The Inn - James Patterson Page 0,24

just here to practice my scales.” I picked up her violin, put it under my chin, scraped the bow across the strings, and made a sound like a rusty belt sander running across concrete. She sighed and shut the laptop, took the instrument from me. I lay on her bed.

“What’ll it be tonight, sir?”

“‘Flight of the Bumblebee.’”

She laughed in that open-mouthed kid-like way she rarely did, a beautiful habit she was losing as she grew up. It made me smile. She played “Orange Blossom Special” because she knew I liked it. When she finished, I watched her fiddling with the strings, my head propped up on my elbow.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey what?”

“I think I was a real dick about the memorial thing.”

“Is this an apology? Oh my God. I love apologies,” she said.

“It is an apology,” I said. “You’re right when you say I should stop pushing my feelings about Siobhan down. I should talk about her more and let you talk about her more. I’m not trying to build some kind of cone of silence here.”

Marni came and lay on the bed beside me. We looked at the plastic glow-in-the-dark stars she had stuck to the ceiling, impossible constellations of unicorns and butterflies. Marni’s fingernails were freshly painted purple, but she’d already started picking the polish off. We heard a thump in the next room. We both looked instinctively at the wall beside us.

“We gotta talk about a room change,” she said. “Neddy Ives gives me the creeps.”

“He’s all right. In fact, as a houseguest he’s great. He doesn’t complain. Doesn’t make a mess.”

“What kind of person lives in one room all the time?” Marni frowned at me. “He must be crazy. And then there’s the ghost on the stairs.”

“There’s a ghost on the stairs?” I asked. “This is news to me.”

“Someone runs up and down in the middle of the night,” Marni said. “I heard it a few nights ago, waited until I heard whoever it was coming up to the second floor, and threw open the door. Guess what? No one there.”

“Well, that’s done it,” I said. “I’m never sleeping again.”

“Me either,” she said. “At least the weirdo next door is only creepy during the daylight hours.”

“Siobhan thought he belonged here.” I shrugged. “If he was good enough for her, he’s good enough for us.”

“Siobhan would have taken in Charles Manson,” Marni said. “Everybody was good enough for her.”

We watched the stars in silence for a while.

“I feel lost without Siobhan,” Marni said. “She was so smart. She always knew exactly what to do. She always had a plan. Didn’t matter what problem I had, I’d come to her with it and she’d say, ‘Let’s make a plan,’ and by the time we were done talking, everything was fine.”

“What do you feel lost about?” I said. “Maybe I can help. I should help. You shouldn’t have to feel like you’re in this on your own. I can’t replace Siobhan, but I can maybe be … I don’t know. A better version of myself. Someone you can bring your problems to.”

Marni said nothing for a long time, tracing the stars with her eyes.

“There’s nobody around who I want to be like,” she said eventually. “There’s no blueprint for what I’m supposed to be doing. No map. Siobhan was pretty cool, so I thought, I’ll just try to be like her. But she’s gone, so now it’s like, who do I follow? Who am I supposed to be?”

I knew Marni didn’t mean it, but her words hurt me. The kid in my care didn’t respect me enough to use me as a guide, a role model. But why should she? I’d spent the last two years hiding from my problems, running from grief, failing to make plans or see anything through. Well, all that was going to change. I didn’t tell her this, but I decided she was going to see a whole different side of me from then on. It was time to man up and show the kid she could rely on me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

A CRISP, COLD morning. Frost on the windows and on the lawn at the back of the house. I leaned against the door frame of the shower in the third-floor bathroom, Angelica behind me. Effie was looking down the shower drain with a flashlight, her nose inches from the tiles.

“It’s the men,” Angelica announced, her arms folded defiantly. “They’re very hairy, and it’s coarse hair. I’m the only woman who uses this shower and my