heard of him.”
“Well, he’s famous in Oregon the way you’re famous in Kentucky.”
“So, pretty damn famous, then,” McQueen said. Allison ignored that.
“Dr. Capello inherited a fortune from his parents and I think he had his own money, too.”
“I never met a broke neurosurgeon.”
“He was known for helping needy kids. I think in the beginning he did pro bono surgeries and that sort of thing. But at some point he became a foster parent. He took in a bunch of kids.”
“An Angelina?”
Allison smiled. “Yeah, an old, male Angelina.”
“How old?”
“Very old. Fifty, I think.”
McQueen, age forty-five, gave her a dirty look.
“I was one of the kids he took in,” she said. “Lucky me.”
“And Roland?”
“Him, too. Except Dr. Capello adopted him,” Allison said. “I haven’t heard from him since I left The Dragon. That’s why I was so surprised.”
“The what?”
Allison smiled behind her glass of bourbon. “The Dragon—that’s what the house was called. You know how beach houses have funny names? Sandy Soles and Blue Heaven or whatever? Dr. Capello said we lived at the edge of the world and on old maps that’s where ‘there be dragons.’ And the house was big and green with shingles like scales. It kind of looked like a dragon when you saw it from a certain angle.”
McQueen nodded his understanding. “So you lived there with a bunch of other foster kids. Was it as bad as I’m imagining?”
“It was paradise,” she said. “Xanadu.”
“Xanadu?” McQueen repeated. “Like the movie?”
“Like the poem,” she said. “‘In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure-dome decree...’ I used to have it all memorized. Anyway, it was lovely there.”
She couldn’t sit still anymore so she put her glass on the table and stood up. She went to the bookshelves that lined the walls and started searching for a book, not because she wanted to read it, but to find something she’d slipped inside it long ago.
“You know that’s crazy, right?” he said.
“What? Didn’t everyone live in a magical beach house with a famous doctor as a kid?”
“Cricket.” McQueen hated sarcasm as much as he hated when she wore jeans.
“I know it sounds nuts,” she said. “I do, but it seemed normal at the time. I was seven, though. I still thought Santa Claus was real. Of all the kids, Roland was the one I was closest to. He was older. He was nice. I just... I never thought I’d hear from him again. That’s all.”
McQueen leaned back in his armchair and steepled his fingers. He did this when he was thinking. She had a feeling he was thinking, That’s not all.
“What aren’t you telling me?” he asked.
“That I want you out of my apartment right now,” she said casually, without malice and without much truth, either. She ignored him as best as she could as she studied her shelves.
“About your brother. Usually when nice people send me mail, I don’t almost lose my lunch.”
“I’m done talking about this with you.”
“I’m not done listening.”
“Well, there’s nothing more to tell.”
“We’ve been sleeping together for six years, Allison. I know when you’re faking it with me. You’re faking right now. You went white as a sheet when you saw his name on that envelope. That’s not like you. You are not a drama queen. You don’t overreact. When we were mugged in Milan, I was the one who puked afterward, not you. There is something you’re not telling me, and I’m not leaving until I know what it is.”
“You’re being nosy.”
“I care,” he said.
“You have an interesting way of showing it,” she said. She’d found her book at last, but didn’t open it.
McQueen sighed. He beckoned to her and she walked to him, sitting in front of him on top of the coffee table between his knees. He leaned forward and took the book from her hand and put it aside. He raised her hand to his lips, kissed her knuckles, before turning her hand over. He caressed her palm with his fingertips, a sensual touch but also comforting.
“Did something bad happen to you in that house?” he asked, meeting her eyes. If she’d thought for one single second that McQueen was prying out of curiosity or nosiness or because he felt entitled to her secrets, she would never have answered. But the man who’d asked that question wasn’t McQueen the rich jerk who was dumping her, but McQueen the scared father who’d burn the world down if anyone hurt his children.
“Dr. Capello didn’t molest me if that’s what you’re asking.”
McQueen took a heavy breath, relieved on her behalf.
“That’s what I’m asking,” he said. “So nobody hurt you, then?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“It’s not—”
“Tell me what happened and I’ll leave.”
“You promise?”
He carved an invisible X on his heart with his finger. “Once I know you’re okay, I’ll go.”
Allison hadn’t thought about her old life with Dr. Capello and his kids in a long time. She tried not to think about them, she certainly never talked about them and she never ever invited memories into her mind. They came sometimes, however, uninvited, creeping like ants through a crack in the wall.
“You wouldn’t be this freaked out if it was really that good there,” McQueen said.
“I’m not freaked out,” she said, maybe a lie, maybe not. She was just...surprised, that’s all. “You’d be shaky, too, if your brother contacted you out of the blue after thirteen years.”
“True. Because I don’t have a brother, even an almost-brother. You do.”
Allison released his hand and picked up the book she’d found, an old copy of Shaw’s Pygmalion, the pages highlighter-yellow from her days as an English major in college.
“Allison?”
She gave in.
“The last summer I
