Chapter 27 SIOBHAN
Chapter 27
S IOBHAN
Marcel drove in silence along Route 90 to Bayou Sauvage. When they reached the wildlife refuge, he parked by the trailhead and unfastened his seat belt. He remained still for a few seconds, his hands limp on the steering wheel; he seemed deep in thought.
“Are you okay?” asked Siobhan.
“Yes,” he replied after slightly too long a pause.
The faint tremor in his voice made her doubtful. She could see that he was swallowing down whatever it was he had contemplated telling her.
The thirty-minute journey had been the longest, tensest, and most uncertain of her life. They had barely exchanged a word since they got in the car. He didn’t seem annoyed to have company—quite the opposite in fact—but he had hardly said a word the entire time, except when they stopped at a gas station to fill the tank, and he asked if she wanted a soda or a coffee. It was understandable but nonetheless worrying.
He expelled his breath toward the ceiling, and his jaw seemed to relax—a truce, at last.
“Come on, let’s go and breathe a bit of fresh air,” he said decisively. “It’ll be good for your hangover. This is where I come to run in the morning while you’re still in REM mode. Except when you get drunk, of course.”
“I don’t know what you’re insinuating.”
“Me?” He raised his hands in defense. “God forbid that I should insinuate a thing.”
The Marcel she knew seemed to be back. His comment about fresh air must have been ironic too because it was horrendously hot, sticky, and dense. They made for a wooden walkway surrounded by lush vegetation that followed the irregular outline of the wetlands. Sweat flowed from every pore. At a bend in the path, the foliage opened out into a swamp. Rays of light penetrated between the branches of the trees that formed a protective cupola over their heads. The atmosphere was slightly less oppressive in the shade. She could smell the lichen growing on the bark, and the only sounds to be heard, over the twigs snapping beneath their feet, were the birdsong and the humming of insects. There was a chipped wooden bench at the foot of a majestic cypress whose gnarled roots formed a lattice stretching to the water’s edge. They sat at either end, staring at the water. The lake gave off the fug of stagnant water.
Siobhan took a breath. She desperately wanted to think of something to say, but what? She bit the inside of her cheek as she tried to find the right words but failed spectacularly.
“Nice place. Perfect for escaping the stress of the city and enjoying nature.”
“Yes.”
There was an uncomfortable silence.
“Hey, Marcel . . .”
“Listen, Siobhan . . .”
They looked at each other and smiled.
“You first,” he said. “What were you going to say?”
“I’m sorry I eavesdropped on your conversation. I shouldn’t have done that. You?”
“I’m sorry you had to witness such an unpleasant scene.”
“Well, it was no big deal,” she said, trying to downplay the situation. “I argue with Robin too. Sometimes, I even allow myself the luxury of imagining I’m strangling him with my bare hands. You have no idea how exasperating my brother can be. You know, when he was ten, he made me believe my parents had found me in a garbage can? I was traumatized for most of the school year.” Marcel’s lips curved into a smile; things seemed to be improving. “The thing is, however much we argue, we always make our peace in the end. It’s the cycle of sibling existence: argue, make peace, argue again, make peace again. Anyway, I’m sure Chaz wasn’t being serious. People say things without thinking all the time.”
“I know, I know, I know what she’s like. That’s not what worries me.”
“What is it, then?”
Marcel ran his hand over his stubble and breathed out hard, as though wanting to empty out everything inside him.
Things weren’t getting better after all.
“The other day I saw a gator. Right there.” He pointed at the water lilies and reeds. “It stuck its head a few inches out of the water, and I just sat speechless watching it.”
Siobhan shot him a look of amazement.
“My god. You saw a gator and you didn’t run off screaming?”
“They’re fascinating animals. Unlike other reptiles, gators care for their young until they’re adults. Not all humans can say the same,” he added, with a touch of bitterness.
She knew he was talking about his father.
“Look, I don’t know what happened between you, and I don’t want to stick my nose in, but perhaps you should listen to Charmaine and go visit your dad before—”
“Before he rots in hell forever?”
The certainty and conviction of his tone surprised her.
“You don’t really think that, do you?”
“Sure I do. My dad did nothing but screw up our lives, ever since we were kids. I don’t have very good memories of those days. Just lots of arguing, punishments, and the odd beating.” His voice was strained, as though this wasn’t a topic he was used to broaching.
“He hit you?”
“Only when he was drunk, but that was about half the time. The other half he didn’t even come home; the only thing that mattered to him was that shitty carpenter’s shop,” he said, flapping those beautiful hands contemptuously. “I’ll never understand how Charmaine was able to forget everything he did to us.”
Siobhan felt a huge weight in her gut as she imagined Marcel as a child.
A child abused by his own father.
“I’m sorry,” she muttered helplessly. “I’m really sorry you had to go through that. Was your mother ...?”
Marcel’s body instantly transformed. His shoulders tensed until the muscles were perceptible beneath the fabric of his T-shirt, and he clenched his jaw. He turned to her and shook his head slightly. Siobhan couldn’t help searching his eyes for signs of the story he had started to tell her, perhaps unconsciously, some time ago. Years of rage, sadness, and solitude bottled up inside him, threatening to burst forth. Then, he slipped his hands beneath his thighs, lowered his head, and focused on the shapes he was drawing in the dirt with his sneakers.
“She abandoned us. She left when I was eight and my sister was twelve,” he said.
After this admission, he seemed to relax. Siobhan, on the other hand, felt a lump form in her throat, and she couldn’t say a word.
“Claudette,” continued Marcel. “You asked me her name once. That was it.”
The lump constricted her throat and strangled her voice, which sounded weak when she asked:
“But ... why? Why did she leave?”
“Honestly? I don’t know. I don’t know what could possibly lead a mother to abandon her two young children. I suppose she must have been very unhappy. Even so, that doesn’t justify her leaving. She left a note. Just like your ex and the protagonist of your novel; apparently cowards love doing that.” The saddest smile in the world broke through his anguished expression. “It said that she didn’t expect us to understand her decision because we were still very young and that one day she would come back for us.” He paused briefly. “I believed her, and that’s why I sat waiting for her on the porch steps, day after day. But she didn’t return. I never saw her again.”
The story provoked multiple emotions. Siobhan had to blink repeatedly to hold back her tears. Don’t cry. Not now. This isn’t your moment. She sat perfectly still, assimilating what Marcel had told her. She looked at him, sitting hunched on the bench, and for the first time since meeting him, she understood there was something broken inside. She averted her gaze and released the very last drop of air from her lungs, overwhelmed by the significance of his revelation.
“I ... I don’t know what to say. That’s terrible.”
“The note also asked us to forgive her, but I’ve never been able to. I was very angry for a long time; I think I still am, in a way. Something like that changes everything.” Then he raised his head and looked up for an instant. The clouds that had started to congregate in the sky were making the temperature shoot up. His gaze returned to some point in the dense swamp. “When someone abandons you, your childhood ends.”
Siobhan felt a stab of pain in her chest. She moved closer to him until their knees brushed together. Neither of them moved apart.
“So you took refuge in literature.”
A hint of a smile appeared on his lips.
“Nice way of seeing it,” he said. “Some people drink to forget, like old Bernard; I wrote stories about monsters and mysterious creatures.”
“Was that when you became a fan of crime novels?”
Marcel nodded.
“There weren’t many books at home, so I borrowed them from the library. Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett, Poe, Wilkie Collins ... Reading those authors helped me discover worlds where the limitations of real life didn’t exist. And with time, I realized that describing other people’s tragedies is a very useful way to forget your own. Writing has a great therapeutic power.” He turned to look at Siobhan. “I’m sure you know what I mean, though your specialty leans more toward the light than the darkness.” A timid laugh slightly eased the pain in her chest. “I got excited about creating a reality where I’m the only one making the rules. I suppose that’s why I decided I wanted to become a writer.”
“But your dad had other plans.”
“The old man wanted me to learn the trade so I could take over the family business at some point. I would rather have blown my brains out,” he admitted, pointing a finger at his temple like a gun. “Writing? That was no use to anyone. It was something for slackers with their heads in the clouds. Though I never heard him complain when he started receiving the checks a few years down the line. You know what he did when he found my first notebooks? He ripped them up. Right in front of my face. With his bare hands. Just like that. Since then, I’ve always kept my writing somewhere secret.”
That explains his mistrust and the fact that the study in his apartment in New York has a security access code. Although he let me in when he barely knew me, mused Siobhan.
A tear sat on the tips of her lashes, but she refused to let it fall.
“At least he didn’t destroy your dream.”
“No, but he wrecked a lot of other things. When my mom left, he took to the bottle. He became this mean, bitter guy who warned his children that no one would ever love them. ‘People always leave, just like your whore of a mother.’ That was his catchphrase. He didn’t even allow us to have friends, for Christ’s sake. Why do you think my sister and I are so dysfunctional?” He exhaled. “It was Chaz who took care of me. She was the one who made sure I wore clean clothes to school and put hot food on the table. She was the one who came running to my bed in the middle of the night when I had bad dreams. All my dad did was tear up my notebooks and hit me. Why on earth would I want to see him?” he asked, and his dark gaze drilled into her like a corkscrew. “The title of Father doesn’t come included with the goddamn sperm; you have to earn it. You can’t take out your frustrations on your kids and expect them to respect you. Things don’t work that way.”
“You left because you couldn’t take any more.”
“And I don’t regret it. You know what I do regret though? Not taking my sister with me. She decided to stay, which I’ll never understand. Maybe”—he raised his hands and let them drop limply against his thighs—“I wasn’t persuasive enough. Maybe I should have found a way to make her see that if she stayed, she would be unhappy.”
“Charmaine made her own decision. That’s what adults do. You can’t blame yourself for that.”
Siobhan believed she finally understood why Marcel Dupont was a solitary and hermetic man who claimed he didn’t believe in love. And it had nothing to do with romance being corny or the absurd idea that men shy away from commitment. It was because of his childhood. It must have been the solitude of that childhood with so few emotional bonds, with an abusive father who only made his mother’s abandonment worse, that had forged his fierce individualism.
“Siobhan.”
“Yes?”
“You once asked me why I hide behind a pseudonym.” He took a deep breath and said: “I don’t want my mother to find me, ever. That’s all. Now you know the pathetic truth.”
Suddenly, something clicked in her brain, and the loose pieces of the puzzle all slid into place. Marcel’s armor was built of fear. A traumatized fear of abandonment, of loss, of there being nobody there to hold him if his nightmares returned. He was terrified by the idea of going back to being that kid sitting on the porch. What would happen if his mother returned? He could reasonably assume she would leave again. As would anyone else he got too close to. Because people always leave . How would he cope if something like that happened again?
Marcel Black was just the shield he needed.
And Claudette, his mother, the cause and effect of its creation.
It was the saddest, most complicated story she had heard in her life.
“Hey,” Marcel whispered with unexpected tenderness. “Are you crying?”
“Sorry, I’m an idiot,” she apologized, wiping away her tears with her hands.
“You’re not an idiot, all right? You’re anything but that. You’re sensitive. You’re generous. You’re special. And you’re important. To me, at least. And to a lot of other people. Look at me.” She sniffed and raised her head. Marcel dried a tear with his thumb. “You have beautiful eyes, you know that?”
The temptation to hug him was unbearable.
“Say that again.”
“That you have beautiful eyes?”
“No, that I’m important to you.”
“You’re important to me.”
“How important?”
“Important enough to share things with you that I’ve never shared with anyone. Does that sound like the right level of importance?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
An uncontrollable desire to touch him swept over her, and she gave in. Light as a feather, she caressed every corner of his perfect face, making the symbolic gesture of trying to smooth out the worry lines. Marcel closed his eyes and let her do it. As she ran the back of her hand over his skin, his lips opened slightly, his Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat, and his nostrils flared, as though his pulse was quickening.
She lowered her hand to his chest and placed it over his heart. She could feel it beating quickly beneath her palm.
“What’s going on in there, Marcel?”
“I don’t know, Siobhan. I don’t know,” he whispered, a tormented look on his face.
Then he took her by the cheeks and rested his forehead against hers. They breathed each other in. Siobhan grabbed his T-shirt and felt the scorching heat of his skin through the fabric. She thought he was going to kiss her; she was sure he would. Until a bolt of lightning split the suddenly leaden sky in two and a fat raindrop landed on her face.
“Shit!” he said, glancing upward. “We gotta go. It’s about to pour down.”
Pity. It would have been romantic if he had kissed her in the rain.
And she deserved a kiss she could remember.
Curse destiny for having other plans.
And curse Louisiana’s crappy weather.
The rain fell furiously, without warning. It wasn’t a drizzle that gradually increased in strength but a torrential downpour. By the time they reached the parking lot, they were covered in mud and soaked to the bone. The return journey was difficult. Marcel was silent, concentrating hard on driving. The rain pounded so hard on the Chevy’s roof it sounded like it would burst through. Gridlock, blasting horns, and a few crashes brought traffic to a standstill while the lightning flashed and the clouds gathered menacingly across the gulf to the south.
“My god. It’s like the apocalypse,” murmured Siobhan as the windshield wipers swept away sheets of water.
He glanced at her and took her hand. They stayed like that, hands clasped over the gearshift, for the rest of the journey.
Back in the Garden District at last, with the Chevy sheltering under the carport, they left the vehicle and ran the short distance to the porch. Then Marcel stopped abruptly in the rain.
“Siobhan!”
She stopped short, turned around, and covered her head with her hands like an umbrella.
“What?”
“I just ... I just wanted to say ...” He swallowed. “I’m glad I told you. I’ve never been good at talking about things close to my heart, but ... you ... you make it really easy. When I’m with you, everything inside me seems to loosen up, and the words just spill out.”
Siobhan said nothing. As he stood before her, dripping from head to toe, breathing hard, eyelashes heavy with water droplets and wearing his heart on his sleeve, she thought he was the most fragile, most beautiful creature on earth. She couldn’t control the urge to throw herself at him and hug him with all her strength. After hesitating for a few seconds, Marcel enclosed her in his arms, and she closed her eyes.
It’s not about who kisses you in the rain.
It’s about who hugs you during the storm.
The final veil that had been obscuring her feelings dropped. And she finally understood the truth: she was hopelessly in love with Marcel.
She loved that broken boy to the very depths of his soul.
The sound of a branch lashing against the side of the house woke her with a start. It was midnight, but the storm hadn’t abated yet. There had been power outages, and many streets remained dark. The wind blew in great gusts, rattling the shutters, and the rain beat ferociously against the roof. Siobhan was worried. A series of images of natural disasters paraded before her eyes like one of those Discovery Channel documentaries narrated in highly alarmist tones. Hurricanes. Earthquakes. Tsunamis. Floods. The very crust of the earth splitting unstoppably like the bark of the crape myrtle in summer. A thunderclap rumbled outside. She drew in her feet and pulled the covers up to her head to try and calm down, but it didn’t work. There were too many things bursting, prowling, and flitting through her mind, not all of them related to the rain. She tried to push away the tangle of emotions—Marcel’s confession, the long embrace in the storm, the chaos outside, the chaos inside—but they only seemed to grow stronger.
Something compelled her to get up. Before she knew it, she was outside Marcel’s door, wielding her cell phone like a flashlight. She opened the door slowly, her heart racing. She approached the bed and shone the phone light at it. He was fast asleep in his underwear. Those tight ones that show everything. Absolutely everything. God, this should be illegal, she thought. She cleared her throat, leaned over him, and touched his arm gently.
“Marcel,” she whispered. “Marcel, wake up.”
He grunted and turned over, which gave her an interesting view of his anatomy. That back was so broad you could have written the whole Dark-Hunters saga across it. And that ass ... She shook her head. You didn’t sneak into his room in the middle of the night to check out his ass, stupid .
“Marcel,” she persisted. “Marcel!”
“What? What? What’s going on?” he shouted, sitting bolt upright. He held his arm up to shield his eyes from the light, looking disoriented. “Siobhan, what’s ...? What are you doing here?”
“How can you sleep when modern civilization is about to be swept away out there?”
“How should I know? Because I’m from Louisiana? Hey, would you mind not shining that thing in my face, please? You’re blinding me.”
“Yes, sure, sorry.” Siobhan turned off the light. “I envy you, you know that? I wish I was from Louisiana, then I wouldn’t be shit-scared right now because of this lousy hurricane.”
“It isn’t a hurricane, just a storm,” he said. “It will have passed by tomorrow. Go on, back to bed.”
“Yeah, but . . .”
She heard him sigh.
“But what, Siobhan?”
“I was wondering whether ...” She wrinkled her nose. No, it was completely stupid. She must have been crazy even to enter his room. “You know what? It doesn’t matter. Leave it. It’s silly. I’ll go. Good night.”
“Hey. Come here.”
“Do you mean ... there there? With you? Both together? In the same bed?”
Marcel laughed.
“Isn’t that why you came?”
“Well, no. Or rather, yes. But ... I mean, it isn’t—”
“Miss Harris, this offer will expire in five, four, three—”
“Okay, okay, I’m coming.”
Marcel lifted the sheet to make room for her. She lay on her side, rested her head on his chest, and let him put his arm around her. It was spontaneous, as though embracing were the most natural thing in the world for them. The beating of Marcel’s heart pounding in her ear was comforting and drowned out the storm outside. Pum-pum. Pum-pum. Pum-pum. The warmth of his skin singed her cheek. She breathed in his natural scent.
“Better?”
His chest vibrated when he spoke, and the tremor ran right through her.
“Much better.”
“Good. This is a safe space for you and your irrational fear of storms.”
“Irrational? I’ve seen the pictures, you know.”
“We’re safe here.”
She liked him using we . It made her feel like she was part of his life. Maybe it wasn’t a big deal, but she and Marcel had something, and perhaps they could keep that something after Two Ways . She knew her relationship with him would only ever be platonic. She slid her fingers over his abdomen. His muscles were so well defined that she started to count them, tracing a line downward, then over and back up, and again, a few more times.
“Are you feeling me up, by any chance?” asked Marcel.
“What? No! I mean, what?” she said, embarrassed, hastily withdrawing her fingers. “I was just counting your abs. How many do you have? Like, twenty-four? That’s crazy. Normal people only have a couple if they’re lucky.”
“You really are something else. First you kiss me, and then you fondle me on the most absurd pretext in history. I’m going to have to think seriously about getting a restraining order, princess,” he said teasingly. Then, he sank his nose into her hair. “Particularly because you smell so good,” he whispered, in a tone of false existential angst. “What the hell do you use to smell like that?”
“It’s an organic ...” Siobhan had to clear her throat because her words got stuck when she felt Marcel stroking her back between her shoulder blades. “... coconut shampoo. From Bath the sparks fell and burned her all over. She wondered how it was possible to want someone so desperately despite being certain it was a mistake.
“But what would happen if . . . ?”
“It isn’t a good idea, Siobhan. Believe me,” he said resolutely.
And with that, all the sparks suddenly fizzled out.
To tell the truth, she felt slightly disappointed. And then she was furious with herself for feeling disappointed. Desire and shame coursed through her entire body. What had she done? Why had she even suggested it? He was probably just as confused as she was. If they crossed that line, there would be consequences. She would fall even more in love with him, and he would push her away.
“You’re right, it’s a terrible idea,” she said at last. “I should probably go back to my room.”
Against all odds, he squeezed her against his body with an intensity that suggested he didn’t want her going anywhere, which was disconcerting and glorious at the same time.
“You can stay. As long as you promise not to take advantage of me while I sleep.” Siobhan punched him on the shoulder. “Ow!” he protested.
“I have no intention of taking advantage of you while you sleep, idiot. Sadly, I can’t make any promises about not drawing a cock on your face, taking a photo, and posting it on Twitter.”
“Go to sleep. And no snoring.”
“I don’t snore, smart-ass. Good night.”
The echo of his laugh thudded in his chest.
“Good night.”
Thirty seconds later:
“Marcel?”
“Mmmm?”
“Do you think Jeremiah and Felicity should end up together?”
“What kind of question is that? Didn’t you say a happy ending is essential in a romance novel? Wait. Don’t tell me you’ve finally seen the light.”
“No, it isn’t that. See, I think they should end up together. Not because it’s a rule of the romance genre, but because here, inside”—she touched her heart, although she knew he couldn’t see—“I feel like they deserve it. Have you never felt like you were falling hopelessly in love with a story and its characters while you wrote it? I know it sounds strange, but ... Well, it doesn’t matter. I want to know what you think. That is, in the hypothetical scenario of Jeremiah and Felicity really existing and not being fictional characters, in the very hypothetical scenario of Jeremiah being able to travel to Manhattan in the future, meet Felicity, and develop feelings for her ... would it work?”
“Honestly? I doubt it. They’re very different people. Setting aside the fact that they come from different eras, there’s the fundamental problem that Jeremiah is a broken soul.”
“But broken souls can be mended. Like a porcelain vase dropped on the floor. You just have to stick the pieces back together. The Japanese do it. What’s it called?”
“ Kintsugi . Anyway, even if you repair it, the cracks are still there, and the vase will never be the same.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. The vase is still a vase, which is the key thing, but it’s also even more beautiful.”
“How can something full of scars be beautiful?”
“Because the scars are proof that even the most fragile materials can be mended. The wound is where the light comes in.”
Marcel remained silent. If she had raised her head, she might have seen a gleam in his black eyes. He hugged her tightly and held her hand. Siobhan couldn’t have escaped his clasp, nor did she want to. At that moment, she simply adored this man. With all of his layers, fears, and complications.