The Arrangement novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: One Bed

Gull Point was a gray-shingled house with a widow's walk.

The lawn ran straight down to the bay, and a boathouse stood at the bottom with a rusted padlock.

Caspar stopped the car at the top of the drive.

He sat with his hands on his knees and looked down the lawn at the boathouse.

"You drive, I'll walk," I said.

"It's your car."

"That's why I'm saying it."

He gave a short breath that was almost a laugh and got out.

The housekeeper met us in the front hall and took Caspar's face in both hands.

She didn't say anything.

She just looked at him for a long moment, and he looked at the floor.

Then she kissed his cheek and picked up my bag like it weighed nothing.

Grandfather's room was at the end of the second floor.

It had a window over the whole bay and a writing desk.

The bed had four carved posts and a mattress the size of a small lifeboat.

There was no sofa.

There was no daybed.

I checked the closet, in case a cot might be hiding there.

"Clause six," Caspar said.

He pulled a quilt off the foot of the bed and spread it on the rug.

"One of us takes the floor."

"The bed has room for six people."

"The contract says nobody sleeps in the other's bed."

"It's one bed. It's the size of a parking space. I could sleep on one edge and you on the other and we wouldn't touch."

"The contract says," he began.

"I know what the contract says. I helped write it."

"Joss."

He said my name gently.

"I'd like to keep my word," he said. "Please."

I let it go.

I took the left side of the bed, and I lay awake on it, and I could hear him breathing on the floor.

Dinner was at seven in a dining room built to seat twenty.

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