Campus had been looking at him differently all week. Wednesday was just the first day nobody bothered to hide it.
People who had walked past Ethan for a year now looked twice and then tried to pretend they had always looked. A professor called on him without the usual tired patience. A girl from Madison’s row asked if he had transferred in, which was a stupid question and still told him the Physique was doing what he paid for.
Madison sat three seats over and did not say anything. She watched him like Sunday was still in her body and the new face had made it worse.
Ryan caught him after class, once the hall had thinned out.
"Walk with me. I don’t want to do this in a doorway."
They walked.
"I had dinner with my father last night. He asked who you were working for."
Ethan kept going. "I’ve been walking listings. That’s not a secret."
"I told him you live in Veronica’s house. I told him you’re taking work from her friends. I told him the mixer made more sense after that."
A couple of students passed. Ryan waited.
"He’s going to call someone. Sophia, or her. I don’t know which."
"If the story is that I have a job and I didn’t take her money, that’s a short call."
Ryan shook his head a little. "That’s not the story he heard. He heard a kid from that house looking like a different person, working for a woman he already doesn’t like. I didn’t have to add much."
Ethan didn’t answer him.
"Anyway," Ryan said. "It’s moving. I wanted you to know."
He took the stairs.
[Ryan Mitchell]
[Move made: donor talk]
[Not a fight. A leak.]
Isabella was on the porch when he got home, phone in her lap, shoes already off.
"You took forever. I was going to make a joke and then I sat here too long."
Ethan sat down beside her.
"Alexandra thinks you and Mom fought about work," she said. "I let her think that."
"Then let her."
"I have been. It’s not really working." Isabella looked at the street. "She can’t stay in a room with you. You come in and she finds something else to look at. I hear her on the stairs at night. I’m not making that up."
"You don’t have to do anything with it."
"That’s easy for you to say." She picked at her sleeve and stopped. "I’m already covering at breakfast and I don’t even know what I’m covering. If this is about Sophia’s building, fine. If it’s something else, I wish one of you would just say so."
The front door shifted in the frame, then went still.
"Ryan told his father," Ethan said. "That’s the call that’s coming."
Isabella let out a breath. "Of course he did. You get a job and start looking like that in the same week. He was going to use it."
"I didn’t do it for him."
"I know." She knocked her knee against his, not quite a joke. "Eat at the table tonight. Don’t take a plate upstairs. I can handle Alexandra. I can’t handle both of you disappearing."
He nodded.
"That’s all I’m getting, isn’t it." She stood up. "Fine. Just sit down and eat."
Dinner was quiet in the way this house got when nobody wanted the first real question.
Alexandra talked about an email her professor had not answered. Isabella said the department was like that and passed the salt. Veronica cut her food and waited until there was a gap.
"Did the inspection go all right, or is Sophia going to tell me something different?"
"He found what I wrote. He found a flue cap in the basement I missed. I told her."
Alexandra nodded like that was the safe part. "Then she should be glad you were there."
"She hired him to work," Veronica said. "That’s all I asked."
She did not ask about Reeve. When Alexandra got up for water, Veronica kept her voice low.
"David Mitchell called my office. He didn’t leave a real message. Just his name. If this is about you working for Sophia, I can handle it. If it’s about you living here and walking in looking different every other day, I need something I can actually say."
Ethan set his fork down.
"I have a job. I have money that didn’t come from you. He can have that. He doesn’t get this house."
Veronica looked at him, then at her plate.
"That’s clean. It isn’t everything. I’m not doing the rest of it at this table."
Alexandra came back with the water and paused.
"If this is a Mitchell thing, I can take Isabella in early tomorrow. You don’t have to tell me why."
"It’s dinner," Veronica said. "Eat."
Isabella asked Alexandra about the email again and let the table go back to that.
[House Fallout]
[Isabella: covering, not fooled]
[Alexandra: offering cover without the facts]
[Veronica: withdrawn, now on a clock]
[Ryan: leak live]
[Next useful door: Madison, if she comes]
[Do not thaw the office.]
Ethan ate.
The week was getting expensive in the way he had wanted. It was also getting closer to a room Veronica would have to walk into with David Mitchell’s name already on the table.
That was fine.
He had money now. He could walk into that room too.