Union Atlantic Page 0,32
no evidence anyone lived there. Since that first day, he hadn't been able to get the place out of his mind.
Finally, on the last Friday in May, after Ms. Graves had rattled on till nearly six and Nate had left more tired than usual by her river of words, he decided there would be nothing wrong with having another look. And so he headed down the slope in the rich light of the spring evening, the grass beneath him freshly cut. Mounted on the corner of the garage, he noticed a surveillance camera and wondered if it fed its images to a screen in the house or to some security firm's office hundreds of miles away.
He passed out of its range, walking around the far end of the mansion which consisted of a glassed-in sunroom, unfurnished, with an open-air deck above. At the rear, a brick terrace extended onto the lawn, which ran forty yards or so down to the riverbank. Nate looked through one of the smaller rear windows into a pantry lined with bare white shelves. Next to that was a room whose perfectly polished wood floors glinted in the sun. He came to a set of French doors off the kitchen, which was a huge space with a slate counter island, two stoves, two sinks, and a double-wide fridge. In the corner stood a small wooden table with one chair, dwarfed by the room they had been placed in.
There were no cameras that he could see along this stretch of the house. He tried the door handle. To his surprise, it moved smoothly downward, the door coming open a few inches. He shut it again immediately, terrified of setting off an alarm.
A minute or two passed and he heard nothing.
What harm could it do, he thought. No one was here and he wasn't going to steal anything. He cracked the door just wide enough to listen. No sound but the hum of the fridge.
As soon as he stepped into the kitchen and closed the door behind him, he could feel blood rushing to his head from the excitement. He walked to the counter and paused there to listen again. The room smelled of wood wax and cleaning fluid. Moving farther into the house, he crossed the marble floor of the front hall and proceeded into a room nearly as large as the downstairs of his entire house. The outsize fireplace had no grate in it and its mantel was bare. Beyond this was the room with the couch placed at an angle facing the giant TV in the corner. The beer bottle he'd seen on that first day that he'd peered through the windows was gone and there was a stack of files on the floor.
He had never trespassed before. He had no idea it could be so exhilarating, all his senses alive with anticipation. The fear of being caught was close to exquisite. And who was it that lived like this? What kind of life did it imply?
Entering the back wing of the house, he stood at the foot of a staircase, stopping once more, trying to detect the slightest sound.
Upstairs, he walked down a central hallway, passing more unfurnished rooms on either side. The scent of pine freshener and just a hint of paint hung in the motionless air. While the thrill of transgression still filled him, he was beginning to find the emptiness of the place almost soothing. A house so unmarked, so unstained by memory or disappointment. It didn't even feel like Finden anymore.
At the fourth door along the hall, he glanced through what seemed to be the entryway to a suite of some kind. Entering it, he came up short at the sight of a king-size bed, recently slept in, the sheets ruffled, the pillow still bearing the wrinkled impression of a head. On the floor, a cordless phone rested facedown, and next to that stood a water glass. The only other objects in the room were a television and a standing lamp.
For several minutes he stood motionless, staring at the bed.
Along the opposite wall was a walk-in closet. Ten or twelve suits, blue, black, and dark gray, hung in a row on one side while dozens of freshly laundered shirts still in their plastic were lined up along the other. At the back stood a dresser, a pile of laundry heaped against its bottom drawer. Dress shoes arranged beneath the suits gave off the scent of newly polished leather. Cautiously, his