The Paris Mysteries (Confessions #3)(31)

The front door was open, and Jacob was holding a boy by the shoulder with one hand and by the waistband with the other and shoving him out the door.

Other kids, heavily inked and pierced and made up, music types maybe, grumbled and shouted at Jacob and collected their possessions at their leisure, as Jacob ranted—at Harry.

I got to the ground floor in a hurry. The parlor was trashed. Bottles and bongs and items of clothing were everywhere. The leather furniture was wet and stained. Someone had puked on the carpet.

Harry was sweaty and shirtless—no tattoos, thank God—but he looked wild-eyed, and he was grinning. He was saying, “Jacob, you’re making a big deal out of nothing.”

Picture Jacob’s intense glare as he tried not to smack Harry for talking back.

“Nothing? You didn’t have permission to bring people here.”

“It’s my house, right, Jacob? I mean, it’s a jail, but it’s my jail. You can’t have control over every single thing I do.”

Kids were laughing, leaving the house in singles and pairs. The more the room emptied, the more I saw: smears on the walls, stains on the expensive furniture, beer puddled in the carpets, a broken lamp that had probably been worth ten thousand dollars.

Jacob didn’t even notice that I was there. And now Hugo was standing behind me.

Jacob said to Harry, “You’re an ingrate.”

“I have a producer now,” Harry said. “I have an agent.”

“You could be in an actual jail now,” Jacob said. “You could be waiting for a lawyer to take your case. Hoping he was good enough to get you out on bail.”

“That’s crazy,” said Harry. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

But his face belied what he was saying. His eyes were huge. A tall blond girl walked by, patted his butt, and said in French, “Good party, Harrison. See you very soon, chéri.”

Jacob said to Harry, “Do you understand that I had a life of my own six months ago? I had friends and family and a community of respectable people who held me in high regard.”

“Oh,” said Harry.

Jacob went on, “I volunteered to guide you children, take care of you and protect you. To make sure you got a fair chance at success. I saved your ungrateful butt just this week, Harry. I asked the board not to cut years off your inheritance. I had to beg.”

“I’m sorry, Uncle Jacob.”

“Are you, Harry? Because last week, a friend of yours died. Then you were taken to the hospital because of a weak heart. Now you are taking substances and bringing strangers here while your siblings are in their beds. You are also disgracing the memory of your grandmother.”

“I’m a wretched person, Jake. But I meant no harm.”

The parlor was finally empty. Jacob closed the door and locked it.

“I was never popular,” Harry said. “Now people want to be with me. I recorded my own composition and it aired in Paris. It was a big thing for me, Uncle Jake. How could I say no to people who wanted to celebrate with me?”

“Learn to say no to self-destructive compulsions,” Jacob said. “Be smart, Harry. Make the best of your privileged situation, because in two years, I won’t be your guardian. You will be free to stand on your own feet, or fall down. That will be up to you.

“But not today. In a few hours, you will go to school and you will be on time.”

Harry said, “I’m sorry, Uncle Jake. I really am.”

He plucked his shirt from where it hung on a lamp finial, then passed me and Hugo as he headed up the stairs. I followed him, whispering at him fiercely, “I know you took some of those pills. Why are you lying to me, Harry? I know you. I know you as well as I know myself.”

He didn’t deny it. But then, he didn’t say anything.

God, oh God, I don’t want my brother to die.





Jacob said exactly six words to me as he steered me out of the house the next morning.

“No school today, Tandy. Road trip.”

I asked why, but his body language told me he was in a galaxy far, far away and didn’t even hear me.

We got into Jacob’s tidy white Fiat, and within a couple of minutes we were tearing south through Paris at warp speed. I grabbed on to the armrest on one side and the console on the other and held on tight.

What the hell was this road trip? Where were we going? Could I even trust that I was safe?

I kept my eyes straight ahead, feeling every intersection as a potential collision site, watching for black cars, maybe a bunch of them barricading the road.

Jacob drove like a robot until we hit the outskirts of Paris. Finally, braking the car at a stoplight, he turned to me with a superintense look.

“You want answers, Tandy? You’re going to get answers.”

“What kind of answers?”

“The kind you like. Complicated.”

Well, thanks for clearing that up, Jacob.

The light changed, and we were off again. I read Jacob’s mood as fiercely determined, like whatever we were driving toward was against his better judgment. That scared me a ton.

I juggled hypothetical scenarios as we sped through Fontainebleau, and then the landscape changed and we hit the really rural vineyard area of Thomery. Jacob took dust-raising corners on two wheels and never consulted the GPS.