physical reaction: an itch up the legs, a scratch in the spine. Her own binders at work had been alphabetized and color-coded.
To hide her distress, she began picking her way around the fringes of the room, trying to marshal her thoughts.
“How many rooms are there like this?” she asked Theo.
“Just this one. I put everything in here. The kids needed room to run around.”
“Right. Okay.” She stopped and looked around. “So what’s the system?”
“System?”
“Like, when you moved things, which rooms went where?”
“Oh.” Theo looked blank. “I guess they all went … everywhere. I was consolidating.”
“You just piled it all in here?”
“Sure,” he said. “It’s not like it was organized to begin with.”
She tried to keep the panic out of her voice. “Maybe it didn’t seem organized, but we can learn a lot about a collection based on how the original owner had it arranged. We can see when things date from, what was with what…”
“I’ll tell you how it was arranged,” he said tersely. “It was arranged like my parents threw down whatever they had wherever they happened to be.”
Kate pressed her lips together. So this was who Theo Brand was. Successful, rich, handsome, kids. He had his whole life figured out, and he was used to getting what he wanted. Whereas she had staked her whole life on coming here. Whereas she was thirty years old with $180 in her bank account, $4,000 in credit card debt, and $18,000 remaining in student loans. There was already an imbalance between them, and it made everything unsteady, like a chair in an interrogation room with one leg sawed short.
“It’s yours now,” he went on. “Organize it however seems logical. Mainly I need a catalog of the contents, as detailed as possible. What did you call it over the phone, a guide, a—?”
“I guess since 1993.” He shrugged. “I thought my dad had cleaned it out, but—obviously not. I don’t know if he even ever came up here. I know I haven’t.”
“You haven’t been here in twenty-four years?”
He gazed at her evenly. “You can leave that kind of commentary out of the aid, thanks.”
Kate opened her mouth, then closed it. She didn’t need to get fired on her first day.
She stepped over a box and crossed to the bay window that looked out onto the yellow lawn. One of the windows was cracked open at the bottom, and the air that blew into the room was cold and wet. She put her hands on the sill and pressed it closed.
“The damp,” she explained.
When she turned around, Theo had hooked his thumbs into his pockets and was watching her. He was larger than she had realized: not so lean after all. A long, raised scar ribboned up his forearm and terminated in a small black tattoo just before the crook of his elbow. He was attractive, Kate realized, and the thought unnerved her. After what had happened with Leonard, the last thing she wanted was to be attracted to her boss. Or anyone. It was no coincidence that attraction felt the same as panic. The speeding heart, the tingle in the neck.
“I set the payment up with the bank,” Theo was saying. “Thirty-five hours a week. If you go over, let me know and I’ll add it on. The special boxes you had me order are supposed to arrive tomorrow. During the days I’ll be working right upstairs, so I can come down, help you with any names or anything like that. As much as I can. I mean, all this”—he waved at the mess—“happened a long time ago.”
“Okay.”
“And as you … as you go through this all, please be discreet. That’s the most important part. If you find anything—personal—I … I don’t want it getting into the wrong hands.”
“Of course.” They had already talked about this over the phone.
“If you find anything like that, I want to know about it right away. Immediately.”
“Of course,” she said again, tamping down her irritation.
Theo looked at her for a moment. There was something precise in his gaze, like he was peeling off her outer husk. Kate fought the urge to put her hands in her pockets.
At last, he said, “Well, then. I guess I’ll leave you to it.”
* * *
Dinner that night was served on the screened-in porch at the back of Louise’s house, on a shiny wooden table surrounded