“What man, Euan?” I asked, my voice barely louder than the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen.
“The man with the heavy watch,” Euan said. “He lived in the house with the red bricks.”
My husband Roger had only one business partner with a house like that, a place with tall white columns just three miles down the county road. Arthur had been the one who delivered the news about the sudden fever at the clinic while Roger was still in the hospital with his own failing heart.
“Did Arthur keep you there?” I asked.
“He told me I could never go back to the brick house,” Euan whispered. “But I ran out when he went to the store.”
He curled his legs up under himself on the sofa, his knees knocking against his chest. He looked around the room as if he expected someone to reach out of the corners and pull him back into the dark.
“He kept me in the room with the green rug,” Euan said. “There was a lock on the outside of the door.”
