always telling Jemima to go easy on Oscar, and now she was reciting his own lines back at him. Her voice had even taken on a bit of his timbre. But after a moment, Theo sighed and dropped his shoulders.
“Downstairs, both of you,” he ordered. “I don’t want to see you up here again. You understand? It’s off-limits.”
Oscar needed no convincing. He wiggled around his father and began to bump carefully down the stairs on his butt. Jemima tagged along behind, whispering furiously into her brother’s ear. Kate would have followed them, purely out of self-preservation, but she couldn’t. Theo was standing right there. There was no room for her to pass.
Without saying a word, Theo came up the steps and knelt down to look at the drawings. He touched one, dragging his thumb down across the tail of a star. The graphite smudged ever so slightly. When he took his hand away, he rubbed his finger and thumb together until the pencil dust disappeared from his skin.
He was crouching in front of her; she could see his scalp glinting up from the part in his hair. The tendons in his back, the rise of a vertebra above the collar of his shirt. She averted her eyes.
He was quiet for a long time, and she hoped maybe he had forgotten she was there, but then he stood up, looming over her even though he was on a lower step.
“What are you doing up here?” he demanded. “I told the kids not to come up. There are chemicals … the darkroom. It’s not safe.”
She stilled. “Oscar and Jemima wanted to show me something. They insisted. I didn’t know it was off-limits.” She tried to say it evenly, but off-limits still came off with a sarcastic edge.
“It’s private,” he said. “As is the rest of the house.”
“I’m not going to play around with any chemicals,” Kate said, half-joking.
“It’s not just the chemicals.”
“Then what? You said you brought everything to the dining room.” She gestured at the wall. “This counts as your mother’s art, right? We could sell it with everything else.”
“I could sell it with everything else,” he said.
Kate’s patience was wearing thin. The brusque tone had been annoying enough when she was skulking around the backyard and they hadn’t yet met. Now she had been working in his home all week, playing the subservient employee and treating his parents’ belongings like fine china. And she had only come up here because she was entertaining his children.
“You hired me to organize the collection,” she said. “It makes my job harder when there are things missing. Her darkroom? Shouldn’t I see that?”
He must have realized she had a point, because he didn’t answer. The stairwell was so small that his breath rustled her hair. Awareness spiked through her limbs. She took that, along with his silence, as a sign she should leave.
She moved to slide past him. He put his fingers on her wrist, stopping her.
“I put everything relevant in the dining room,” he said.
“You don’t know what’s relevant. That’s why you hired me.”
His fingers tightened around her wrist. Just a small twitch, probably instinctive. But enough to make Kate sweat.
“Don’t come up here again,” he murmured. “You understand?”
Like she was a child. Like she could be ordered around. The air shifted and heated. A strange itch began in her throat, like the beginning of a cough. She had a sudden desire to lean up to him and press her mouth to the small divot in his lower lip—an urge so unexpected and inappropriate that it only made her angrier.
“Yes,” she said coldly. “I understand.”
And with that, she wrenched her arm away and clattered down the stairs.
MIRANDA
SERIES 2, Personal papers
BOX 6, Falkman College, 1974–1978
FOLDER: Disciplinary records
* * *
Falkman College Office for Student Affairs Conduct and Decency Board
Internal Document
Copies furnished to named parties only, upon request:
Miranda Rose Planchart
Richard Cameron Rohber
A. F. Fitzhugh (faculty investigator)
Joseph Smith (faculty investigator)
Tina Fry (faculty investigator)
TRANSCRIPT OF MEDIATION
04/28/1977
FITZHUGH: I think it’s working now. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us. This recording is for reference and information only. A transcript may be provided to you upon request. I will be leading today’s inquiry along with my colleagues Professor Smith and Professor Fry. I can speak for all of us when I say that we were extremely disappointed to learn of this incident. The purpose of today’s mediation is to settle upon a resolution that will enable everyone to move forward peacefully. Is that understood?