“It's you,” he said. I stopped walking and smiled at him.
“It is me. Were you waiting for me?”
“You're the man with the nice car.”
“That's right,” I said, laughing. I was a sucker for cars when I was a little boy too. The Aston Martin got a lot of stares, as it should. Some of my first big purchases when I was finally in charge of my own money were cars. If the boy loved this one, he needed to see the one I used in the States.
“Can we go for a ride in your nice car?” he asked.
I laughed. Honestly, in the ten seconds that we had known each other, I was ready to
tallow the little chap to do anything. His toothy little grin was to die for. The hair was unmistakably his mother’s but so was that smile. Just before I handed over the keys and told him to have fun, a woman charged out of the house.
“Riley? Riley. What have you gotten into? You know your mother doesn't like it when you play in the puddles and get yourself muddy.” It was the lady from yesterday, the older woman, the housekeeper. Riley frowned at being scolded.
“You're supposed to be inside cleaning up your toys,” the woman said, taking Riley's hand and heaving him up the porch.
“But the puddles are more fun.” I watched the exchange between the two of them, the woman taking off the child's rain boots and muddy jacket before she let him go into the house. When she was done with him, she finally turned her attention to me.
“Good morning sir, did you have a good night?”
“Quite,” I said.
“Please excuse the child.”
“Not a problem at all. I remember those days myself.”
She chuckled. “He’ll send the few dark hairs I have left grey. You must be hungry. Come inside. Coffee and breakfast are served.”
Was that the child who was supposed to be under the weather? He had made a miraculous recovery in the hours since Eddy told me he was unwell. I walked into the house after the housekeeper and she directed me to the kitchen. The inside of the house bore more resemblance to the outside than I expected. We passed the sitting room on the way to the kitchen, or what I thought was the sitting room because it was almost totally empty. There was barely any furniture inside. Well, that told me why I wasn't directed there yesterday when I showed up. Inside the kitchen, I sat at the small breakfast table and looked around. It looked like a normal kitchen, but on one wall there were two hanging portraits of Eddy and the little boy. Next to them was a rectangle-shaped light patch on the wall where it seemed there used to be a third. That was odd.
“Please, help yourself,” the woman said. I was so distracted looking around, that I momentarily forgot my hunger. She excused herself to clean up the muddy child while I had breakfast.
I just nodded and helped myself to some coffee. There was a nice spread on the table. Eggs, sausages and the biscuits from last night. I wasn’t shy with the jam. The biscuits were delicious. They made me miss being back in the States. I was so ready to go back but then all this happened. Now, I wasn’t in as much of a hurry. I didn’t even care about the watch that we were going to London to retrieve. Now, I was just having fun spending time with Eddy.
She walked into the room as I was pouring my second cup of coffee. Again, it was a few seconds of her being lost in her thoughts before she noticed me.
“You-you’re here,” she said.
“Good morning to you too,” I said. She gave me a small smile and walked towards the table. Since it was the first thing in the morning, I wished I was seeing her in a robe and slippers with no makeup and her hair a mess from bed, but she was dressed.
“Good morning. Did you sleep well?” she asked, pouring herself some coffee. She added cream and sugar to hers.
“Better than I thought I would,” I said. “The mattress was pretty comfortable after all. Either that or I was too tired.” She sat down across the table from me.
“I’m glad you survived,” she said.
“What happened in here?” I asked.
“What?”
“Your sitting room is practically empty. What happened?”
“Oh, I’m just redecorating,” she said.
“Redecorating?”
“I wanted to change the place around a bit, you know, since Russell passed. I feel like this is a good time to change things. Time for a fresh start. He had a terrible eye. Most of the decorating decisions were made decades before I even arrived. You know how it is.”