Near Miss

Chapter Ten: Barrier

Sylvie was expecting the door to be opened gently, or at the very least courteously. Instead it was flung open with such force that she couldn't help but recoil.

For the past few seconds, she'd been shifting back and forth on the doorstep of the Hawks' house, waiting for someone to answer. She could hear footsteps inside, evidence that someone was probably going to come to the door, but she had no idea as to who. Would it be Grayson Hawk himself, who only "got along" with Magdalen, who had tutored Jacob Long, who Sylvie was so anxious to interview? Would it be his as-yet-undescribed wife, or their suspiciously inconspicuous son?

"What are you selling?"

The woman who opened the door had a thin face, with deep furrows across her forehead and lips stretched tight in disapproval. When Sylvie didn't answer right away, she reached forward and clicked her fingers inches from Sylvie's face. "What do you want?"

"Uh..." Taken aback, Sylvie wasn't sure what to say. "I just wanted to talk to Grayson?" she managed after a moment.

The woman didn't fail to pick up on the uncertainty in her tone. "Why? Do you want something with him?"

Sylvie stood her ground, determined not to blink if the woman reached forward again. "I need to speak with him. It's about his sister."

The impatient woman eyed her suspiciously. "I don't know what you want with Grayson, but somehow I don't think it has anything to do with his sister. You're too young to know anything about that."

"Anything about what?" Sylvie challenged. "Is there something I should know?"

The woman frowned. "I'm getting tired of your attitude, young lady. Get to the point, or move on to the next house."

"I told you, I'm not selling anything." Slowly but surely, Sylvie's voice was rising in volume. "Whatever you think I'm too young to know about, it's something I need to hear. I'm trying to save someone's life!"

Shaking her finger, the woman bent over until she matched Sylvie's height; although she was not that much taller than Sylvie, her perch on the floor was a few inches higher than Sylvie's on the porch. With the extra height advantage, Sylvie felt almost like a student about to be scolded, which apparently was exactly the woman's intent. "Good girls shouldn't tell lies. You have no business here." Straightening up, the woman concluded with an unnaturally familiar question: "Shouldn't you be in school?"

Sylvie lost it.

In talking to this woman in the first place, she'd had to put up with enough. When she'd answered the door, Sylvie had had no choice but to engage. This woman was just another barrier she had to break through in order to solve the mystery, just another wall to climb.

But why did she have to be so patronizing?

Libby Whitlock had known what to do. When she'd answered the door, and Sylvie had asked to talk to Jacob, she'd called him down and let them speak outside. She hadn't tried to stop Sylvie from having that conversation. She hadn't made automatic assumptions about what Sylvie wanted or why she needed to talk to Jacob.

"You have no right to assume why I'm here!" Sylvie snapped. "I have reasons for everything, I'm working on something infinitely more complex than you would think me capable of, I'm on my way to saving a life, and then suddenly everything stops, and I have to deal with you."

"On the contrary," the woman replied, "I have every right to refuse. This is my house. This is my family. If I want you to leave, I'm perfectly entitled to make you leave. You're poking your nose into other people's affairs. This is none of your business."