Look Closely - Laura Caldwell [84]
The alarm. Shit. I’d forgotten about it.
I stepped inside and quickly crossed the marble foyer to the alarm panel, praying that he hadn’t changed the code. I pressed the numbers that corresponded to my birthday—1013—but the alarm kept up its insistent beeping. Probably only thirty more seconds until it went off. What could he have changed it to? I entered 0102 for my father’s birthday. The alarm continued its warning beep. Was it getting louder? Think, think, think! Caroline’s birthday? What was it? I put in 0418. At least that’s the date I remembered, but the damn thing kept beeping. I knew I had precious few seconds left. What was Dan’s birthday? It was in June, but I couldn’t remember the date. What about Annie? Would he have used her birthday? Did he even know he was a grandfather?
Any second a piercing scream would bring cops running to the house. Think. He always used dates of some sort. At least he had in the past. And then I thought of a date that had been looming in my mind, one that was fast approaching. May 20, the day of my mother’s death. I punched in 0520, and the alarm went silent.
The house was eerily quiet, except for the thump of blood pumping through my body. A deep blue-black had settled over the rooms now that the sun was gone from the windows. A few breaths restored my heartbeat. I cut through the formal living room that we never used, down the long marble hallway to the right, and into my father’s study.
The far wall, made all of glass, overlooked the English garden in the backyard. The two side walls held floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, lined with an array of books—legal and commercial fiction, leather-bound first editions and paperbacks. My father’s decorator had suggested that he keep his paperbacks and the more “user-friendly” books somewhere else in the house, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He loved all of them, he said. All the different volumes mixed and mingled. His books were the one part of his life that my father didn’t keep meticulously organized.
I went to his desk, the place I used to sit when he traveled for work and some babysitter spent the night with me. I would climb up in that red leather chair, careful not to send it flying on the wheels, and I would touch the things he always used—the leather cup with the embossed logo of the University of Chicago Law School, the iron hammerhead from his father that he used as a paperweight, the heavy silver letter opener. These things were all still there. I picked up the hammerhead that was sitting atop a stack of faxes, turning it over in my hand, seeing the words painted on the bottom in red—For Billy. As always, I marveled that my father had ever been called Billy.
I flipped through the faxes and business letters. I vaguely read the trial notes on his desk, the half-written client letters printed out with his pencil-marked corrections. It struck me how few personal documents my father had here. I opened the large file drawer and found his household bills, scrupulously reviewed and filed alphabetically and by date, but there was little else. No postcards from friends, of which he had few, no magazine clippings or journals.
I went through his Rolodex and his address book, but there were no numbers for Dan or Caroline that I could see. Nothing that mentioned Portland or Albuquerque or New Orleans. I pawed through the rest of his drawers distractedly, wondering if he was about to come home any minute, dreading the talk I planned on having with him. One of the bottom drawers was difficult to view, since I’d turned on only the small desk lamp. I moved the lamp over to see in the drawer more clearly. Nothing exciting, just stacks of legal pads and some other office supplies.
I sat up, glanced around the desk once more, feeling achy and tired from too much driving, too much thinking, and the