The Library

The car came up the drive at a quarter past twelve, black and long and very clean, the kind my father’s office hires by the day and calls a car.

Duncan was on the steps. I was one step above him, by the green door, because I was not going to stand in the hall and be fetched.

The car stopped. My father got out before the driver could come round. I had done the same thing on this gravel a week ago, and I had thought it was mine, and I watched him do it and understood for the first time where I had got it from.

Gordon Halloway at sixty-four is a tall man in a navy overcoat with silver hair he has never once had to think about. He stood on the gravel and looked up at the house the way I look at a building: the…