CHAPTER TWELVE

Xavier’s POV

I came back from Thailand with several unread reports, a fourteen-hour time difference still sitting behind my eyes and the particular exhaustion of a man who had spent three weeks closing a deal that should have taken two while fielding daily calls from Kingsley Sinclair about a wedding timeline I had no interest in discussing from a different continent.

The penthouse felt too quiet when I landed. Too organized, like a space maintained rather than lived in. I had a driver, a housekeeper who came twice a week, and a refrigerator that contained exactly the things my nutritionist had approved, but nothing I actually wanted to eat after a fourteen-hour flight.

I stayed at the penthouse for two days before I decided to visit the estate. I hadn’t called ahead, I rarely did when I came to the estate, it was still my grandfather’s house more than any other definition and it was also the closest place to home since my father died. Calling ahead to your own home felt like a formality that belonged to a different kind of relationship than the one my grandfather and I had maintained across thirty years of understanding each other imperfectly but consistently.

The gates opened on recognition of my plate. The gravel drive was empty except for Margaret’s small car and a vehicle I didn’t recognize, a modest silver sedan parked near the side entrance with a car seat visible through the rear window.

I sat in my car for a moment looking at it. I couldn’t remember the last time a child had been brought to this estate for any reason that wasn’t a formal family occasion, and even then, children were a peripheral presence at Beaumont gatherings, seen briefly, managed efficiently and returned to their parents before any real impression was made.

The entrance hall was quiet when I went inside, the familiar smell of old wood and the stillness of a large house setting into its afternoon hours. I dropped my bag on the couch.

Then, I heard laughter coming from the east corridor, specifically, from the direction of the library, which was why it sounded strange to me, because the library was one of the rooms my grandfather maintained with reverence that was always communicated, it was not a space for noise or carelessness. I had understood that as a boy through one memorable incident involving a football and a first-edition shelf, and the consequences of that action had stayed with me ever since.

Whoever was in that library had not received the same instruction.

I followed the corridor, andI found the library door open. I stopped in the doorway and look at the scene playing out before either occupant noticed me.

Arthur, my grandfather was in his reading chair, upright and alert in the way he rarely managed this late in the afternoon, his newspaper folded on the side table beside him, his full attention directed at the small boy sitting cross-legged on the library floor three feet away from him. The boy had commandeered what appeared to be an entire shelf’s worth of books, arranged in an elaborate configuration around him that I couldn’t immediately identify as structure but he was clearly very invested in it.

He was talking while he built, a continuous, confident narration of his own process that required no encouragement and no audience response, just a voice that had apparently decided the room needed filling and had taken on the responsibility enthusiastically.

Margaret stood near the far bookshelf, arranging some books on the lower shelves with the expression of a woman who had made peace with the reorganization of a room she had maintained in careful order for decades.

Arthur looked up first.

His expression when he saw me was not the surprise I would have expected from an unannounced arrival.

“Xavier,” he said. “I didn’t know you were back.”

“Two days ago,” I said, stepping into the library.

The boy looked up at the sound of my voice.

I noticed his face in pieces, the way you notice something that catches you off guard, feature by feature rather than all at once.

His dark eyes, sharp and immediately alert, a jaw that was still soft with childhood but carried a structure underneath it that would harden into a specific face in another decade. The way he tilted his head slightly to the right as he assessed me, a small, unconscious angle of consideration. I knew that angle. That was me, exactly the mini me!

The boy showed none of the shyness most children produced around strangers. He simply looked at me with the same directness he probably gave everything, sizing me up with a frankness that was almost funny under different circumstances.

“Are you Xavier?” he asked.

I looked at my grandfather. He looked back at me with the same watchful expression, giving nothing away and waiting with the patience of a man who had decided the scene needed to play out at its own pace.

“I am,” I said, returning my attention to the boy.

“Arthur talks about you,” he said, apparently satisfied by the confirmation, and went back to his book structure without further ceremony, the way children moved on from things that had delivered their expected information.

I walked further into the room and sat into the chair across from my grandfather’s, the one nearest to the window, my eyes still moving between the boy and my grandfather with a question I hadn’t yet found the right words for.

“This is Bryan,” my grandfather said, with a quietness that carried more weight than the introduction warranted. “He’s been spending some weekends with me.” He smiled sheepishly at that, and I wondered what was funny.

Bryan looked up again at the sound of his name, offered me a brief, assessing look, decided I was not immediately interesting and returned to his books.

I watched him for a long moment. The structure he was building had reached four levels now, the books stacked with more precision than I’d given him credit for from across the room, each one placed with the particular concentration of a child who took his own projects seriously regardless of whether anyone else did.

He picked up the next book without looking at the spine and added it to the structure, the movement so casually certain that the angle of his wrist and the slight furrow of focus between his brows hit me somewhere I didn’t have an immediate name for.

I looked at my grandfather, he was watching me too, the way he had been watching me since I walked into the library, not with urgency, rather with the pointed impatience of someone waiting for a reaction. He kept quiet and held the attention of a man who was in no hurry because he had already arrived at a conclusion and was simply waiting to see how long it took everyone else to catch up.

I looked back at the boy on the library floor.

Bryan had become aware, with the boundary sensitivity of a child accustomed to being observed, that I was still looking at him. He glanced up once more, met my eyes without flinching, and said with the simple confidence of someone stating a fact rather than making conversation:

“Your grandfather has better books than my school library.”

“Does he,” I said.

“Yeah.” He returned to his structure. “He lets me rearrange them too.”

I turned to look at the shelf Margaret was quietly reorganizing in the background. Then back at my grandfather. My grandfather had the expression of a man trying very hard not to look pleased with himself and failing at the effort.

I said nothing.

There was nothing to say yet, not until I understand exactly what was going on in this space, because it feels like I’m the only person left out in all of these.

My eyes drifted back to Bryan, still seated in the middle of the floor with the settled comfort of someone who had already decided he belonged there.

But the resemblance lingered on in my mind, to make it worse, no amount of rational explanation I reached for made it lie flat.

Maybe it’s just a coincidence. After all, there are lots of people out there with thesame face.

Those were the exact words I convinced myself with.