Trickiest Job by Cleo Peitsche Read Free Book Online

back soon. Will you wait inside?”
    It’s stupid that my eyes fill with tears at the invitation, but they do.  
    I walk slowly across the wide, flat porch. The stone is immaculate, and the sound of my shoes rings out like my mother’s footsteps used to.
    One step up, then through the wide doorway. My fingers trail over the decorative bull’s ring knocker on the mahogany door as I pass.
    But the vestibule is different. My mother always used to keep fresh flowers in the two vases, and after my parents died, the household employees took over the task. They did it for years.
    I wonder when they gave up.  
    “Where are the photos?” I ask, and Miss Susan’s lips tighten. Up close, I see that the downy light hair on her cheeks has become thicker.
    “Mr. Yorker had them removed,” she says. “He found them depressing, and he felt it would be more appropriate to keep all the photos in the same room.”
    That’s so like something my grandfather would do. I don’t need to ask her which room because I’m sure they went into my parents’ former bedroom.
    The mansion has several master bedrooms. After my parents died, their room became a sort of shrine. I used to go there on the worst days, in the times when Grandfather was preparing me or Layla—but usually me—to do something unethical for one of his millions of lawsuits.
    Being there always made me feel better, but I tried to limit my visits; I didn’t want to give our grandfather something to use against me. He might have emptied out the room, or threatened to, if he’d known.
    “Can I… go up?” I ask.
    “Oh, my dear,” she says. “This is your house. Maybe your grandfather forgets that, but no one else has.”
    I don’t have the heart to argue with her, and anyway I just wanted permission to go up. I’m already climbing the stairs, and I swear I’ve forgotten about the three men until I hear a set of footsteps behind me.
    My fingers trail up the curving banister of cool polished wood. It was never right for sliding down, but that didn’t stop me and Layla from trying. Right at the top, my fingers make a tight turn, and there it is, that fracture from when Layla and I broke off a chunk thanks to an unruly soccer ball. We glued the broken and splintered pieces together before anyone found out, and it wasn’t until almost a year later that our father noticed.
    Every step I take evokes a hundred more memories.  
    Deep inside, the knotted, petrified remnants of my heart are aching, twisting. It feels like my chest is going to crack open.
    I go up the next set of stairs. As I turn, I glance back and see Romeo is following. I wonder how it was decided that he would come but not the others.
    The bedroom is at the end of the hall. I know my mom loved it because of the balcony overlooking the pool. She could be doing her own thing, then come check on us.
    Layla and I were never allowed in the pool without Miss Susan or someone else keeping an eye out, and even though our mother worried, we were pretty good about that, even if we broke a lot of the other household rules.
    Like letting the dogs into our bedrooms.
    Or watching television shows that we weren’t supposed to.
    Or playing with the cars in the garage, listening to music while pretending to drive. The keys were always in the ignitions, so it was easy enough.
    I touch my palm to my sternum. The skin, the bone, it all feels paper thin, like if I push hard everything will crumple.
    My other hand rests on the polished knob.  
    I don’t know what I’ll discover behind the door, but I know what I won’t find. I know who won’t be sitting in her overstuffed chair, an open bottle of pink nail polish filling the room with its acrid odor— Hey, baby love, let me do your nails? How about just one? You said the blue the last time wasn’t so bad.
    She accepted me as a tomboy, but she never gave up hope. If she could see me now…
    My eyes drift closed, and I wage an all-out war with myself. What good can come