And concerned, I realized.
“Are you all right?” he asked quietly, stepping close and peering down at me in the bright sunlight.
I nodded and held up my cup. “Just trying to clear my head.” I stared up at him and felt my throat tighten. I laughed and looked away.
“What?” he asked me, and I heard the uneasiness in his deep voice. I understood why. My laugh had sounded brittle. Odd. He probably worried I was going mad.
Just like Elizabeth.
“Nothing. I was just thinking about how we’d probably make coffee even if a nuclear bomb dropped nearby,” I said thickly, blinking unwanted tears out of my eyes and taking a giant gulp of my coffee, burning my throat to distract myself. He didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he touched the inside of my elbow lightly.
“That’s how this feels to you, isn’t it? Like a bomb has dropped on your life.”
I tried to laugh it off, but it sounded like I was choking. I felt him taking my coffee cup out of my hand. He put his arms around me, his chin resting on my head.
“I’m so sorry. God, I’m sorry, Anna.”
We just stood there, my arms at my sides, his arms wrapped around me in the warm sunshine, until I brought myself under control. I sniffed and snuck my hand between our bodies, wiping off an unwanted tear or two from my face. He must have sensed me breaking the connection, because he loosened his hold on me and backed away.
“Will you come into the office? I want to talk to you about something.” He waved behind him, and I saw the opened French doors that led to his office. I hadn’t entirely been aware of walking out onto the terrace, or where I’d gone. But I’d stopped at the stone parapet just outside of his office.
I followed him inside, thinking how strange it was, entering the male room from this door. Same room, different perspective.
The world turned upside down, I thought, and nearly laughed out loud again.
All traces of hysterical humor vanished when I saw the wooden box on his desk, just where I’d set it the other night. I experienced a strange sense of time stretching into eternity and then collapsing closed violently, like a snapped rubber band.
“It could not have been only two nights ago that I put that thing on your desk,” I muttered.
“Where did you find it?”
“I didn’t. The work crew did while they were doing demolition in the viewing room. One of them brought it up to the kitchen, and Valeria showed it to me later.”
“You opened it,” Evan stated flatly rather than asked.
I nodded.
“I’m sorry. Again,” he exhaled in obvious frustration. “Always.”
I didn’t say anything for a moment. My emotions were bubbling up to the surface again. I wasn’t as calm as I’d convinced myself I was.
“You apologize. Does that mean you had something to do with it? The box?” I asked him.
“No, of course not. The things in that box were from Elizabeth’s domain, not mine.”
“Then why did you apologize?”
“You know why. Because I brought you here. I exposed you to it all.”
“Could you put it away?” I asked, my voice sounding unusually high.
“Of course,” he said, moving quickly. I saw him whisk Elizabeth’s box—the Sex Box—as I’d come to think of it in my mind, off his desk and open a cabinet all through the periphery of my vision.
“I’ll get rid of it later,” Evan said a moment later.
“You shouldn’t,” I said, turning to face him. He stood behind his desk. I noticed his questioning look. “Get rid of it. Maybe there’s some kind of proof on those discs.”
“Proof?” Evan asked blankly.