Chapter 7
Byron was the only person who hadn’t seemed at all happy with Abigail’s decision to approach Bee and invite her to help figure out what had happened to Jacob—and to Abigail. He didn’t go so far as to actually say anything, but he excused himself from dinner, claiming that he’d received an urgent call from one of his clients begging him to come immediately to fix a problem in their house. She didn’t want to think Byron had been lying but was sure that she hadn’t seen his phone light up, and he hadn’t joined her and Cleo for dinner since.
Abigail knew she had spent too much time thinking about it in the last few days because she was starting to find herself annoyed by the thought popping back up and making her feel... creepy. It really wasn’t any of her business if Byron didn’t want to have dinner with them. He had, after all, spent every evening with her and Cleo in the days before—maybe one more woman was too much. Abigail made a face at her reflection in the mirror she was cleaning. If Byron turned out to be one of those men who couldn’t stomach being in a room with too many women, she would be equally disappointed as she was surprised.
As she thought back over her interactions with Byron, Abigail concluded that it was deeply unlikely to be that. Unfortunately, as she came to that conclusion, a second explanation popped up—he had been called a heartbreaker. What if he had dated Bee? Abigail made another face; she wasn’t absolutely sure of Bee’s age, but it was a safe bet that Byron was significantly older than her.
Abigail shook her head to try and clear the thought. Bee looked anywhere from twenty-three to thirty-five in different lights—and it wasn’t even any of her business anyway!
“Stop being ridiculous,” she scolded her reflection, “who even cares?”
A voice at the back of her mind whispered: well, clearly you do.
The thought irritated her, but she couldn’t deny that it did. She enjoyed his company, that was all. The fact that he was ridiculously good-looking was just kind of a bonus. Right? Like how the contents of a book don’t change just because it was a special edition hardcover with fancy edges and fan art inside the cover...
Unbidden, the image popped into her mind of the illustration on the front cover of her most recent special edition purchase. It just happened to feature the male main character in his dragon rider uniform that, despite the obvious tactical and temperature disadvantages, did not feature a shirt—just rather tight leather trousers, which also seemed like a disadvantage to Abigail—and a leather jacket that was hanging open in this particular scene. She had laughed at it when she’d read it as well as when she had opened the cover to see that was what they had chosen to go with, but now that she could see the facial similarities between Byron and the illustration, she was blushing furiously.
“Stop it,” she huffed.
Abigail turned from the mirror and surveyed the bathroom she had just finished cleaning, determined to think about literally anything other than Byron in anything less than a full suite of plate armor and a face-concealing helmet. Everything in the bathroom was sparkling, somewhat to her annoyance. Making her way through the ground floor of the house had taken her just over a month, but now the entire floor was spotless, and she had absolutely no reason not to venture upstairs.
No reason at all.
At first, she was dismissive of her hesitation to head upstairs. Logically, she knew that being a little weirded out by her old bedroom that strangers had slept in for years was understandable. As she had spent more time in the house, though, and one week became two, then three, and four, Abigail had realized that she didn’t just find the idea of her old room weird—she was afraid to go up.
She shifted from foot to foot as she thought about it. Since the flashback, she had been worried about triggering another one. Ironically, as she thought about the incident triggered by a cup of tea, she realized that she wanted one. Abigail rolled her eyes at herself and collected the cleaning equipment from around her to head back to the kitchen.
As she ducked through the door, she noticed one of the perfectly circular bore holes in the wall at the very top of the door frame on the hallway side. A wave of annoyance and anger rolled over her. The existence of these things was driving her mad. She stepped across the hall and turned to get a better look at it. In her cleaning kit was a strong flashlight that she used to check cupboards and peer down pipes. She grabbed it and clicked it on. Something reflected back at her, small and silver. Her jaw dropped; oh lord, what if they were cameras like Cleo had been panicking about!?
As she flicked the flashlight back and forth over the borehole, she noticed a color shift in the plaster leading away from it that ran parallel to the ceiling. She glared at the spot as she placed the cleaning kit down next to the wall directly beneath the hole. Knocking the lid closed with her toe, she tested the steadiness of it. The thing handily folded into a small step stool, but she’d never been game to test out that particular feature—except that now it gave her just enough reach to feel the hole with an outstretched finger. Something small and sharp grazed her fingertip. Clicking the flashlight on again, she positioned it directly under the spot and moved from side to side to see if she could see a shadow from whatever was protruding. Her stomach slipped as she realized she could—it looked like wires.
Reaching into her back pocket, she extracted the pliers she had been using to tighten the bolts on the bathroom cupboard door and reached up to try and catch the protrusion. As the plier tips grabbed the end of the wires, she clamped them shut and pressed down on the bar that locked them in place before she started to pull. There was a little resistance, but on her third try, it gave out, and suddenly, she could see about an inch of wire that was split at the end, and the copper twisted off.
“Ah crap,” she swore as the corner of the borehole started to crumble as the wire tugged against it.
There’s no way it should be crumbling that easy...she glared and tugged gently again.
“Ah!” she buried her face in the crook of her arm as a large chunk and dust rained down from the ceiling.
“I hope that’s not asbestos...” she mumbled as she brushed it away from her shirt.
At that same moment, her phone chimed her text alert.
She carefully climbed down from the cleaning kit and unlocked her phone.
From Byron: I”m glad to see you’re locking your door these days. Do you have time for a delivery?
Was he at the door? She wondered, her eyes flicking from her phone down the hall. Why wouldn’t he just knock?
Well,she reasoned, the last time he had knocked on her door when she wasn’t expecting him, she had been sitting directly behind it and it had made her jump out of her skin, so maybe it was justified.
From Abigail: Sure, I’ll come and let you in. I was just about to make some tea actually.
The typing dots appeared and disappeared a few times, but they were gone by the time she had reached the door. Opening it, she saw Byron standing with his hands full, weighed down by shopping bags.
“What’s all this?” she asked, staring.
“Just a few things for the upkeep that’s due this month, plus the grocery delivery guy was here when I pulled up, and I offered to help.”
“Oh, right,” she said, “that makes sense.”
He looked at her with a tiny creasing of his eyebrows as if asking why it wouldn’t make sense on Earth, but she had just assumed that he wouldn’t be doing his maintenance rounds because she was here now. Her heart tightened as she realized she was still paying him; he was her employee... technically speaking. The realization suddenly brought back the images she’d accidentally conjured earlier and she was immediately flushed with embarrassment. They’d been a bit wild before, but realizing that she was employing him made them not just wild but wildly inappropriate.
Oh no,she thought as another realization occurred to her, what if he’s only doing any of this because I’m paying him!? Would he bill her for helping out around the house? She cringed internally at the potential invoice that could be sitting in her inbox.
“So, uh,” she said, wondering if she should bring it up, “how’s, you know, work?”
Byron shrugged as he passed her in the doorway, lugging the bags towards the kitchen, “you know, work is work.”
Abigail bent to pick up the remaining two shopping bags and noticed his car keys on the deck. They must have fallen out of his pocket.
“Sure,” she replied, picking them up along with the bags and making her way into the kitchen.
“So, tea?” he said, smiling at her from behind the counter.
“Yeah, sounds good. Your choice… I picked last time, I think.”
He nodded and moved to get the process started, leaving Abigail at a bit of a loss as to what to do. She decided that unpacking her groceries was probably the least awkward thing she could attempt. Was it awkward, though? Or was she just feeling like it was... she glanced at Byron, who was reaching into the cupboard to retrieve the electric kettle. She should really just leave it on the counter; she was using it more and more these days, and it had started to annoy her having to get it down each time she wanted a cup of tea.
The bag closest to her held the glass jars, she guessed from the red sticker on the bag that read ‘heavy’. Peering in, she saw she was correct and started to unpack them. Stacking them carefully, she organized them into sweets like honey and jam and the jarred pasta sauce she didn’t love the taste of but loved the convenience it gave her when she wanted to make a quick meal.
“So, how are the kids?” Byron asked, smiling as he arranged the tea cups.
Abigail groaned, “well—one of them got very angry with her father for starting to date a woman. She thinks it means she has to move to London permanently, and so flushed an extremely expensive bottle of whiskey down the toilet. She’s more embarrassed than remorseful; she didn’t realize it was so expensive, but she still feels justified. The other is terrified her sister getting in trouble might get her grounded too, and so is focusing all of her energy into being perfect all of the time.”
“Ah,” Byron said with a knowing smile, “which makes you suspicious...”
“Yes!” Abigail said, laughing, “because normally Hannah would be all over her sister getting in trouble, the ‘I told you not to do that’ or something similar... it might just be that her classes are everything to her right now and she doesn’t want to feel any more excluded than she already does—but I feel like there may well have been just a little bit of egging on.”
Byron laughed as he poured the tea. This one was a startling blue color, and he saw her expression change.
“I brought this one,” he said, “thought you might like it. It’s pea flower, starts out like this, and when you add a little bit of anything acidic, it’s magic.”
“Magic?” she asked, leaning her elbows on the counter to get a little closer.
“Yep,” he said, grabbing a small lemon from the bag beside him and deftly slicing it in half, “Magic, watch.”
He quickly stirred the pale blue tea with a silver teaspoon, and while it was still swirling, he held the lemon just above the teacup and squeezed it.
As soon as the drops hit the surface, the pale blue gave way to a warm pink.
“Oh wow!!” Abigail exclaimed, “That’s so cool! What does it taste like?”
“Not much,” Byron admitted, “but that’s why there’s plenty of other things in the blend. It’s all very fruity and aromatic. Not a heavy tea.”
She smiled as she looked up at him, her stomach doing a tiny flip as she saw him smiling back at her.
“Oh, you dropped your keys,” she said, remembering.
“What?” he asked, confused.
“On the porch,” she said, digging into her pocket and retrieving the set of keys, “they were next to the bags. I figured you dropped them.”
“Right,” Byron replied, “sure, yeah.”
He held out his hand for them, and as she dropped the keys, she noticed that the key ring was a silver circle with an embossed number on the inside.
“Seventy-five?” she asked.
“Uh, yeah,” he said, “that’s the one.”
Had the atmosphere changed?she wondered as she watched his smile flicker.
“Is it, like, a sports thing?” she asked lamely.
“No, it’s from a long time ago,” he said, “just a leftover.”
“Right,” she said and awkwardly sipped her tea.
It was light and slightly sweet. The lemon juice didn’t make it sour at all; instead, it was fresh, and she liked it.
“Sorry,” he said. “I was a cop for a while, and if I”m honest, I don’t really like talking about it.”
“Oh,” she replied, trying to fit this new piece of information into the image she’d developed of him. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“No, no—it’s fine. I should take this thing off,” he said, “I mean, I gotta expect someone will ask about it, seeing as it’s on my keychain.”
“I guess, sure...”
The silence that grew around them wasn’t the comfortable quiet she had been getting used to with Byron. Instead, it prickled at her as she searched for something to say.
“Anyway,” he said, “I brought the normal stuff I do every six weeks, it’s mostly the gardening stuff. So, shall I get started?”
He swallowed the tea in two large mouthfuls, smiling at her as he put the empty cup down on the counter. Before she had a chance to respond, Byron had grabbed one of the bags from the counter and was already heading out the door into the hallway.