Page 53 of Shades of Grey & Gold

The man driving nods. He has dark, slicked back hair and his face looks rough, both with age and something else I can’t place. I catch his eyes in the rearview mirror, and they crinkle deeply at the edges as he smiles at me.

“You gonna introduce us to your friend, boss?”

His accent is thick, but his tone is almost jolly. The guy next to him groans and scrubs his hand down his face.

He is younger than the driver but still looks to be in his thirties. His hair is lighter and he shakes his head with a sigh.

“What friend?” is Cal’s ice-cold response. “I only see the both of you and me in this car. What about you, Gio, you see anyone else in this car?”

“Nope,” the younger man agrees. “That’s all I see, too, boss.”

The air seems to go cold as both men straighten, all joking sucked from the cab.

My throat bobs with a hard swallow and I blink, trying to stop my eyes from widening.

Cal alluding to me being off limits as a subject of discussion doesn’t stop the discussion between the two men at the front, though. I listen as they discuss lunch plans, arguing over what restaurant has better pasta while Cal stares out his own window as we drive.

Unsure if regret is swimming in my stomach or their discussion has just made me hungry, I look down at my lap. Cal has been gone for years. But he also wasn’t gone, because he was at Ellison. And when he wasn’t at Ellison, he was here—in Providence.

“Stay in the car,” Cal says as the SUV pulls through iron gates up to a house that is warm, large and looks like something out of a movie about people who have family dinners that last four to six hours.

“With two strangers? No.”

He turns to look at me and I’m already unbuckling.

“No offense,” I say, leaning forward slightly toward the two men in the front, “to either of you fine gentlemen.”

The older one in the driver’s seat makes a sound that might be a laugh. The younger one keeps his eyes forward.

Cal looks at the ceiling of the car. He takes a breath that a person takes when they are collecting significant patience.

“Cal.”

Another breath. “Fine.” He opens his door and circles to mine to open it. “But remember—”

I step out and he shuts the car door behind me. “No names, I know, I remember, it was very clear in the car there that I’m invisible.”

“No names,” he says it again quietly, just for me, as we walk up the front path. His hand finds the small of my back, his fingertips pressing softly in a way that feels natural now as he steers me gently toward the door. “And stay close to me.”

“Is there danger behind this fancy, suburban door, Cal?”

The door opens before we reach it.

The woman standing in the doorway is in her mid-fifties, with dark hair pulled up high on her head, and Cal’s exact smile and the golden-green eyes that I have apparently been drooling over for nine years. She’s wearing an apron. It has flour on it.

She sees Cal and her hands fly to her face.

“Calogero—” the unfamiliar word comes out like a prayer and a scolding simultaneously. She steps forward and takes his face in both her hands, pulling him in the doorway and looking at him the way mothers look at children they have been worrying about. “You didn’t tell me you were coming! I would have made lunch. You look thin. Are you eating? You’re not eating. You never eat when you’re away, I can tell every single time—”

Then she sees me.

Her hands drop from his face.

Her eyes go very wide and I stop one step into the threshold.

And then she makes a sound that I can only describe as the sound of a woman whose prayers have been answered in a way she didn’t expect but absolutely accepts. Something between a sob and a shriek.

“Oh—” She steps around Cal entirely; she even makes a show of pushing him out of the way as if he has ceased to exist. “Oh, look at you!”