Chapter 25 - The House With the Green Shutters
The Vermont house looked nothing like Adrian's penthouse. Dorothy had sent me a picture after I asked about accessibility for a possible supervised visit: old slate steps, green shutters, a vegetable patch drooping at the end of the season.
A housekeeper's schedule was taped beside the kitchen clock. A row of rain boots stood by the back door. Leo's life was happening in small, repeated ways that no investment memo could describe.
Adrian had gone north for a second weekend. This time he called before driving back to New York.
“There's a blue bedroom,” he said. “He says it's the room where his mother read to him.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing clever. I asked which books.”
“And?”
“Dinosaurs and a story about a train that gets lost.”
I sat on the edge of my bed and pictured a little boy deciding whether the tall stranger who paid for his house would stay long enough to finish a story.
“Did you read one?”
“Twice,” Adrian said. “He corrected my voices.”
May you like
I laughed, a short surprised sound. Adrian waited rather than turning it into intimacy.
When the call ended, I added one sentence to my notebook: He can learn. That doesn't mean I owe him anything.
