Sinnerman

Chapter 26 Exploring & Reunions

Evie edged her little car slowly down the broad road. The trees overhead seemed more green and spreading out here. She never had cause to come this high up in the Hills. It was a veritable millionaires row.

Driving past gates and front yard entrances that were bigger and wider than her whole house. And some of the houses so far down a winding road she couldn't even make them out from her car. The ones she could told her instantly of the sheer moneyed nature of this part of the neighbourhood.

She saw sprawling Italian style villas. Gardens full of bay and olive trees. Big modern colonials with huge extensions. Massive mansions with gleaming Porsche's and Audi's in the drive. Immaculate manicured gardens.

She finds it daunting. Especially as she pottered along the road in her clunked out little second hand Honda. She's scanning house numbers and eventually, she comes to one, set far back from the rest along the street. Perched on its own with a big dark sleek gateway. Evie double checked the slip of paper in her hand - though she's re-read it several times by now. She knows what it says.

Especially because it matches the numbers she can see enshrined in gleaming silver digits on the gate.

1138 Columbia Drive.

Her tummy squirms in anxiousness. She turns the car into the grey paved brick of the entry way. A keypad for her to access by the drivers window. She enters the code and the gates sleekly shudder open. She inches her car in up the drive.

Her jaw hung open.

The road curved up, onto a slight incline. Surrounded by lush impossibly green grass and well trimmed modern garden. Spiked tropical plants and white gravel beds sunk with exotic ferns. And high on the incline at the top, sat a house that wouldn't look out of place as the front page of a home design magazine. She couldn't see much from the road. But now she can see all of it in its entirety.

She has to pump the brakes halfway up and stop just purely to marvel at it's brutal magnificence.

She didn't know what she was expecting Kylo's home to look like. She's not entirely surprised by its basic, barren design. But she is taken aback by how beautiful, and colossal it is.

It was a big, sleek black block. A mid century glass house. An entirely dark edifice. And no wonder it was so closed off from the sight of the road. Floor to ceiling glass showed her big sections of the home within. It was a big three story block that levelled down three times, like stairs. The whole thing from the road was just a square, but behind it one side his back out into an L shape. The longest part now facing her. The drive leading her into a dipped down two-twin garage. Tall eucalyptus bay green trees crowded the house from every angle.

She knew he had an Aston. His prized jet black and very much cherished Aston DBS superleggera. But she wouldn't be surprised to think what couple of other expensive sports cars lurked beyond the conceal of those garage doors. She feels very inadequate parking her second hand clunker on this drive. But she eases into a space. And shuts off the engine.

She climbs out her car, in her sea foam green wrap around chiffon dress. And worn old sandals. And just gazes up at the magnificently dark house that towers above. She just drinks it in. Before she steps up the big white slab of marble steps and up to the front porch. Sunk beds of white gravel hemmed in the porch slabs, a small variety of exotic cactuses and succulents lining the way, not a stone was out of place. It wouldn't dare.

His house fit in perfectly with the polished and gleaming proud houses she's seen lining the road she drove in on.

She can't believe it. He had this exquisitely modern masterpiece of a house. Yet he told her he felt calmer in her shabby little two up, two down shack in the woods. With its peeling wallpaper and squeaky floors. And he had a mansion like this as his home. She could feel cosy here. It must be glorious in the rain and wind. Curling up in the lap of luxury next to a big window on a cool day. Get the fireplace roaring, and a cup of steaming hot tea. And watch the rain fall and fuss on the other side of the glass.