RUINED BY DESIGN

I'm really happy, Sera

"You say that like it means something."

"It means everything," he said.

The wind came off the water and moved between us and I was intensely, acutely aware of how close he was standing, close enough that his arm was an inch from mine on the stone wall, close enough that if either of us moved slightly—

I got up.

"Goodnight," I said.

He didn't move. Just looked at me with that patient, certain expression, "goodnight, Sera," low and even, my name in his mouth like something he owned.

I went inside.

I stood in the hallway with my back against the cold stone wall and my eyes closed and my heart doing something completely unreasonable, and I told myself very firmly that I was not falling for this, that I was not that foolish, that I was not going to be the girl who looked at all the evidence and chose the wrong thing anyway.

I told myself that three times.

I went back outside.

He was still there, exactly where I'd left him, looking at the water, and when I came through the door he didn't turn around, didn't look surprised, just waited, like he'd known I would.

That infuriated me most of all.

"I need to understand something," I said, coming to stand beside him again, closer this time, not quite touching but close enough that the inch of air between his arm and mine felt charged, "the wall, the photographs, Edinburgh, Lisbon — what was it, what were you doing, what exactly was the plan?"

He turned to look at me.

"You," he said simply, "you were the plan."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only honest one." He turned to face me fully now, and the last light was completely gone and the sea was black and the space between us was very small and his voice was very quiet, "I saw you once, years ago, and I made a decision, and everything after that was just the distance between the decision and this moment."

***

His name was Reiss, I didn't know that at first, I heard it the way you hear things in that house — in fragments, through gaps, a word cut short when I walked into a room, a name spoken once between Dorian and Marco in the hallway before they saw me and the conversation died instantly, both of them looking at me with the particular stillness of men who had just remembered I existed.

"Sorry," I said, "am I interrupting."

"No," Dorian said, and went back to whatever he'd been saying in a lower register I couldn't follow.

I went to the kitchen and stood at the counter and turned the name over and I saw that same name, Reiss.

Three days later I found the newspaper, it was left open on the kitchen counter, small article, bottom of page six, it said a Belgian businessman had been found in his car outside Brussels with a single gunshot wound to the head, there had been no suspects, and police were still investigating. It was followed by a photograph of man in his mid-fifties, heavy-set, the kind of face that looked like it had made a lot of money making a lot of compromises.

I read it twice before Dorian sudden came into the kitchen. He crossed the room and folded it closed in one smooth motion, without any comment or explanation, and set it on the counter before opening the fridge.

"Was that him," I said.

He took out the orange juice.

"Dorian."

"Leave it, Sera."

"Was that Reiss."

He poured his juice and looked at me across the counter and said nothing, which was everything.

My hands were very still on the folded newspaper, "did you—" I stopped, looked at his face, at those steady eyes that gave me nothing and everything simultaneously, "did you do it."

"No."

"But you know who did."

A pause one beat too long.

"Leave it," he said again, quietly, finally, the voice he used when a conversation was over whether I agreed or not, and I left it.

I walked out of the kitchen and up the stairs and stood in my room with my back against the closed door.

I stayed in my room for two hours, then I came back down for dinner and sat at the table. I passed the bread and talked to my mother about her garden while watching Dorian cut his food. He must have eliminated so many people or order their elimination, because he looked totally unbothered.

***

Marco arrived the next morning without warning. It was different this time, there were no private words in the kitchen doorway and no quiet warning, he came in fast and went directly to the study, closing the door behind him with carefulness. After that, I heard voices and something about the energy of it made me put down my book and sit very still and listen, they talked for twenty minutes before the door flew open and Marco came. When he did, he was different, it felt like he had fear in him, and when he saw me in the library doorway he stopped.

"Go somewhere," he said, low and fast, "today, take your mother, go into town, spend the day, don't come back until evening."

"What's happening."

"Sera." He said my name like he knew me that well, "I'm not asking."

I looked past him at the study door, still closed, "is he—"

"He's fine, he's always fine, it's everyone around him that isn't." He looked at me with those complicated eyes, "please," he said, and it was the please that moved me, Marco didn't strike me as a man who said please easily or often.

So, without arguement, I took my mother to town.

We spent four hours in the village, from a coffee store to a bookshop, and lunch at the place on the harbour she liked. she was happy and bright and talked about the wedding flowers for forty minutes. I sat across from her and smiled and laughed and thought about Dorian's face, thought about Reiss, thought about a name cut short in a hallway.

On the drive back she said, "you seem distracted lately."

"Just tired."

"Is it the house? I know it's a lot, it took me a while too—"

"Mom." I looked at her sideways, at the profile I'd known my whole life, "are you happy."

She glanced at me, surprised, "yes," she said, simply, completely, the way she said things she didn't have to think about, "I'm really happy, Sera."