Escape the Night by Richard North Patterson Page A

will have our name on them.”
    â€œSo other people can see it?”
    John Carey didn’t answer: Peter felt consumed by the blackness of his stare. Then a small smile crossed his face. “We’ll come again. There’s something else I want to show you.”
    They went to the car. John Carey nodded curtly at the chauffeur. “Drive us to the firm.”
    An hour later they stopped in front of a twenty-story building of slate-gray stone jutting upward from the corner of Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. On its exposed side, towering over the ruckus of Fifth Avenue, “Van Dreelen & Carey” was lettered in outsized gold script, glistening in the late afternoon sunlight. The building’s front was of an elaborate French design, with a mansard roof and black wrought-iron railings around the upper office windows, its elegant glass doorway—surrounded by more windows filled with John Carey’s hardback books—topped by ornate gold-painted filigree and the same gold lettering, “Van Dreelen & Carey,” that Peter recognized from the book he held. “Is that our name, too?”
    â€œYes.”
    They stared up at it from the sidewalk. Chill fall winds brushed Peter’s face. “Do we own this building, Grandpa?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œDid we always?”
    â€œNo—not always. Men named Van Dreelen owned it once—your Grandmother Carey’s family.” John Carey turned, palms extended toward Peter. “I got these calluses shoveling coal into their furnace.”
    â€œ Then you bought it.”
    â€œYes—a long time later.”
    Peter thought of his father, the way he had of sometimes looking over his shoulder, as if someone were pursuing him. “Do other people want it, too?”
    â€œYes.” John Carey’s face was hard. “But I won’t ever let them take it from us.”
    Peter looked back at the lettering above the door. “How come my daddy never brought me here before?”
    John Carey did not answer.
    Peter felt puzzled. “Does he love this building, too, Grandpa?”
    For a long, silent moment, John Carey turned to stare at it. “I don’t know.”
    â€œThen why do you? ”
    John Carey kept staring at the building, motionless, gripping Peter’s hand. In a fierce near-whisper, he said, “Because it’s ours .”
    The hoarseness in his grandfather’s voice made Peter somehow afraid. Timidly, he asked, “Are you much older than my daddy?”
    â€œYes, John Peter, I am.” John Carey’s eyes were still fixed on the building. “Why?”
    Peter could not say what he knew only by instinct: that no one had driven horses or stoked furnaces for a long time, that his grandfather moved more slowly now, as if the movements were from memory and the memory was failing, that his face became redder when they had to hurry across a street, that it was autumn and leaves fell from their trees, that there was no Grandmother Carey and no one ever spoke of her, that old voices sounded lonely. “Don’t worry, Grandpa. I’ll take care of your building for you.”
    John Carey knelt abruptly on the sidewalk, clasping Peter’s shoulders and staring into his eyes. “What made you say that?”
    â€œI will .”
    â€œThen why did you ask about your father?”
    Still Peter couldn’t say. He touched the lines on his grandfather’s face. “Because you have cracks . Daddy only has little cracks near his eyes.”
    John Carey was silent. Then he smiled. “What does your Daddy play with you?”
    â€œSometimes he chases me, in the park.”
    It frightened Peter when John Carey started trying to chase him like his father: Peter saw that it was much too late.
    His grandfather would run and then pull up, wheezing and red-faced. A worried Peter stopped asking if they could run; disappointed, his grandfather would challenge him.