dinner.”
Daniel rises, follows dumbly in her wake. Exiting the house, Cristina says out of the side of her mouth, “How did you come from that ?”
Awestruck, he struggles to keep pace down the marble steps of the front porch. “I…”
“What?”
“I think I’m falling in love with you.”
That wide smile springs up, overtaking her face. She reaches for his arm but then pinches it, so hard he jerks back.
“What was that for?”
Already she is two steps ahead again. “So you never forget.”
* * *
He paused now before those same marble front steps and looked past the drop at the Pacific. The view was the only thing he missed here, the way the house seemed suspended above the earth rather than attached to it. To the east the Golden Gate Bridge guarded the Bay, the celebrated towers wrapped in fog. The orange-vermilion hue—officially designated “International Orange”—was in fact accidental, the color of a primer coat that just happened to catch the architect’s fancy. It matched the autumn foliage of the bookending headlands while announcing the bridge sufficiently for ships, standing out and blending in simultaneously, unique and paradoxical—San Francisco embodied.
This was, if nothing, a city of contradictions. Synonymous with freedom, yet home to the world’s best-known prison. The heart of the pacifist movement and the brains of the war machine. The blinding edge of innovation, navigated by cable car. The most East Coast city on the West Coast.
As he approached the house, he considered his and Cris’s life together, how they’d always been something of a paradox themselves, how they managed to bring contradictions into harmony, completing the circle.
A middle-aged painter wearing a backward A’s cap paused from his work on the front door to return Daniel’s nod and let him pass. A trace of burning birch laced the air inside. Striding through the well-appointed halls, he wondered if he really had to be here. Maybe Dooley was right and the news of his appearance at the crime scene hadn’t leaked. Maybe he’d overestimated Evelyn’s reach into the city.
He found her in the library against a backdrop of leather-bound books, inhabiting a wing chair like a Bond villain, aside from the seemingly anachronistic iPad in her lap. To her side the hearth crackled behind a triple-panel screen, and above hung that solemn rendering of his father, who surveyed the scene with an air of strained dignity.
On the south wall, a larger rendering of her father.
Her eyes lifted, one hand rising to fluff the steel-gray hair away from her neck. “Daniel,” she said sternly. “What’s this about your walking into a murder?”
So much for overestimating her reach.
“I got a letter accidentally—”
“I already spoke to the president of the police commission. I know more about it than you do.” She returned her focus to the iPad, tapping and sliding. “I’m going to have a private protection detail assigned to your house.”
This was why he came. Evelyn didn’t just react to news. She implemented.
“We’re fine. No need to overreact.”
“You walked in on Jack the Ripper, he took your picture, and I’m overreacting?”
“The guy’s clearly targeting people who he thinks have done something—”
“Like burst in on him in the middle of an evisceration?”
“If we feel threatened,” Daniel said, “we’ll take care of it ourselves.”
“So you’re being obstinate and self-denying. Shocking.” A series of cartoonish sneers and twangs emanated from her iPad.
“Mom, are you playing Angry Birds?”
“I can’t help it. It’s so … satisfying. ” A reluctant smile. “How are you these days? Still rubbing elbows with criminals for a living?”
“For now. I’m making a transition into private practice.”
“Thank God. At least that has a modicum of respectability.”
Her semi-endorsement of the change grated more than he would have thought. No matter how prepared
Daniel rises, follows dumbly in her wake. Exiting the house, Cristina says out of the side of her mouth, “How did you come from that ?”
Awestruck, he struggles to keep pace down the marble steps of the front porch. “I…”
“What?”
“I think I’m falling in love with you.”
That wide smile springs up, overtaking her face. She reaches for his arm but then pinches it, so hard he jerks back.
“What was that for?”
Already she is two steps ahead again. “So you never forget.”
* * *
He paused now before those same marble front steps and looked past the drop at the Pacific. The view was the only thing he missed here, the way the house seemed suspended above the earth rather than attached to it. To the east the Golden Gate Bridge guarded the Bay, the celebrated towers wrapped in fog. The orange-vermilion hue—officially designated “International Orange”—was in fact accidental, the color of a primer coat that just happened to catch the architect’s fancy. It matched the autumn foliage of the bookending headlands while announcing the bridge sufficiently for ships, standing out and blending in simultaneously, unique and paradoxical—San Francisco embodied.
This was, if nothing, a city of contradictions. Synonymous with freedom, yet home to the world’s best-known prison. The heart of the pacifist movement and the brains of the war machine. The blinding edge of innovation, navigated by cable car. The most East Coast city on the West Coast.
As he approached the house, he considered his and Cris’s life together, how they’d always been something of a paradox themselves, how they managed to bring contradictions into harmony, completing the circle.
A middle-aged painter wearing a backward A’s cap paused from his work on the front door to return Daniel’s nod and let him pass. A trace of burning birch laced the air inside. Striding through the well-appointed halls, he wondered if he really had to be here. Maybe Dooley was right and the news of his appearance at the crime scene hadn’t leaked. Maybe he’d overestimated Evelyn’s reach into the city.
He found her in the library against a backdrop of leather-bound books, inhabiting a wing chair like a Bond villain, aside from the seemingly anachronistic iPad in her lap. To her side the hearth crackled behind a triple-panel screen, and above hung that solemn rendering of his father, who surveyed the scene with an air of strained dignity.
On the south wall, a larger rendering of her father.
Her eyes lifted, one hand rising to fluff the steel-gray hair away from her neck. “Daniel,” she said sternly. “What’s this about your walking into a murder?”
So much for overestimating her reach.
“I got a letter accidentally—”
“I already spoke to the president of the police commission. I know more about it than you do.” She returned her focus to the iPad, tapping and sliding. “I’m going to have a private protection detail assigned to your house.”
This was why he came. Evelyn didn’t just react to news. She implemented.
“We’re fine. No need to overreact.”
“You walked in on Jack the Ripper, he took your picture, and I’m overreacting?”
“The guy’s clearly targeting people who he thinks have done something—”
“Like burst in on him in the middle of an evisceration?”
“If we feel threatened,” Daniel said, “we’ll take care of it ourselves.”
“So you’re being obstinate and self-denying. Shocking.” A series of cartoonish sneers and twangs emanated from her iPad.
“Mom, are you playing Angry Birds?”
“I can’t help it. It’s so … satisfying. ” A reluctant smile. “How are you these days? Still rubbing elbows with criminals for a living?”
“For now. I’m making a transition into private practice.”
“Thank God. At least that has a modicum of respectability.”
Her semi-endorsement of the change grated more than he would have thought. No matter how prepared
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