21 Elle To Dance #2
“They’ll be back,” Douglas promises. He’s busied himself with a book that I’d grabbed for him and set down on the other side of the counter. I occasionally flip the pages of it whenever he can’t drum up the presence to himself.
“Then they’ll have to do with cold soup. I’m not waiting any longer.”
“You could call for them?”
I could. But it’s not absurdly late yet. And if I find Bridget alone while Liney’s off looking at seaweed, what could stop me? I don’t trust the island’s influence; it may drag me into bloodthirst, as it’s done before.
I won’t tell Douglas, but these moments are also a gift to Liney. If Mr. Pratterman won’t compromise with me, this could be the last time she’ll both trust me and enjoy Bridget’s friendship.
I can barely admit to myself that I’m also enjoying this time alone with him.
“No, she’s decided to stay out. They can warm it up on the fire later.” I then realize what I should ask. “Would you like to sit with me? I suppose you can’t eat any of it, but—”
Douglas interrupts, rushed and eyes alight. “I’d be honored.”
We dine together. I pour our bowls to the brim with soup and cut four slices of the loaf, two each.
I place a small dish of butter between us.
If the girls interrupt us, I’ll say I set something out for Liney and forgot Bridget.
We sit, but before I can bring my soup spoon to my lips, Douglas startles.
“There’s wine above,” he says, looking to the stairs. “You’ve never touched it.”
It was too invasive to drink. While using his kitchen and sleeping in his bed was necessary, the small collection of old wines was too intimate.
“Feel free,” he urges. “Concord wine from Boston a few years ago.”
We drink together. Well, I drink. I pour him a glass, and he smells at the rim.
“Sweet,” I say, swishing it in my mouth. It’s fruity enough that I swallow it before the rotten aftertaste all other meals develop can take hold.
“I prefer sweet over dry,” he explains. Was he worried I wouldn’t like it?
There’s an opportunity to tell him about the rot. How it’s getting worse. But as the wine settles in my stomach, so too does a swirling shame. This is my problem, not ours.
“I would’ve guessed the opposite,” I say, keeping my tone light.
He smiles and sits back as I take my first sip of the soup. Thin, but I prefer it that way. Without the richness of a cream base, it’ll take longer for my decay to overtake the flavor.
“I have a sweet tooth,” he confesses. “My mother made maple taffy when I was young. I’d look forward to early spring every year when tapping season began.”
“Around here?” I hang on every new fact. A year ago, when we were either brooding or screaming at each other, would I have believed we’d speak over dinner of bygone maple taffy?
He shakes his head, looking down at his bowl. “Near Montreal. She helped with a sugar shack there for some of the year.”
“Why did you come here?”
He’s somewhere else now. Years ago, miles away. “The ocean is the only thing that doesn’t remind me of her. She hated the idea of any water deeper than her waist. It helped the grieving, in a way.”
I dip a slice of bread into the soup. There’s so much I don’t know about this man.
“We have red maples on the island, don’t we?” I ask, sitting taller as a smile spreads across my face. “Could we tap them? We could have maple syrup of our own.”
“Perhaps,” he agrees, running his fingers over the crust of the top piece of bread. “It requires a lot of sap to create a small amount of syrup. We used to need buckets and piping between the trees. Likely not noticeable by boats, but a risk.”
Right. Because in the real world, not my fantasy of making a ghost enjoy my company, there’s no room for tapping trees. Survival can’t become a second priority.
Douglas continues talk of pleasant things. The constant rain and the book he’s been rereading. I finish my soup, slurping unprettily. I usually wouldn’t notice. But I feel his eyes on me as I tip the dregs into my mouth.
“I have an odd request, Elle.”
“And that would be?” My mind flashes full of potential threats.
“Could you fill a spoon with soup for me? I don’t have much strength today in the physical realm. I would like to”—he looks away, boyish—“pretend.”
Pretend. It’s easy to forget even a small thing, grasping a spoon, can be beyond his reach. All he wants is a slice of humanity. He’s come to the wrong person, yet I must try.
I lean over the small table and take the spoon in hand, dip it carefully into the full bowl. My arm shakes slightly as I lift it to his face. His chin is within an inch of my knuckles. He breathes in slowly through his nose, taking in the smell.
I stay still and so close. He’s become so many different things to me. My sin, my guilt, the last shreds of my conscience. He closes his eyes and presses his lips to the edge of the spoon.
How could I have thought him old? Should my plans succeed, I’ll become older than him. A peculiar thought.
“Thank you,” he says, quiet as the dawn’s first light over the horizon, and raises his head. “There’s kindness in you. More than you know.”
I take his spoon back and tip it into my mouth. No use wasting it. His chest hitches up, but not back down. I’ve made a ghost hold his breath.
I clean up our plates and store the rest of the bread and soup for Liney. Then I down the last of my wine, its sweetness filtering out the rot.
That’s what Douglas does. He strains the darkness from me. What’s left is raw and small, achingly vulnerable, but it’s me. Every soft glance from him makes me think that perhaps that could be enough.
I could fall into foolishness. Liney has, given her giggles and blushing around Bridget.
Perhaps it’s my turn. Douglas knows we’ve got no prospects together.
Our beings aren’t of the same realm, and our moral compasses point at polar opposites.
We’re a churning tide of my betrayal and his disappointment.
Yet in this lighthouse, in the setting sun’s orange light, we are James Douglas, young man, and Elle Forsyth, young woman.
“There’s a small music box tucked in a loose floorboard beneath the left side of the bed,” Douglas says when I’m finished cleaning up. “I don’t believe you’ve discovered it yet.”
The music box is a delicate thing. It fits into my palms when I pluck it from under the floor. Wooden, square, with lacquered sides engraved with delicate flowers.
“A memento. My mother told me it was a gift from my great-grandfather to his wife. Passed down ever since. The key should be inside.”
I open the box with the delicacy of a surgeon. Inside are the brass mechanisms, the roll of tiny bumps to create the melody, and a small key on a dainty gold string. I pluck the key out and hold it up to him.
“What does it play?” My stomach is in knots. This piece of him is too precious.
“See for yourself.”
I set it on the bedside table and turn the key in a small notch at the back. The song begins as I stand beside Douglas. It’s tinny, but it’s the first song I’ve heard other than in my sister’s voice in over a year. It’s beautiful. I close my eyes and let the melody wash over me. It’s a lullaby.
“My great-grandfather had it made,” Douglas explains softly. “Based on a song my great-grandmother used to hum on her way to the market. He memorized it on their walks and worked with a tinkerer to perfect it. Or so the story goes.”
“It’s a beautiful song.”