Chapter 9 #3
He kisses me. Unhurried, certain, his hand warm at the back of my neck—a kiss with no question in it at all. Then he sets me on my feet, smooths the collar of my shirt with both hands like he's putting me back together for company, and stands.
"Come on," he says. "Before your friend forms a permanent opinion of this family based solely on Zero."
I shiver. “Oh, God.”
Bane chuckles and we go out into the hall and downstairs.
Wren is just stepping out of the powder room. She has fixed her hair. She has reapplied a small amount of lip color. She looks at the two of us coming down the hallway side by side and something in my chest goes pleased and warm at the sight of her looking at me.
Then she sees Bane, and her whole face changes. She wouldn’t admit it, but she lights up when she sees him and something inside me loves that he’s kind of like her night in shining armour.
He’s mine too.
"...Bane."
"Hello, Wren."
He stops in front of her. He doesn't reach for a hug or a handshake—just looks at her, steady, his face open in a way I rarely get to see on him. He’s so handsome like this, open, strong, ready to face everyone in the kitchen if it means protecting my best friend and me.
"You look well," he says.
"...I am. Mostly." She tugs once at the hem of the navy dress. "The apartment helps."
"Good." A beat. "Reeves behaving herself?"
"Reeves," Wren says, "has decided I'm not allowed to skip therapy anymore. She drives me there herself. She sits in the waiting room like a bouncer. Last week I tried to tell her I had a headache and she just—looked at me. Didn't even say anything. Just looked."
"Mm. That's the Reeves special. What I pay her the big bucks for."
"It's deeply unfair."
"Is it working?" Bane asks. "The… therapy?"
Wren is quiet for a second. Her thumb finds the hem of the navy dress and stops there.
"...yeah," she says, like the admission costs her something and she's decided to pay it anyway. "Don't tell Reeves, though. God, she'll be insufferable. But—yeah. It's helping. I hate that it's helping."
"I won't tell her." The corner of Bane's mouth moves. "She already knows."
Wren huffs the almost-laugh, and something in her shoulders comes down half an inch. She’s safe. She’s thriving. That’s all I wanted for her.
"Margot's in the kitchen plotting your destruction with three kinds of cheese," he says. "Come this way."
Wren follows him and I follow her, hiding the smile on my face. We head into the front parlor, where Zero is already waiting at the bar.
He's in a button-down. A button-down. The collar is open and the sleeves are rolled but he is wearing what is, by Zero's standards, formal wear, and he has clearly been instructed by Margot to make a drink for Wren the moment she walks in and is taking the assignment with theatrical seriousness.
"Wren." He swipes his hand in front of him as if welcoming her into his humble abode.
"...hi,” she mumbles.
"What do you drink?"
"uh...nothing strong."
"Something white. Bubbly. Cold. Easy to set down if you decide you hate it."
Wren looks at me as if for permission. I nod, so she relents. "...okay."
He pours her a small, careful glass of prosecco. He hands it to her with both hands, like he is presenting her with a small dog. She takes it, looks at me sideways, and presses her lips flat against a laugh that very nearly gets away from her.
"This is Zero," I say.
"I'd assumed."
"He's the middle brother."
"Yes." Zero grabs himself a beer. "I'm the disappointment."
"He's not the disappointment," I say.
"I am the delightful disappointment, Maxie, please." He shoots me a look as he sips his beer. “Margot just hasn’t realized it yet.”
Wren snorts into her prosecco.
Zero looks pleased. Sips his beer. He's on what passes, for Zero, as best behavior—which is not the same thing as harmless.
He's still watching Wren the way he watches everyone: sideways, amused, already turning over what she's made of and which thread he might pull to find out.
The only difference tonight is that the claws are sheathed.
Mostly. I can see him deciding she's interesting, and with Zero, interesting is never entirely good news.
It is, I realize, the closest Zero gets to company manners—and even his company manners have teeth.
I love that about him too.
Richard comes in from the back hall in a sweater vest, holding a section of newspaper, looking baffled that there’s a guest in his house as if it isn’t the only thing Margot has been talking about for a week.
"Oh. Wren. Hello. Welcome. Hello."
"Hi, Mr. Graves."
"Richard, please."
"Richard. Hi."
"Margot was just telling me—" he waves vaguely with the newspaper toward the kitchen "—something about a lemon tart? Bane apparently made one. Bane."
"...did he," Wren says, very carefully.
"He says he did." Richard frowns, as though the tart is a small puzzle he can’t parse.
"I have known that all his life and I’ve never once seen him near an oven.
" A pause. His mouth curls in a frown. "Lemon, though?
I've never quite understood lemon as a dessert.
It's a cleaning product flavor. Why would you—"
"It's my favorite," Wren says.
Silence
It isn’t a long silence. It is, however, a complete one—the particular airless quiet of a man realizing, in real time, that he has insulted a guest's taste in the first ninety seconds of knowing her. Richard's face goes through three distinct stages of horror.
"I—that’s—what I meant—"
"Smooth, Dad," Zero says, delighted. "Real smooth. I’m sure you’re her favorite of all of us so far. You want to tell her which of her books you don't like next? Really round the evening out?"
"I didn’t—"
"Typical."
"Zero." Richard's voice goes sharp, like Zero found the soft place and pressed. "I was making conversation."
"You were making it worse."
"ZERO."
"Drinks first, Richard," Margot calls from the kitchen. "Drinks. Bring everyone in. Honey, can you set the table?"
Richard, given an exit, takes it with visible relief—folding his newspaper under his arm, telling Wren welcome, truly, ignoring all of us on his way past, and disappearing toward the kitchen.
The second he's through the door, Zero sets down his beer, takes my chin in two fingers, tips my face toward his, and kisses me.
Quick. Unhurried in its quickness, somehow. It only lasts a second and a half but has mine written all over it.
He lets go. Picks his beer back up. Resumes drinking it like nothing happened.
I turn—warm to the ears—and find Wren staring at the two of us over the rim of her tiny prosecco, her eyes enormous.
"...is this," she says slowly, "what it's like here? All the time? Is the whole house just—" she gestures, a small helpless circle that takes in Zero, me, the kiss, the doorway Richard left through, the entire Graves estate "—this?"
"Pretty much," Zero says.
"Pretty much," I admit.
Wren takes a long, fortifying sip of her drink.
"...okay," she says. "Okay. I'm going to need a bigger glass."
Zero points at her with the neck of his beer bottle, his whole face lit. "Her," he announces, to the room, to no one. "I like her. She stays."
Margot calls us to the table at ten past seven.
The dining room is at its most domestic—the good lamps on, the chandelier dimmed, the centerpiece a low arrangement of greenery Margot cut from her own garden because she will not, on principle, pay a florist for cut flowers when she has acres of perfectly good ones outside.
The roast is in the middle of the table.
The corn pudding is in a deep dish next to it.
The green beans with the slivered almonds are in the white serving bowl that always reminds me of Thanksgiving.
The lemon tart is on the sideboard, sitting out on a serving dish with the white box it came in probably stuffed deep into the trash.
Still, he made a show of placing it there so Wren would think he made it.
I’m not going to spoil his secret.
We sit.
Margot says grace. I swear as long as I’ve known her she’s never done that but she’s being deliberate. Wren bows her head in respect and I roll my eyes, playing along with the show too.
This is the kind of stuff people like Wren as I hate. The forced perfection, the theatre. But Margot doesn’t mean any harm by it and for that I can’t blame her.
Once Zero has said amen the loudest and made Richard ruffle, we pass the food.
Wren, on my left, eats slowly. She cuts everything small, the way I do.
She takes a careful first helping and waits to see if a second one is offered before she reaches—the way I do, the way you learn to in houses where the food was never a sure thing.
When the green beans come to her she hesitates a half-second before she serves herself, like she's confirming the bowl is really meant to include her.
I see Bane see it but he says nothing. Instead, he serves her three times what he serves himself when the dish comes back around.
"So Wren," Margot says, after the second pass. "Tell us about you."
Wren takes a sip of water.
"...what would you like to know?"
"Anything. Everything. You're the first new person at this table in a while."
"...okay." A breath. "I grew up mostly in Iowa.
My mom died when I was eleven. I went into foster care after, group homes mostly.
I moved out here when I aged out at eighteen because—" a small pause "—I wanted to see if I could build a life somewhere that didn't already have my history in it.
I work at Cornerstone Books most evenings.
I read too much. I make terrible coffee. I'm getting better at it."
"Iowa to here is a long way to come on your own," she says. "That took some spine." A small beat. "And anyone who reads too much is welcome at my table for life. Richard will try to recruit you to his side of things—don't let him."
"It's a good side of things," Richard says.
"It's a side, darling, and we try not to argue at the dinner table."