Private Property (Rochester Trilogy 1)

That doesn’t even earn me a glance. Baltic Avenue. Mediterranean Avenue. She can barely restrain her glee when she lands on one of those. Bloodthirsty little thing.

“I’m hungry,” she says.

“We just ate.”

“I’m still hungry.”

There wasn’t a large amount of the lobster stew today. The bowl is empty, and Mrs. Fairfax already left for the day. “Do you want a Pop-Tart?”

“No,” she says, drawing out the word. “Mac and cheese.”

“Okay.” I’m no chef, but I can make this happen with a blue box. I head into the kitchen and pull out the butter, the milk. I’m heating up water in the pan when I peek back into the dining room. Empty. The real estate cards fan out on the table.

There’s no Paige in sight. No kitten, either.

Shit. It’s not the first time she’s snuck from the room. She’s quiet and stealthy, but usually I’m able to keep track of her. Aside from folding her laundry and organizing the papers for her schoolwork, it’s my only job. Now she’s gone.

Probably because I asked her to do schoolwork. This isn’t a coincidence.

I head down the expansive hallway, peeking into each of the large sitting areas and come up empty. Hmm. Next I go upstairs to her room to see if she decided to curl up in bed.

Her room is empty.

The room next door that holds her desk—also empty.

I try a few of the doors since I’m up here and find only spare rooms like mine. A few of the doors are locked. And in one last, random attempt, I peek into my own room. Nope, no one here. I even check the bathroom, in case Paige brought the kitten here to use the litter box.

From here I can see through the window to the outside.

Rain comes down in thick, uneven droplets.

Where could she be?

In a terrible but necessary repeat, I check all the same places again. The room where I left her—this time, under the couch and behind the armoire. The other rooms, calling her name. The dining room. The kitchen.

“Kitten,” I call in a high voice. “Kitten, where are you?”

Paige has refused to name the kitten, and I can’t do it since I already offered her the privilege. So the kitten is called kitten. Sometimes she meows when you call her that.

Silence. It’s like I’m in the house alone.

A shiver runs down my spine.

I go upstairs again and check her bedroom, her school room, my bedroom. I even check the strange bedroom with the watch and teacup—empty. I break the rules and check the attic. Nothing.

Finally, in desperation, I reach Mr. Rochester’s study door.

I hear a low voice coming through. “There’s no way I can make it to check the building myself. I don’t care how important it is. It’s not happening. I’m stuck here in goddamn Maine on a goddamn life raft, because it doesn’t ever stop raining. So you and the rest of those lawyers getting paid five hundred dollars an hour will just have to do your fucking jobs and figure it out.”

I knock on the ornately carved door and open.

He turns to face me. “What?” he asks, brusque and annoyed.

“Have you seen Paige?” I ask, knowing that he’ll censure me for losing track of her. And worse, he should censure me. I know better than to leave her alone for even a minute. An ordinary six-year-old girl? Sure. She could survive on her own while you make mac and cheese. One reeling from loss and angry at the world? That’s a different story.

“You don’t know where she is?” he asks, slamming his phone on the desk. “You misplaced her like a sock in the goddamn dryer? Please explain to me what I’m paying you for.”

“Listen. You can be angry at me, you can hate me. You can fire me, but right now I just need to find her. So I’m assuming you haven’t seen her. I’ll keep looking.”

He lets out a growl of frustration and follows me through the hallway and down the stairs. “Did you check the living room with the fireplace? She likes to hide underneath the chairs there.”

“Already checked.”

“What about the pantry? Those Pop-Tarts—”

“I came from the kitchen. She’s not there.”

“Her room? She can slip away and end up taking a nap.”

I whirl on him. “So what you’re saying is that you already know she has a habit of sneaking away and hiding, and you didn’t bother to warn me about it?”

He looks grim. “I thought it was only me she’d hide from.”

The innate sadness of that statement makes my heart clench. But the unease I’ve been feeling at her absence turns into acute worry. The fact that she has a history of hiding makes it clear she’s an expert at this. Maybe she’s decided to try a new hiding spot.

I glance again at the windows. “What if she went outside?”