Chapter Four
FOUR
He has spoiled like mincemeat left out too long, the rot of him a blackened hole that repels the sun.
Blackberry bruises riddle his arms, and his forehead is swollen to the touch; maybe it’s a good thing his room has no mirror and he can’t look at the shameful aftermath of his spiral last night.
At least it’s over. He remains inert where he sits on the floor under his window seat, afternoon light streaming over the curved half-moon of his spine and somehow not touching him at all.
If he had an episode last night, he can’t remember. He never remembers. No one is here to dose him with medications and smother him in quilts as he sleeps off the pain, so he simply sits and breathes as little as possible around sore ribs and lips bitten bloody.
This is the third day he’s been—
Alone.
Locked in.
Sweat trickles down the back of his neck, but he can’t seem to force himself to strip off his sweater or splash cool water on his face.
A sultry, stifling heat has pressed two hands over his mouth.
He never drank the milk or took his meds that first night, and the sour reek of the untouched glass fills his bedroom with a sickly stench that sends his stomach churning.
Tip it down the bathroom sink. Clean up. Do something, goddamn it.
He does nothing.
Then at last there is the turn of the key in the lock.
It is a melody, it is his savior, it is another strike of shame.
See? You didn’t need to freak out. Why are you even like this? Why are you so embarrassing—
Instead of rushing at the door, he stays where he is, drawing his knees up so he can rest his forehead against them, his face hidden, his mortification buried. He is so very, very wrung out, so devastatingly tired.
Even without looking, he can tell it’s Laurie lingering in his doorway.
He must be taking it all in—this sanctuary, this prison—and there is a soft murmur of disgust when he finds the source of the foul smell.
Evander squeezes his eyes shut so tight that white sparks dance behind his lids, and he only feels Laurie sweep past and dump out the glass in the small attached bathroom.
When a heavy shadow falls across him, he finally glances up.
Laurie looks down at him with his expression shuttered.
Even in expensive jeans and a white shirt cuffed to his elbows, he looks disreputable, his top buttons undone and something jaunty about his popped collar.
But, despite everything, he is a whisper of sunshine in the fetid oppression of this room.
“I went with the ambulance,” Laurie says finally. “I mean, obviously they were too late, but protocol and all that, and—” He stops, frowning, though it doesn’t seem directed at Evander. “I got stuck in town until Grandfather’s goddamn attorney drove me back here this morning.”
It takes a full minute of silence to put together that this is meant to be the explanation for why Evander was left, forgotten.
That he is meant to be fine with the fact people were in Hazelthorn all of today, they just couldn’t be bothered to check on him.
Of course he heard nothing because he never does, not all the way up here in the north wing with a heavy oak door shut and locked.
“But is he—” Evander’s voice comes in a damp rasp. “I—I—I just thought maybe he isn’t…” But he trails off as Laurie makes a face.
“Stowed away in some mortuary freezer drawer?” he says. “Well, he is. We’re waiting on my great-aunt to arrive to organize the funeral.”
Evander hates the way his mouth wobbles, but he forces himself to nod. He needs to pull himself together and not act like a sickly, unpredictable brat, demanding attention when the Lennox-Halls are busy dealing with a family tragedy. Byron Lennox-Hall wasn’t even his grandfather.
Laurie starts playing with his brace, his eyes skirting past Evander to stare out the window.
“I thought Carrington stayed here with you, but … I think he was hospitalized. The shock and everything.” There’s an odd, detached blankness to Laurie; he’s grieving, he must be.
“Anyway, the attorney is here to read the will. So get up.”
“What?” Evander rubs hard at his swollen eyes. “But I’m not…”
Laurie shrugs. “He said no need to wait for my relatives to arrive for the reading, just to get you. So let’s call a truce between us.”
It’s such a ludicrous request, Evander almost laughs. His limp hair is stuck to his face from two days of anxious sweating and his stomach has punched in on itself with hunger and his whole face is puffy from crying and someone is dead—and Laurie wants a truce?
“I don’t—” Evander clears his raspy throat. “I don’t even understand why you tried to kill me. What did I ever do to make you hate me so much?” The question feels like a vulnerable, childish whine, and it cracks at the end.
Something unreadable plays around Laurie’s mouth. “It’s hard to explain.”
“Try,” Evander snaps, but then shrinks under his own outburst.
This isn’t him. He is soft-spoken and deferential. He is a gentleman, crafted by Byron Lennox-Hall’s careful tutelage, and he dedicates himself to squeezing into that shape.
Three days alone and he is already losing who he is.
“Ask me later,” Laurie says finally. “When an impatient attorney isn’t breathing down my neck.”
Evander has waited seven years to understand why Laurie attacked him, so it shouldn’t matter that his trembling fists are still empty of answers.
He feels dull-eyed as he watches Laurie drift over to the redwood wardrobe and flick through the collection of knit sweaters, vests, and crisp trousers.
Most of Evander’s clothes are vintage, hauled in from storage courtesy of some long-dead Lennox-Hall relative.
Laurie selects a dark button-up and a brown cable-knit and dumps them at Evander’s feet. They smell of mothballs.
Evander takes the clothes and watches the afternoon sunlight glance off the side of Laurie’s face, haloing his skin like a gold-brushed angel.
Someone had to have poisoned Byron Lennox-Hall and, aside from Carrington, there’s only one other option.
The mansion has grown or maybe Evander has shrunk, his bones wobbly inside too-loose skin and his limbs like soft, green sticks that feel bent too far.
He follows Laurie at a careful distance, masking the way he keeps steadying himself on a wall or taking the stairs one at a time.
It feels irreverent to think about how hungry he is, but it cycles in his skull.
He hasn’t eaten in three days.
At least he looks less bedraggled now, his shirt buttoned to the throat and tucked in, his belt tight and sweater neat, the thickness welcome despite the warmth of the afternoon because anxiety leaves him perpetually cold.
The only thing missing is shoes, forgotten out of habit since he never needs them while alone in his bedroom.
Laurie says nothing as they walk, leading him down the intimidating grand staircase and toward his grandfather’s office.
he’s dead dead dead they buried him and they forgot about you and he was the only one who loved you and who will care for you now that he’s deaddeaddead—
He hates how little he remembers of these halls, of running up and down them shouting and playing with Laurie. A black void stretches instead, eating away at the edges of the childhood he should know.
It scares him, to think of what else he might have forgotten.
It scares him more wondering what will be done with him now. Especially if Laurie takes this chance to make him leave and be free of him once and for all.
He can’t leave. He has no idea what Mr. Lennox-Hall planned for his future, but a vast, unmappable emptiness spreads before him.
College had to be the plan, somehow, what with all the studying he did, but he can’t imagine himself actually stepping off the estate.
Just thinking about it brings him near to hyperventilating.
He could think if he wasn’t so hungry, could compartmentalize all the questions puncturing thorns through the inner flesh of his cheeks, could work out how to hold in all the fear and questions and grief.
Instead, he keeps his shoulders tight as he enters a study with vaulted ceilings and soaring bookshelves behind a massive dark wood desk.
Hard leather sofas sit by the old fireplace and deep forest green Persian rugs cover the floor, everything drenched in musty, lavish austerity.
What catches Evander’s eye are the lancet windows with the garden pressed so hard against them that vegetation has left stringy trails of rot and deep scratches across the glass.
Never has a garden looked so angry to be kept out.
Two wooden chairs have been placed in front of the desk, and Laurie slumps into one with a bored sigh.
“Ah, here you are.” A man rises from behind the desk and Evander jumps half out of his skin.
This must be the attorney, though he looks more like a young college student in owlish glasses and a brown suit, his watch heavy and expensive, his dark blond hair slicked back and sandalwood aftershave too strong in the closed space.
He has a square jaw and the casual ease of someone attending a garden party instead of being here to read the will of an incredibly wealthy dead man.
It occurs to Evander he hasn’t spoken to anyone aside from Lennox-Halls and Carrington for seven years. He doesn’t know how to talk to people. He probably looks shell-shocked standing here, gawking at the stranger.
“Nice to meet you, Evander.” The attorney flashes a bright, white-toothed smile, but there’s something too intense about his enthusiasm. “My name is Benedict Dawes and I will be serving as executor of the will. Please, sit down. Get comfortable.”
Evander tugs his sweater sleeves over his fingers and stares at the rug.
“So, we have a few things to go over.” The attorney opens a leather folio and pulls out gilt-edged papers, before peering at Evander again. “Sorry, do you, ah … talk?”
Evander wants to melt into the floor.