Chapter 33: Two in the morning

We were on the road already when the call came in again.

Bruno took the phone from my hand and ended the call.

"Margaret is safe," he said. "That's what matters right now."

"Sara is with Richard," I said.

"Yes."

"She walked out of that hotel room with the investigators and went straight back to him."

"We don't know that yet," Bruno said. "We know she was at Margaret's house. We don't know why."

I looked at the envelope in my hands and then at the dark water beyond the dock and then at Bruno standing in the post light with his jacket open and his tie long gone and his hair pushed back from where he had run his hand through it in the car.

He looked like a man who had been through a long day and was still standing at the end of it.

So did I, probably.

"Come on," he said. He took the envelope from my hands. "We're done with this dock."

We walked back up the dock to the car park and got in and he started the engine and turned the heat on and we sat for a moment in the warm car with the dark marina outside the windows.

"I don't want to go back to the hotel and stare at the ceiling," I said.

"We're not going back to the hotel," he said.

"Where are we going?"

"My place," he said. "Actual place. Not a hotel. Not a borrowed room." He looked at me. "I've been living out of a bag for four months. I have an apartment I've been in three times since January and a kitchen that has nothing in it and I'd like to go there with you."

I looked at him. "You want to go home."

"I want to take you home," he said. "There's a difference."

He drove inside immediately.

Thirty minutes through quiet streets and then up into a part of the city I hadn't been to before, older buildings, wider roads, trees along the pavements that were thick enough to have been there a long time.

Every where looked scary and so different.

He parked and we went up two flights of stairs and he unlocked a door and we walked into an apartment that smelled like fresh air and old wood and the particular smell of a space that has been closed up and is now open again.

He turned a lamp on.

The apartment was good with high ceilings and bare floors and a long window along one wall, and even in the dark you could tell the view was worth waking up for, with books on shelves that had been organized once and then left and a coat on the back of a chair that had been thrown there and forgotten.

It looked like him.

"Kitchen," he said. "I wasn't lying about it being empty but I think there's coffee."

There was coffee. There was also bread that was still good and butter and eggs and Bruno made eggs at two forty in the morning with his jacket off and his sleeves rolled and I sat on the counter beside the stove and watched him and the kitchen was warm and the lamp threw a good light and outside the city was as quiet as it ever gets.

He put a plate in front of me and I ate and he ate standing at the counter beside me and we were close enough that his arm pressed against mine and neither of us moved away.

"Tell me about the view," I said.

"In the morning," he said. "It's better in the morning."

"Is that a reason for me to stay?"

He looked at me. "Yes."

I set my fork on the empty plate and he took it and put it in the sink and when he turned back I was still on the counter and he came and stood in front of me and put both hands on either side of me and looked at me properly for the first time since the dock.

"Are you alright?" he said.

"Ask me again in the morning," I said.

"Phoebe."

"Bruno." I put my hands on his face. "I'm here. I'm with you. Everything else can wait until morning."

He held my gaze for a moment.

Then he leaned in and kissed me and I kissed him back and his arms came around me and I wrapped mine around his neck and the kitchen was warm and quiet and the eggs were done and the city was asleep outside the long window and none of the night's damage had gone anywhere but it was far enough away that I could not feel it from here.

He pulled back and looked at me.

"The view really is better in the morning," he said.

"Then I'm staying for the view," I said.

He smiled and I felt it against my cheek when he pressed his face briefly to mine before stepping back and taking my hand and leading me away from the kitchen and the lamp and the empty plates.

We slept but not immediately, we talked first, our low voices were echoing in the dark, about Lisbon and the studio he wanted to find me and the painting I was going to do badly and the boat his father had sold that he was going to buy back one day from whoever had it now.

Ordinary things aren't true.

At some point the talking just stopped.

His arm was around me and my head was on his shoulder. I stayed like that for a little while longer. Just feeling his arm around me. The place had been empty for a long time, and suddenly it wasn’t anymore.

I closed my eyes.

The phone on the nightstand lit up the ceiling once.

It was message but I didn't move to read it.

Bruno's arm pulled me closer in his sleep and I stayed exactly where I was and let the ceiling go dark again.

In the morning, I told myself.

Everything in the morning.

The phone lit up a second time.

Then a third time before it began to ring.

Bruno stirred beside me and pulled me closer and I stayed exactly where I was and let the ceiling go dark.

At some point I slept.

I woke to Bruno already awake, sitting on the edge of the bed, fully dressed, his back to me, his head bent forward.

"How long have you been up?" I said.

"An hour," he said.

I sat up. "What's wrong?"

He turned and looked at me and his face told me before his words did.

"Luca called," he said. "The civil claim Richard filed. The forty million dollar claim with your name on it." He paused. "A judge reviewed it this morning at six."

"And?"

"It's been accepted," he said. "They're issuing a freeze order on your accounts. All of them. By nine o'clock this morning you won't be able to access a single penny."

I sat very still.

"There's more," Bruno said.

"Tell me."

"The freeze includes the foundation," he said. "Claire's foundation and every account connected to your name."

I was out of the bed before he finished the sentence.