Through the rain, she saw little - the muted lights of a front porch, the vague outline of a large house.
She wondered about her choice to accompany Spencer home. The conversation had been so easy, the wine dulling her inhibitions.
Spencer jumped from the car, pulled a light coat from the backseat, and ran to Orla’s door. He opened the door and held the coat over their heads as they dashed into the garage beneath the carriage house. Orla made out the shapes of two cars in the darkness. Spencer took her hand and led her, laughing, up a set of narrow stairs.
He pushed through a door, Orla behind him. The door swung closed, and Orla stood in complete darkness. She blinked into the room, her breath catching as she waited for the light to turn on. Seconds passed.
“Spencer?” she asked, the first seedling of doubt rooting in her mind. She had followed this man, a complete stranger, to an isolated house in the woods.
The lights flipped on washing the room in a yellow glow.
“Sorry.” He grinned. “Took me a minute to find the switch.”
Orla gazed around the apartment. The ceilings were high. Bookshelves lined the large window that looked over the driveway. A modern black sofa sat on a white shag rug. Above the sofa, a canvas hung, the paint a splattering of blacks and reds.
It was a studio apartment, but spacious. The bed stood in the main room, tucked behind a Chinese screen. The apartment was clean; spotless, really. Orla glanced down where three rows of men’s shoes stood in a row. She imagined her own room, the bed unmade, books strewn haphazardly on the bedside table.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but does your mom clean your apartment?”
He walked to the little kitchen complete with a narrow, pea-colored stove and refrigerator. From a cupboard, Spencer produced two wine glasses. He grabbed a bottle of red wine from a rack on his counter.
“Do you like Merlot?” he asked.
“Sounds great.”
“And no, my mother doesn’t clean my apartment. I’m tidy. I realize it’s unusual, but I prefer it this way.” He gestured at the apartment.
Orla walked to the bookshelf and scanned the titles. He read mostly nonfiction. She peered at dozens of titles about psychology and sociology. A stack of magazines sat on one end of a shelf, and she looked at the cover.
“True Detective,” she murmured, gazing at the image beneath the headline of a terrified woman with a knife pressed against her throat. A masked man stood behind her. Orla grimaced and pushed the magazine away.
“Have you ever read it?” Spencer asked, startling her from behind.
She jumped and shook her head.
“Not my style. It looks creepy.” She took the glass he held out.
“True enough, but it’s real life. Better to be prepared than-”
“Surprised?” she interrupted.
“Dead,” he finished, clinking his glass against hers. “But let’s not talk about death. I want to know more about you, Orla Delaney Sullivan.”
She followed him to the couch and sat down, sipping her wine and continuing to gaze at his impeccably clean apartment.
“I’m marveling at this place. Where’s the pile of dirty laundry?”
He laughed.
“I’m guessing you’re not a neat freak. If you were, this would make complete sense to you.” He pointed at a little door near his bed. “That’s called a closet. It contains a hamper. Inside, you’ll find my dirty clothes.”
“Wait. Those plastic things with the handles? Those aren’t for books and unmatched socks?”
He widened his eyes and groaned.
“I guess that’s another use for them.”
She smiled.
“I’m not as bad as I sound. I do, however, like to drop my dirty laundry in the corner, and then kick it down the hall to the laundry room.”
“I had no idea we’d be having such a scintillating conversation.”
Orla cocked an eyebrow.
“With all those psych books, you’re clearly interested in people’s idiosyncrasies. What’s more revealing than laundry habits?”
He leaned toward her, eyes twinkling.
“Sexual habits are pretty revealing.”
Chapter 7
Orla
Orla laughed, color rising into her face.
“I’m gonna need more than one glass of wine to reveal those secrets.”
He pointed at the counter.
“I’ve got bottles.”
She glanced at the rack.
“Tell me about you, Spencer. You go to the University of Michigan, you’re studying to be a psychiatrist. Do you have a girlfriend?”
He balanced his chin on his hand and studied her.
“Do you think I’d bring a woman home if I had a girlfriend?”
“You wouldn’t be the first man who did.”
He shook his head.
“No girlfriend. I’ve dated at school, but I’m busy. Most women aren’t keen on spending Saturday night in the library.”
“I love the library,” Orla admitted. “Though our reading preferences differ considerably.”
“Which is the perfect moment to pivot to you, Orla. Tell me about your life.”
“That’s a long tale.”
“We’ve got all night.”
“Do we, now?” She took a sip of wine and leaned back on the couch. “Well, I was born in Detroit in 1955. My parents are Patrick and Fiona. We lived for a few years in a little apartment. Dad worked for the Chrysler factory. My mom stayed home with me and worked part-time as a seamstress. They were Irish immigrants, and both had family in Detroit, but my dad’s cousin, Uncle Martin, moved to Traverse City. He’d gotten construction work. He wrote to my parents, said it was beautiful, simple. So, they packed us up, and we drove north.”
“Are you an only child?”
“Yes and no.” Orla thought of the wooden crib in her parents’ attic engraved with the name Cillian. “I had a brother. My mom had him when I was five, but he only lived for a few days.”
“I’m sorry.”
Orla sipped her wine.
“It’s sad, in a mysterious way. Like when you’re walking through a graveyard and see a child’s tombstone. But I was young when he lived and died. I have no memory of it. Do you have any siblings?”
He shook his head.
“I don’t think my parents planned for any children. I was an accident.”
“A happy one, I’m sure.”
He shrugged.
“Maybe.”
His comment surprised Orla. She wasn’t exactly bosom buddies with her parents, but she’d never doubted their love for her. Even her mother, who often drove her nuts with her constant fretting, loved Orla to near suffocation.
“How did your father die?”
Spencer shook his head.
“I don’t know. A heart attack, maybe. One morning my mom found him dead.”
“Had he been ill?”
“Not that I’m aware of, but she doesn’t like to talk about it. I’ve accepted that I’ll never know much about him or his death.”
“She doesn’t talk about him as a man? As a person?”
“He was a dentist. She met him when she got a root canal in Chicago. He liked to golf, and he liked to read. That about sums up what I know.”
Orla started to ask another question, probe the mysterious dead father, but she noticed the grim look in Spencer’s eyes and closed her mouth.
He swirled the wine in his glass, and then looked at her conspiratorially.
“Tell me the worst thing you’ve ever done, Orla.”
She paused at the abrupt change in topic and tried to conjure a list of the bad things she’d done her life.