The Exiles Read Free

loudly to the pavement. High-tech didn’t mean lightweight. “This thing is going to kill us one of these days.” She slammed the trunk shut. Trevor continued to squirm in Nate’s arms as Emily propped Ollie open. Straightening the wheels, snapping the seat into the chassis—it was all second nature to them by now. Emily slipped the car keys back into Nate’s pocket as he lowered the boy into the carriage.
    Bob Daugherty stood in the door to his office.
    “Just in time. Get the hell inside,” he said, waving Nate, Emily, and the stroller through the entryway. He was all kinetic energy, not the calm rock he’d been the few times Nate had spoken to him previously.
    “It’s good to be here,” Nate said. He followed Bob past the reception area, where the secretary’s seat was deserted. The staff must have been sent home already for the holiday weekend.
    In the inner office, Bob sat behind the desk and Nate lowered himself into a chair in front of it. The desk was ornate, constructed from traditional heavy mahogany, with worn leather accents. The walls of the office—other than the narrow sliver by the door, which was adorned with Bob’s framed diplomas (Bates, UConn)—were erratic, crammed with Japanese silk screens and odd oversize watercolors of Chinese lanterns.
    “Hey, Em?” Nate called to Emily, who sat in the empty reception room with Trevor. “Come in here.” She and Nate were equal owners of the house, both names on the deed. They might not have a marriage license, but now they had a kid and a house to bind them. It was the real thing.
    “Hey,” Emily said as she slunk into the office. “Everything set?”
    “Everything’s fine. Glad you made it in. Holiday traffic can be a bitch in this town,” Bob said. Nate relaxed.
    “It feels like we spent hours on that bridge,” Emily said. “We pretty much eased our way into Newport, but we’re here, at least. We hit a bird.”
    “It’s beautiful, though, that view coming in,” Nate said, giving Emily a brief glance. Bob didn’t need to know about the bird. The bird was fine. “We could have timed it better than Friday at five, for sure,” he said.
    “For sure,” Bob repeated with a tight grin. He passed a folder across the desk and leaned forward, sharp elbows on mahogany. “It’s all in there. Your copies of the paperwork, two sets of spanking-new keys. I’ll be heading away for the weekend, immediately, to be frank, so if you have questions, ask now. Give it all a good read.” On the two front corners of Bob’s desk sat sprawling bonsai trees. Miniature, shrunken topiaries, like Charlie Brown Christmas trees, hopelessly stunted.
    Nate slid the papers out of the envelope and palmed the keys. The papers were warm, but the keys were cold and light, as if crafted from a space-age alloy. He quickly eyed the contract (they’d already combed through it carefully) and then handed it to Emily, who gave it her own compulsory once-over. If the sellers had snuck an insidious clause into the text, Nate and Emily weren’t going to catch it today.
    “I think we’ve already got this; it looks great,” Nate said. “Shit, the house is ours.”
    Bob nodded. “You own a home, kids. Newport’s newest residents, for what it’s worth. That and a quarter will get you, well, nothing.”
    Nate laughed, halfheartedly. Ferguson and Neiman had worked hard to sell Nate on the town, as well as the job. Though both partners lived in Newport only on the weekends, they’d lauded the local school systems (public and private), the summer boating season, the audacious diversity of the year-round residents, and each had said to Nate, separately, “You, of all people, will be impressed by Newport’s architecture.” They hadn’t mentioned Nate’s father by name, never stated outright that the thrill of possibly working with George Bedecker’s son had perhaps, maybe, spurred them to interview Nate in the first place, but Nate understood. He was the son of a