15. The Apples Don’t Fall Far from the Tree
THE APPLES DON’T FALL FAR FROM THE TREE
WILLIAM DE WITT LOOKED at me expectantly, with all the genteel tranquility of a man with more to offer than I even had adequate space to want. A thought, briefly occurring: Imagine this kind of safety. (A prayer, then: If I fail, let it not be because I dreamed too small.)
“I just … I don’t think I should,” I said after an elongated pause, managing the smile of someone who simply couldn’t bear to put their host out for even one more second.
“Take advantage of your hospitality, I mean. It’s very generous of you, but I can just go help Emmanuelle, see if the roads open back up—”
“Emmanuelle’s got plenty of company for the night, I suspect.” There was a tone of something I couldn’t parse, certainly disapproving. Not unlike my mother speaking of me. And then he continued, “It’s not a problem, Anya. Really, it’s a mess out there—”
“I just don’t want Genesis to have to … I mean, it’s just so silly, I’m fully capable of—”
We were speaking over each other, my fault.
There was no chance of being dignified at the moment.
There was a heat coursing through me, directionless, restless.
Twice in looking at William I’d already quietly imagined the places I might dig my fingers in, as if being with Jude had woken up something larger, indiscriminately insatiable, in me.
I stopped.
“True.” William’s eyes strayed from my face a moment, then returned. As if nothing had happened, he clarified, “It’s not like you and I can’t turn down a bed on our own.”
I swallowed, then tried one last time, “I just don’t think—”
“Here.” He padded away from the stairs, toward me.
For a moment I thought he was going to take me in his arms—he came that close.
Instead he gestured behind me, to the door I’d just passed through.
“You can stay in one of the cabanas beside the courtyard, you’ll like that.
Emmanuelle had a friend stay over recently. The linens should be newly refreshed.”
He didn’t seem to mind the rain as he led me outside; I, meanwhile, scoured the path for any sign of wandering demons.
The courtyard’s glass doors were shuttered against the rain, but Emmanuelle was outside, dancing with Atticus.
I lifted a hand to wave to her as we took the stairs down the terraced path, but she was lost to me, already well into the realm of bacchanalia.
There was a sensuousness to her—a sumptuousness. The rain slid down her open decolletage, cresting there from time to time like delicate beadwork before sloughing away. In her hand was a mottled smoothie, its contents a characterless shade of brown.
The cabana, unsurprisingly, looked like a hotel room on the inside—it had an air of bohemian chic, very much in line with the rest of Emmanuelle’s taste.
Inside was a bed with white linens, a small table facing the window that overlooked the courtyard, a narrow door I assumed was a closet.
Another person had joined the fray, I noticed from afar.
Emmanuelle reached over for a woman who looked like a supermodel—who was, as far as I could parse from this distance, an actual supermodel.
She was laughing, and as Emmanuelle’s guests usually were, spilling her drink.
They fell into each other, obviously drunk; within moments, Atticus had pushed both women in the pool.
“She and I have slightly different ideas of family legacy,” commented William, who was lingering beside the open door. His voice was flat, a bit distant.
He, however, was very close to where I lingered near the window, unsure what surfaces were acceptable to touch. I could almost feel the warmth of his chest against my back.
“Oh?” So it was disapproval he felt toward her, then. I felt an idiotic loyalty to Emmanuelle, a desire to defend her. I didn’t respect her much, but I resonated more strongly with her position in the villa, with the hand she had little choice but to play.
“This house was certainly once known for its revelry,” William said. “Emmanuelle gets that part right.”
I felt like I could sense the presence of every place we might have touched. I was still buzzing from my brush with Jude’s monster, and now every inch of me felt electrified.
“I thought she was your producing partner?”
“Partner is a strong word. She knows how to cut an advantageous deal.” He shifted his weight from foot to foot, closing in on my periphery.
“Though she sees my philanthropy work as a distraction from her true purpose of reinvigorating Killian’s social scene,” he added drily.
“She and Fred have … somewhat oppositional goals.”
“Why not both?” I suggested, intending to be playful.
“Mm” was all he offered in reply, as if he’d already asked himself as much.
We both watched Emmanuelle find herself a pool floatie, clambering atop it and singing into the pelting rain. The model floated with hazy stupefaction on her back, drifting with a weightlessness, a full embrace of leisure.
“Have you always lived with her?” I asked, mostly to make conversation. Emmanuelle struggled to sit upright on the pool inflatable, leaning over the edge of the floatie and down toward the model like she was whispering a secret in her ear.
“Not always,” William said with a shake of his head. “But this house, the family…” He trailed off. “It’s what Killian would have wanted.”
“She has a real instinct for glamour,” I said, summoning something nice to say about my benefactress.
She was, after all, my boss, and I was fond of her in a way that made me very tired, which was how I felt about a great many of my acquaintances.
Emmanuelle seemed to me a natural extension of their lifestyles—taken to their inevitable conclusion, you seemed to unequivocally derive Emmanuelle.
“Makes sense that everyone would either want to be her or be with her,” I murmured as I watched her throw back her head with a laugh.
Then I felt the cool air of William taking a step back. He twisted around to cough, an alarming sound. Almost like a retching, as if something had gotten trapped inside his throat.
“Are you—” I began, but he lifted a hand, dismissing my concern.
Then—
“Emmanuelle tells me you’re a Morris,” he said, clearing his throat.
“Yes.” It wasn’t untrue, I equivocated in silence, though I knew the degree of accuracy wasn’t the problem. Suddenly, the hum of the air conditioning felt loud and aggressive. It was substantially cooler here than it was outside, such that I couldn’t quite fight a shiver.
“We’re distantly related to the Morrises, you know,” William said. His eyes were still on the window, resting somewhere behind me. “We have the full genealogy in a volume somewhere. One of Killian’s prized possessions.”
“Emmanuelle mentioned you were something of an aficionado.” Something had gone stilted, excessively formal. I couldn’t tell if it was because I’d complimented Emmanuelle, or because he’d set a trap for me that I’d somehow failed.
“Mm, yes. History buff and all that.” He looked at me then as if this were a press junket, with a smile of disinterested politeness on his face.
I felt young and stupid. “Right.”
“I wanted to show it to you, but I couldn’t find any record of the Morris family in LA,” he said. “Of course, it could be out of date. You’re what, twenty?”
I cleared my throat. “Twenty-two.”
“And nobody’s done anything with those since Killian passed, so maybe it needs updating.
” His smile seemed particularly still, as if he were holding it in place.
“Anyway, I’d better go check on her.” He gestured with his chin to the window—to his gregarious, inebriated sister. “You’ll be all right in here?”
“Oh yeah, definitely. Thank you, again.”
He answered my nod with his own and turned as if to leave.
I finally allowed myself to take a seat on the bed, exhaling more sharply than I intended as I met the mattress.
Even before William left the room, pieces of the night were floating retributively back to me—his proximity, the heat of his presence, then the abrupt indifference, the sudden shift.
The sharp rap of his cough. Renovation dust, Emmanuelle had said many times, but I’d never coughed here.
Not that it mattered if I happened to have hardier lungs.
Unavoidably, my mind found its way to Jude. To the ill-advised kiss I’d started, the way I’d let a monster touch me. The way that, had I been there even a single moment longer, I would have almost certainly gotten down on my knees and begged for more.
Before I could make sense of any of these thoughts, though, William had paused to face me from the doorway.
“By the way,” he said. “Are you hapa?”
“What?” I thought at first that I’d misheard him. A strange rush of apprehension had filled my ears, like the sound of an incoming wave.
“Hapa,” he repeated. “You just have a look to you. I’ve been trying to put a finger on it.”
“Oh. Uh, no?” I said, even though he could very easily find out the truth if he wanted to. Maybe I could claim not to have known the term—it wasn’t that widely used. It didn’t even technically apply to me, it was just … often used in reference to what I was.
“Ah, okay, just curious. As I said, Jude seems quite taken with you.” He smiled at me. “Have a good night.”
I’ve replayed that moment in my head several times since then. I still don’t know what it was that raised some alarm in me, why the hairs on the back of my neck seemed to rise. The tone of his voice, maybe? Possibly the question itself, or how quickly I knew I was about to lie?
Either way, it was back again. That lingering sense of danger.
Even after he was gone, it took a moment to calm my racing pulse.
I closed my eyes, taking deep breaths, retracing my steps.
Images floated to mind, populating like a growth of spores, undulating, unbidden.
The moments of Jude’s guilelessness, his flaking knuckles where they wrapped around my throat.
In my mind, a pair of ocean eyes met mine from below.
A glint of teeth flashed from a mouth fitting itself hungrily between my thighs.
I rose to my feet and locked the door quietly. Then I turned, resting my back against the door, and unbuttoned my jeans.
Without even noticing, my breath had quickened.
My eyes fluttered as I slid my hand down my torso.
There was nothing artful to it—more like the urgency of an itch.
Jude’s eyes, the darkness in them, the steady beat of pounding rain.
There was a shriek of drunken obscenities from the courtyard, but I wasn’t listening.
In the stillness of my room, a breathy whimper slipped out from between my lips as I came.