Chapter 31 - Uncle Dean

Chapter 31: Chapter 31 - Uncle Dean

The man led Jesse through a narrow hallway lit by a single flickering bulb, then down a steep concrete staircase that seemed to go on longer than it should have.

The air grew cooler with every step. It smelled like old brick and machine oil, with a faint trace of something clean underneath. Lemon, maybe. Jesse kept one hand on the cold metal railing and tried not to think about how nobody in the world knew where he was right now.

At the bottom of the stairs was another steel door.

The security man punched a code into a keypad beside it. Something clunked heavily inside the wall. He pushed the door open and stepped aside.

"In you go."

Jesse hesitated in the doorway.

The man waited. He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t need to.

Jesse took a breath and walked in.

He stopped two steps inside.

He’d been expecting a basement. Damp concrete, a metal desk, a bare bulb, maybe some filing cabinets.

Instead, it was like he’d walked into a dollhouse.

Everything was perfectly, almost unbearably symmetrical. The room was painted in soft, muted tones of dusty pink and pale mint green. Two identical brass lamps sat on two identical side tables on either side of a long walnut desk. Two identical bookshelves stood against opposite walls, their spines arranged in color order from red to violet. A row of framed botanical prints ran across the back wall, each one exactly the same distance from the next. Even the rug had a pattern that mirrored itself perfectly down the middle.

There wasn’t a single thing out of place. Not a pen, not a paperclip, not a speck of dust.

It looked like a set from a Wes Anderson film.

And sitting dead center behind the desk, perfectly framed by everything around him, was a man.

He was thin, with silver hair that fell neatly to just above his shoulders, parted precisely down the middle. He wore a tailored gray suit with a pale pink pocket square and a pair of thin wire-rimmed prescription glasses. His hands were folded on the desk in front of him, fingers interlaced.

He was staring at Jesse.

Behind the glasses, his eyes were the palest blue Jesse had ever seen. Almost silver. The kind of eyes that didn’t seem to belong to this world, eyes that looked at you like you were a problem waiting to be solved.

Jesse knew those eyes.

He hadn’t seen them in thirteen years. But he’d know them anywhere.

The man tilted his head slightly. When he spoke, his voice was soft, careful and precise, every word measured out.

"Jesse?"

He said it like he was testing an equation. Checking the math twice to make sure the answer was right.

Jesse felt something tighten in his throat.

"Uncle Dean."

Dean Monroe’s face changed.

The careful stillness broke, and something bright and almost childlike came over his features. He sat up straighter. His folded hands came apart, then pressed flat on the desk, then came back together again.

"Jesse." He said it again, surer this time. "Jesse Byrne. You’re Jesse Byrne."

"It’s me."

Uncle Dean. It had been years since Jesse called anyone that. Jamie Byrne didn’t have a brother, just a sister, Aunt Celeste, who had never really been in the picture. So when Jesse was little, the quiet man in the gray cardigan who sat in the corner at his parents’ parties and taught him to count in binary had become Uncle Dean.

Dean had never seemed to mind. He’d seemed to like it, actually. It was one of the few times Jesse ever saw him smile.

He was smiling now.

The security man was still standing in the doorway, watching the two of them with a frown. He looked from Dean to Jesse and back again, clearly confused. Jesse got the feeling that his boss didn’t light up like that for anybody.

"Duncan," Dean said without looking away from Jesse. "Thank you. You can give us some space now, please."

Duncan hesitated. "You sure, boss?"

"I’m sure. Jesse is family."

Duncan gave Jesse one more long, measuring look. Then he nodded.

"I’ll be right outside. Tap the button on your desk if you need me."

He stepped out. The heavy steel door swung shut behind him with a soft, solid click.

"Sit," Dean said. "Please. Sit down."

He gestured at a chair on the other side of the desk. There were two of them, identical, positioned perfectly symmetrically. Jesse took the one on the left. He noticed Dean’s eyes follow the movement and saw him relax very slightly once Jesse was seated.

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Dean was studying his face. Not casually, the way people normally look at each other, but intently, with total concentration. His eyes moved over Jesse’s features slowly, from his forehead to his nose to his eyes to his jaw and back again, like he was working through a hard math problem he couldn’t quite solve and couldn’t stop thinking about.

"How are you?" Dean asked finally. "How have you been? It’s been thirteen years, two months and..." He paused. "Eleven days since I last saw you."

Jesse almost smiled. Of course he knew the exact number.

"And how is your mother? How is Emma?"

The smile never came.

"I’m okay," Jesse said quietly. "But my mom isn’t."

Dean’s brow furrowed. "What do you mean? Is she still sick? She told me in March that the new treatment was working. She said her numbers were improving. She sounded..." He stopped. "Is she still sick?"

Jesse looked down at his hands.

"She died, Uncle Dean," he said. "Four days ago. We buried her on Monday."

Dean didn’t move.