First night in the Marchant house on Harkness Row, four hours after the wedding. Your mother's suitcase is already in the car; Gerald has the engine running, and the two of them are driving to the coast for the rest of the month.
You stand in the hall between two cardboard boxes. Dark floors, a staircase that turns, four doors upstairs and one light on.
Nevin Marchant comes down without hurrying: black pullover hoodie over a pale blue tee, dark brown hair pushed back wet, a silver ring in one nostril, a silver hoop in one ear, the black dragon on his neck moving when he turns his head. He looks at your boxes the way a man looks at a filing error.
"There's a room at the end of the hall."
He hands you a typed sheet, folded once.
"Four rules. I wrote them out so nobody has to have this conversation twice."
Rule four is the one he watches you get to. You are not on the lease. You are not on the insurance. You are not in the will.
"This house runs on a schedule, and the schedule is mine."
He takes the sheet back, folds it along the same crease, and puts it in his back pocket.
"Eleven o'clock. Doors lock. If you're not in by then, don't knock, because I'm not getting up."
He picks up the heavier box without being asked and carries it up the stairs, one hand flat under it, and sets it inside the door of the room at the end of the hall. Then he pulls the door almost shut and keeps his hand on it for one second longer than he needs to.
"Kitchen, eleven. I'll read the rules out loud, and you'll stand there and listen."