Nothing Good Gets Away

Chapter 5

ROWAN BASS

Scout is yapping his head off in the trunk of my car as he props himself up on the top of the leather seats. I look back through the rearview mirror and tell him, as if he's a human child, that we're almost there. He whines and falls back to all four legs to look out through the back windshield instead.

Right off the Pacific Coast Highway, I turn down a quieter street and climb the car up the winding hill that will get me to my childhood home. The mansions block my view from the setting sun down below, and I keep wanting to turn back to see the golden sun sink down into the ocean.

When I was a kid, I was convinced that that's literally what happened–that the sun went into the water to go to sleep. I remember feeling sad when my dad explained to me that the sun never goes to sleep, but instead travels all around the world constantly. I thought it should be able to get a break sometimes.

Outside my parents' house, I park beside my brother-in-law's Ferrari in the wide stone driveway. I grab Scout's leash and sling my tote bag over my shoulder as I step out to carefully retrieve him from the trunk. He immediately pees in the front yard, so I praise him and give him a little treat for not doing that inside my car.

Albeit reluctantly, I tug Scout along the path leading to the giant glass door. It opens when I push on the wooden slat, and Scout's sense of smell must be going wild in a place he's never been as he hastily sniffs at the glossy tile floor.

"Hello?" My voice echoes in the entryway, bouncing off the chandelier suspended above my head.

My mom appears from down the hall wearing a pair of black trousers with a black and white striped sweater that fits snugly on her small frame. Her ashy brown hair falls straight to her shoulders with a slight bend in the ends, and her lips are red like they always are.

"Hi, chèri," she smiles at me, and I'm still struck by her natural beauty the way I've always been. She's the prettiest woman I've ever seen.

"Hi," I hug her and take in the scent of her usual Maison Louis Marie perfume. It's the same one I wear, because of her.

"Let me see you," she puts on a concentrating frown as she lifts my chin, but an immediate smile stretches across her lips as our matching blue eyes meet. "Perfect. Just as I suspected."

Elise has a way with people. She's charming, and she's mysterious, and she knows when to be serious and when to laugh politely. Her eye contact is so intense that not many people can hold it for very long. You might think she's judging you, but all she's doing is trying to get a sense of who you are. She told me once that you can learn a lot about someone through their eyes. I never forgot that.

"Oh, this is Scout," I laugh as he jumps up on her, and she crouches right down to pet him with two magical hands. He calms right down.

She speaks to him in French, saying something about how he's cute and small, and everything I need. He licks at her hands to make her laugh.

"Is that Rowan?" My dad comes around the corner with a dish towel perpetually folded over his broad shoulder. I think of Joe's comment about how my dad spends his time "serving people" and "cooking in a kitchen" like it's a bad thing.

"Hi, Dad," I reach up on my toes to hug him. He rubs my back with one hand.

"You look great, how's it going?" He smiles at Scout, but he doesn't touch him in order to keep his hands clean.

"It's going," I exhale as I follow them through the house, where my sister and her husband are sitting at the breakfast nook together. I'm as much of a fan of Matthew as I am of Grant and Joe.