Chapter 8 #3
“He liked to fuck.” Cal found himself breaking the silence again, mostly to dispel the tension that was spreading through the room like a thick, miasmic fog.
“That’s what my father is hinting at so coyly, Nadine.
Caledon Cullraven liked chasing women almost as much as he enjoyed chasing deer.
And if rumors are to be believed, he didn’t particularly care if they were willing. ”
There was another silence, longer this time, and if the other had been crafted of ice and fog, this was a violent storm waiting to release a torrent of electric fire.
Ben was glaring at him and his father had drawn himself up in affront.
“My youngest is very passionate.” A smile parted his mouth; it was like watching a faultline open up.
“I suppose it’s the lawyer in him. He likes to know where the line is, so he can cross it freely. ”
“Including the repetition of colorful local slander,” Ben cut in.
“Whereas Ben,” Cal retorted, “enjoys testing the limits gradually, so he can know where all the load-bearing walls are before he makes everything come crashing down. That’s why men like him become architects. It feeds into their fantasies of destruction.”
Odessa laughed out loud, delighted. “This is fun. Now do me.”
“You,” Cal said, turning obligingly, “don’t have a line at all.”
She sulked, grabbing the wine and filling up her glass to the very top, until it threatened to spill over to the polished table. His mother’s eye twitched and it seemed as if she might speak, but she just bent her head to her soup, still barely touched, and took a quiet sip.
Clearly feeling as if the focus of the room had ventured too far from himself, his father decided to speak. “Pleasure does not have to be reciprocal or fair. Nobody asked the deer if it desires to have its throat cut, but that does not taint the thrill for the hunter.”
“You’re scaring our guest,” Ben said, with a nod at Nadine.
“Well, we can’t have that.” He smiled insincerely, carving into the slice of meat on his plate. “I do hope you’ll forgive us our faults.”
“What are you doing to find my sister?” she said, in lieu of a response. “I spoke to the sheriff and he said you helped him put out a statement. Why wasn’t I or my aunt notified.”
His smile flickered. “I assure you, my deer, we’re doing all that we can. It’s not exactly convenient for us to reach out, though. Our connections to the outside world are tenuous at best. I’m sure Cal told you how old-fashioned we can be.”
Cal saw her visibly bristle at the word convenient. “Well, I’m here now.”
“So you are.” The expression on his face took on a decidedly unpleasant cast. “I hope you’re staying for the Running of the Deer festival.
This unpleasant business has cast a pall over the town but people come from all over the globe to participate in our little wild hunt.
Since you’re so inexperienced, either of my boys would be glad to take you. ”
“Yes, Nadine,” Cal said, pitching his voice low. “I’d be sure to take very good care of you.”
Ben looked ready to explode. Given his propensity for slip-ups and theatrics, the outcome was hardly beneath him. The only downside was that it wasn’t him who would be paying for his mistakes. It was Nadine.
Nadine, who was looking at him like she’d never seen him before. Cal imagined he saw a dawning awareness in the depths of those pretty pale eyes that she was not quite as safe as she imagined: it was the look of an animal being taken to the axe.
“I just updated the website,” his sister chimed in. “You should take a look.”
“Like I said,” Nadine said faintly. “I’m not much for guns.”
“Of course, there’s food and wine and other forms of entertainment also,” his father said, though he was now studying Nadine in a way Cal didn’t appreciate.
“I find it really brings people closer to their roots. Any man can become king for a day when he has all of god’s creatures under his dominion. ”
“My father would like to have the whole world kneeling at his feet,” Cal said as an aside.
“Cal knows a lot about kneeling,” Ben butted in. “He’s made this entire town his willing congregation.”
Nadine flinched. She wasn’t looking at him but Cal didn’t need to see the hurt to know it was there.
“You sound bitter, Ben,” he said coldly. “But I don’t see you out there with a flashlight, looking for your wife.”
Ben breathed out angrily. “I could say the same of her sister.”
Nadine blinked back tears. Cal could swear her fucking lip trembled.
“She came here, didn’t she?” he heard himself say, the words firm and commanding.
It even gave his father pause, and for the first time since he had brought up tradition, his mother lifted her head and looked at him directly.
She had not looked at him like that since he had been a child, and Cal did not know what to make of her clear-eyed appraisal now, or why it made his chest tight.
“Well,” Nadine said thickly, “I think all of us can agree that we hope she turns up. Right?”
“Oh dear.” His mother laughed nervously. “Of course, Nadine. She was family.”
Strangely, this was the final straw. Nadine withdrew from them completely, gradually losing her light. It was like watching a sunset become engulfed by the night.
“Are you sure you won’t join us in the parlor for a glass of port?” his father pressed, his lips a curve of satisfaction.
Nadine shook her head and got to her feet unsteadily, all but running from the room. It sounded like she was hitting every loose board. Cal could track her progress all the way to the upstairs hall.
With a sense of numbness he could normally only achieve with rum, Cal followed his family into the parlor as his mother peeled off and drifted away silently upstairs.
His father went to the liquor cabinet and produced four snifters, which he began filling with the good port he had imported from Portugal.
Cal sipped his slowly, each swallow a heated burn in the back of his throat.
His father was complaining about the various intractable vendors, throwing their respective wrenches into his grand plans.
Ben, seeming to talk in parallel, was ranting about a demolition job that was being postponed because of a labor strike.
Concerned that the dynamite might be stolen, he had, foolishly, brought some of it back to store at the house, rather than leaving it at a fucking warehouse.
“You brought explosives to a Victorian house in a town where everyone hates us?” Odessa demanded, sounding both thrilled and horrified. “If this place goes up, they’ll be roasting hotdogs.”
“They’re in a safe place,” Ben said. “And who knows, they may come in handy.”
He exchanged a glance with his father, so fleeting it might be missed in a blink.
But Cal noticed. And so did Odessa. “Don’t blow anything up without me,” she said.
“Nobody is blowing anything up,” Cal said. “And I suggest you refrain from making such comments when your mobile devices are in easy reach.”
“Ah, Cal.” His father twisted the delicate crystal in his fingers. “Where would we be without all your useful advice? And yet, for all your knowledge about rights of inheritance, you seem to have staked a claim on something that doesn’t belong to you.”
“If someone were incompetent enough to mislay their property, one could consider it effectively abandoned and stake a true claim for themselves,” he murmured.
“Oh, fuck you, Cal,” said Ben.
“I’ve marked her,” he said. “I’ve claimed her. You can try to take her from me, but I won’t be giving her up willingly. Not until I’m finished having my fun,” he added.
His father appeared disinclined to comment, which was surprising. Warily, Cal watched him reach for the brandy, moving up to stronger spirits. Ben eagerly moved closer to join him.
Odessa rolled her eyes and got up to leave, and Cal moved to do the same rather than join his father and brother in their quest for oblivion.
She looked at him, slowing her pace as she tilted her head, causing her braid to swing over one shoulder. “And where are you off to, Baby Cal? A little nocturnal hunting?”
“Not for want of trying,” he said. “And you aren’t exactly helping matters, by the way.”
“She said no to you.” Odessa laughed gleefully. “Just when I think I couldn’t like her more, the shrunken violet goes and proves herself a cutting judge of character.”
“Yes, well, if you like her as much as you claim to, perhaps you might stop hindering my every move,” Cal said. “Father plans to give her to Ben as consolation prize. She’s not as weak as they think she is but a fate like that would end her.”
“And you think she’d accept you?” she asked skeptically.
“I think she could be persuaded.” He ran a hand over his unshaven jaw, sighing. “She is becoming entirely too comfortable within these walls. And with me.”
“But that’s what you wanted,” she pointed out.
“She should leave. But I don’t trust myself to let her go.”
“Then scare her. You’re good at that. That’s why you became a lawyer, isn’t it? Reason it the absence of baser human emotions so you can lord your superior logic over all those quivering hysterical peons like a raven preening on his perch?”
Cal grimaced at hearing his plan spoken of aloud in such mocking tones. It sounded even worse coming from his sister’s lips. “You paint a flattering portrait, though I’m not sure how closely it favors me.” Still troubled, he frowned. “And on that note, where are you off to?”
“I’m going out.” She flicked the hem of her dress. “Ask me where.”
“No.”
“Ask me who then.”
“Unless you’re asking me to interfere, I should think the less I know the better.”
“You’re not fun when you act all stern.” She gave him an impish grin. “Does Nadine like it when you boss her around? I bet she does. That girl screams daddy issues.”
“Don’t you have someone else on the rota to emasculate with your crude psychoanalyses?”
“I thought you didn’t want to know where I was going,” Odessa said sweetly.
Cal made an aggravated noise, warding her off like he was banishing a demon. Odessa flipped him off before letting herself out the door, a fresh spring in her step.
Shaking his head, he looked out at the black sky beyond those pitted glass windows, wondering if he could bring himself to do what needed to be done.