Ryan

Chapter 1 Dane pushed open the front door and stepped into the foyer of his magnificent home. After taking three steps across the black and white tiles, he stopped and looked slowly about—at the table with the vase that usually housed an outlandishly large floral display, at the paintings on the wall and the antique hatstand in the corner behind the door. Things he’d seen a hundred times, a thousand times, and yet now seemed only a little familiar. He continued turning, completing the circle, and as he caught his reflection in the ornate silver mirror where his Aunt Beatrice used to check herself before leaving the house, he stopped and stared into the glass. He hardly recognised himself. He appeared pale, transparent, and soon he disappeared completely to be replaced by scenes of the car accident that had claimed Aunt Beatrice’s life. There was rain. Something, a dog, running out in front of the car. The car skidding. The screeching of tyres, screeching that tore through his mind and rattled his bones. Hands, his hands, frantically gripping the steering wheel, and his foot, pressed down hard on the brake. Somewhere in the distance, screaming. His Aunt Beatrice before her head connected with the dashboard, silencing her forever. He shook his head, trying to shake away the guilt, and found himself gazing, once again, at his own image, the one face he couldn’t bear to look at. He wouldn’t look at. Averting his eyes, he walked across the foyer and disappeared into the heart of the house. The house was U-shaped with a half-Olympic-sized swimming pool nestled between the two prongs of the U. It also featured twin garages, a tropical garden with various large stone heads scattered throughout, and a gazebo with white net curtains, and cushions. There was an outdoor setting by the pool, which sat eight people, and a row of four, stark white sun lounges. Inside, there were no less than fourteen spacious rooms. A considerable number in a single-storey home. There was a formal lounge room, a dining area and a living room forming what his Aunt Beatrice had liked to call the “west wing.” In the middle of the house was the kitchen, with walk-in pantry, a sunroom—where his aunt had been fond of having her breakfast—and two bedrooms, one which Dane had earmarked for conversion into a home gym one of these days. Along the “east wing” were three more bedrooms, two with their own en suite bathrooms, the main bathroom, and the laundry, right at the end. The wall opposite the rooms was ceiling to floor glass, affording the occupant an uninterrupted view of the swimming pool and a good deal of the vast back garden. As Dane wandered through each room in turn, memories of days gone by were everywhere. Memories of Christmas lunches spent at the immense dining table, which almost filled the room. Lazy afternoons by the pool while Aunt Beatrice watched from the sunroom, sipping her iced tea and fanning herself with an antique Chinese fan. When he arrived at the main bedroom, Aunt Beatrice’s room, he grew even more glum. He entered slowly, his eyes on the brass bed with its nest of white pillows edged in lace and the lace-covered quilt where his aunt had slept not fourteen days ago. He walked across the rug to the antique wardrobe and opened it, the rail inside crowded with her dresses and coats. Atop the wardrobe, piled high in large, colourful boxes, were her hats. And he’d seen every one of them. In his twentieth year, he’d become her companion and carer. He’d been at university at the time, studying journalism with a major in electronic media. At the top of his class and hungry to begin a career, he also helped out at the local community newspaper whenever he could. Initially, his position with Aunt Beatrice was to be temporary, until they could find someone permanently, but things didn’t work out that way and he dropped out of university for good. He’d had no regrets. He was still able to write the occasional human interest story, and she paid him handsomely as well as allowing him to live with her rent-free. When he’d insisted he pay something, his aunt had puffed out her chest, a horrified expression materialising on her face. “Charge you rent?” she’d gasped. “Family?” She shook her head. “Whoever heard of such a thing?” He’d shrugged. “I just thought it was the proper thing to do.” His aunt had studied him for a moment. “You, your grandmother—or what’s left of her—and I are all that remains of this family. If I don’t have you to look after me, what do I have? Some stranger skulking around my home, looking in my drawers, and stealing God-knows-what.” She’d got him there. His mother had been born many years after Beatrice, a surprise rather than an accident. When his parents had died in a small plane crash travelling in the outback of Australia, naturally he’d been devastated. With his father’s parents and his mother’s father deceased, and his mother’s mother in a home for dementia patients, Beatrice was, as she’d stated, all the family he had.