Chapter Thirteen
THIRTEEN
MAVEN
Clinging to Ronan with my pulse racing and my heart up in my throat, I stare at the crater in the sidewalk.
The chunk of cement is enormous. The pile of rubble around it extends out into the square. Despite the rain, small puffs of dust rise from the wreckage. It looks like a small bomb went off.
“Are you okay?”
Blinking in shock, I look up into Ronan’s face. “What happened?”
“Part of the facade of the building detached and almost killed you.”
He stares down so intently at me, it’s disorienting. His expression is severe, his jaw is tight, and his eyes … they can only be described as worried.
There must’ve been something off in that adobo. If I’m thinking Ronan Croft is worried about me, I’ve definitely got food poisoning.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re sure?”
He takes a quick visual inventory of me, scanning for blood or missing body parts.
“Ronan.”
“Yes?”
“Thank you for pulling me out of harm’s way.”
“Saving your life, you mean.”
“I wasn’t finished. Thank you for pulling me out of harm’s way, now let me go. This is very uncomfortable.”
His grip on me remains steadfast. His gaze turns from worried to smoldering.
“Why would it be uncomfortable?”
“Because I dislike you intensely.”
“Not hate? We’re making progress. Maybe you’re uncomfortable for some other reason. Hmm. What could it be?”
“Whatever fairy tale you’re concocting in your stunted neocortex is incorrect.”
“You know what I find interesting?”
“Other than how I haven’t dismembered you and thrown your body into a ditch yet?”
“No. How you had the presence of mind to hold on to your umbrella.” He drops his head and whispers hotly next to my ear, “And how you can’t stop looking at my mouth.”
I inhale, and the scent of his skin invades my nose. It shoots into my head and conjures a thousand old ghosts from their graves. Memories of the times we were together assault me in such graphic detail, I shiver.
As if it were only yesterday, I remember the heat, the passion, the frantic urgency, our greedy hands and mouths and how quiet we always had to be because every moment was stolen. Secret.
Forbidden.
When I cried out in mindless pleasure, he’d put his hand over my mouth to muffle the sound.
When he moaned my name, I hushed him so no one would hear.
Only the times in the backseat of his car were we able to let go completely because we were deep in the forest, on a dark road with only the wolves and the wind to hear us roar.
I came close to telling him how much I loved him on one of those nights. The words were on the tip of my tongue. Then he looked at his watch and said he had to be up early for football practice, and I swallowed the words forever.
He was still inside me when he said he had to leave.
My cries of passion still echoed against the steamy windows.
I push him away and step back, nearly taking out one of his eyes with the points of the umbrella. He ducks just in time.
“Strong as ever.”
“Not at all. I’m much stronger than I was at seventeen. I have you to thank for that.”
“You’re angry.”
He waits for an explanation, but it won’t come. I stopped explaining myself to him the day I told him I was pregnant, and his face curdled like bad milk.
There’s no pain on earth like that.
It’s horror, shame, humiliation, rejection, anguish, disillusionment, and abandonment, all in one. When she’s made to feel worthless by the man who holds her heart, a woman either crumbles and never recovers or grows a callus over the pain to survive.
In my case, I grew an entire suit of armor.
I grew a fortress made of steel.
My chest aching, I step away from him. From inside the restaurant, the hostess rushes out, followed by a busboy wearing a stained white apron.
“What happened? Holy shit!” The busboy looks at the mess on the ground, then up at the roof in disbelief.
When Ronan turns to speak to him, I take the opportunity to flee. I run away through the rain and don’t stop until I’m back at the house.
Breathless, I dump the umbrella in the stand inside the front door and kick off my muddy boots. I pull my cell from my coat pocket and google the number to Anderson’s. I dial the number listed, then tap my foot in impatience until a woman picks up.
“Anderson’s Funeral Home, how may I help you?”
“Yes, this is Maven Blackthorn. Put Mr. Anderson on, please.”
There’s a long pause. “Um, Mr. Anderson is indisposed at the moment. Can I take a message?”
“Sure! The message is that unless he takes my call, I’ll contact every news station I can find listed to tell them how my grandmother’s naked body was stolen out the window of his establishment. Now is he indisposed?”
She clears her throat. “Please hold.”
My ear fills with tinny lounge music for about thirty seconds, then the line is picked up again.
“Hello, Miss Blackthorn.”
Mr. Anderson sounds as if he’d rather be dead himself than speaking to me.
Good. Serves him right for losing my grandmother’s body.
“I’m sure you’re busy making your escape plans to Argentina, but I have a question for you. My grandmother was not embalmed, correct?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“So how did she stay so fresh for the time between her death and her viewing?”
He takes so long to answer, I imagine he’s trying to decide if this is a trick question. Then he says tentatively, “She was refrigerated?”
“Is that a guess or an answer?”
“I’m sorry. It’s an answer. I just don’t understand the significance of the question.”
“Never mind the significance, what do you mean she was refrigerated?”
“It’s standard mortuary practice. In the absence of chemical preservation, we store the decedent’s remains at two degrees Celsius. We can keep them there for up to three or four weeks before the funeral if the family isn’t local or there’s some other factor requiring a delay.”
Refrigeration. Of course. The knot of worry in my stomach unwinds.
“Thank you, Mr. Anderson. Call me as soon as you have any new information.”
I hang up on him and head upstairs to find Bea. She’s in my old room, lying on the bed with Luna curled up on her stomach.
Taking off my coat, I drape it over the back of the desk chair. “Hi, sweetie. Did you eat anything yet?”
“Some toast with blackberry jam. Luna says we should move here.”
Amused, I sit on the edge of the bed and gently smooth a hand over her riot of red curls. “Are you going to take a nap? You two look comfortable.”
“I was thinking I’d like to go meet that red fox.”
“Red fox?”
She glances at the window. “The one sitting on the white bench under those trees. She’s been there every day since we got here. I think she wants to tell me something.”
I rise and look out the window. In the right side of the yard, an overgrown hedge of privet marks the boundary of the property. Nearby, a small grove of birch trees stand guard over an iron patio set, once painted white but rusted with age. Two scrollwork chairs flank a round table.
In the middle of the iron bench nearby sits a large red-and-black fox.
Its coat is orange-rust in hue, its tail a bushy plume of flame wrapped around slender black feet. The chest is the color of clotted cream, and the eyes are the vivid gold of a sunset.
Through the window and the rain, our eyes meet. The creature’s pointy white canines flash as it smiles.
The bench the fox is sitting on is the same one Granny used to recline in every evening at dusk to smoke her tobacco pipe and gaze at the stars.
The fox gazes at me a moment longer, then turns and vanishes under the hedge.
I shake off the strange and unwelcome feeling that something important lies just beyond my understanding and turn away from the window and the view of the yard.
“There’s no fox, Bea. But if you see it again, stay away from it. They’re called wild animals for a reason.”
Luna wakes up, stretches, and jumps off Bea’s lap onto the floor. She trots out of the room, nose held high and tail twitching.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
“How come Q doesn’t talk?”
My grandmother told me he was once a famous opera singer long ago who bartered his voice with the devil in exchange for immortality, but I’m sure as hell not telling her that.
“I don’t know, honey. Does it bother you?”
She shrugs. “No. I just wondered. It’s nice having someone just listen.” Then she yawns. “Maybe I will take a nap. I’m kinda sleepy.”
“Okay. I’ll be downstairs when you wake up.”
She rolls off the bed and walks into the bathroom.
I watch as she reaches for the small white container next to the faucet on the sink.
She pops open the two round chambers, fills each with saline solution from a plastic bottle nearby, then carefully removes the colored green contact lens from her left eye and puts it in the solution.
She repeats the same procedure with the right lens.
She glances up at me and smiles.
My daughter’s eyes are reflected back at me in the bathroom mirror, that same remarkable shade of palest ice that belongs to the boy who abandoned us so long ago.