Chapter 7 - The House on Pacific Heights
The house on Broadway sat high on the ridge of Pacific Heights, where the streets were lined with century-old London planes and the bay windows looked out across the water toward Alcatraz and the Marin headlands. It was a four-story shingle-style house built in 1912, with deep white eaves, leaded glass transoms, and a wide brick terrace surrounded by wild hydrangeas that smelled of salt and rain.
Michael had bought it eight years ago after his mother died. He had spent two years renovating it, putting in radiant heating beneath the old oak floors, building a library with ten thousand books he rarely had time to read, and installing a kitchen designed for someone who loved to cook for large families.
He had lived in it alone.
A housekeeper, an Irish woman named Mrs. Higgins who had known Michael since his first startup in an attic on Fourth Street, met them at the front door. She had been woken by Thomas’s call thirty minutes earlier. She wore a wool cardigan over her apron, her grey hair pinned back, and she did not ask a single question when she saw the three little girls standing on the Persian rug in the foyer, their wet socks leaving small grey smudges on the wool.
"The second floor is ready, Michael," Mrs. Higgins said, her voice brisk, warm, and entirely practical. "The two guest rooms have the fires lit. The water is hot in the big tub. And I made a pot of oatmeal with brown sugar and cream if they have room for it."
"They have room," Michael said.
Emma walked into the library, her taped shoe silent on the parquet. She stopped in front of the fireplace, where three birch logs were burning with a clean, sweet fragrance. She held out her small hands toward the flames, her eyes wide, watching the sparks rise into the chimney.
"Is this a castle?" she asked.
"No, Emma," Michael said, setting the insulated bags from Lucent Sky on the long oak table. "It's just a house."
"Do you have a little girl?" Lily asked, looking around at the walls of books.
"No," Michael said. "I don't."
"Why?"
"Because I was busy," Michael said, the words coming out before he could filter them. "I spent a long time working on things that didn't have names, and by the time I stopped, there wasn't anyone here."
Scarlet looked at him from the doorway. She had not let go of the three plastic horses in her pocket. "Our dad was busy too. But he always came home for the Sunday biscuits. Until the trees burned."
Michael knelt down so he was at her eye level again. "Your father was a good man, Scarlet. Anyone can see that by looking at how you take care of your sisters."
Scarlet’s lower lip trembled. It was the first sign of weakness the seven-year-old had shown all evening. She did not cry, but she took one step forward, reached out her small, cold hand, and laid it against Michael’s cheek, her fingers light as a leaf.
"Your face is warm," she said.
"That's because the wind stopped," Michael told her.
Mrs. Higgins appeared at the door with three large white bath towels that smelled of lavender and sun-dried cotton. "Come along, little ones. Let's get that Sixth Street soot out from behind your ears. There’s warm water up to the brass taps, and bubbles that smell like pears."
Clara looked at Michael. Her eyes were red, the skin around them tight with forty-eight hours of terror and twelve hours of steam-plant heat. "Mr. Willoughby... why are you doing this? Nobody does this. Not in this city. People look right through us on the street. They step over us on the stairs. Why us?"
May you like
Michael stood up. He walked to the window that looked out over the black water of the bay, where the lights of Sausalito were glittering like spilled salt on velvet.
"Because forty-two years ago, a man told me that his bakery wasn't St. Vincent de Paul," Michael said quietly. "And I promised myself that if I ever grew up to have bread, I would never let another child stand in the cold asking for a crust while men in gray suits ate turbot."
