9. Juliette
Chapter Nine
JULIETTE
Holt is different this morning.
It's in the way he checks the road twice before pulling out of the gate and his careful pauses before answers that used to come easily.
“Stay in the back today,” he says, eyes on the road. “Let Nora take the counter. I need to speak to you later.”
“Why?” I watch the side of his face.
A muscle moves in his jaw. “I'd feel better.”
“That's not a reason. Something's happened. You're doing the thing where you decide what I get to know.”
“Juliette…”
“I'm working the counter today. If there's a real reason I shouldn't, tell me what it is, and I'll weigh it up. That's how this works now.”
He pulls up outside Latte Da! and looks at me, and for one second I think he's going to say it, whatever it is; his mouth opens. Then something in him closes like a stove door.
“See you at two.”
The morning rush saves me from stewing. I pull shots, I burn one batch of scones out of distraction and hide the evidence in the compost like a criminal, I get a latte rosette to come out looking like a rosette instead of a jellyfish.
By early afternoon the rush thins to regulars and gossip, and I'm boxing an eclair for the pastor's wife when the bell over the door rings.
My body knows before I look up. Expensive orange and musk cologne, applied liberally.
Corbin looks like he stepped out of an expensive catalog.
Camel coat, white shirt, the haircut that costs more than my week's wages.
He surveys Latte Da! with the pleasant, delighted expression he wears in rooms he considers beneath him, and then his gaze arrives at me behind the counter.
He smiles and my hands go cold around the pastry box.
“There she is,” he says, his voice like syrup. “Juliette, my sweet. Do you know, I've been looking absolutely everywhere for you.”
The pastor's wife looks up and Nora goes quiet in the corner.
“What can I get you?” My voice comes out level, surprisingly.
“A soy latte, since you're asking. And one of those charming… rolls.” He sets a fifty on the counter.
“Look at you. An apron. It's actually adorable. And the church newsletter! My people said you were so easy to find.” He leans in, dropping to a concerned register, pitched loudly enough to carry.
“Sweetheart. Everyone at home is worried sick.
Your mother's barely left her room since the wedding. And I have to ask, because we all care about you. Have you been taking your medication?”
I want to scream. Throw the milk in his face and tell the whole shop that I've never been prescribed so much as a sleeping pill. Shout that the bruises on my wrist came from this man's manicured hand, that his concern is fake.
But if I scream, I prove him right; every decibel I produce becomes a symptom. He's come to make sure Wildwood remembers the poor unstable girl and the patient man in the tailored coat.
So I don't scream, I make his latte. My hands want to shake but instead I set the cup in front of him with a rosette on top so clean Nora could frame it.
“I'm not on any medication, Corbin. I'm not confused, and I'm not going back. The wedding is off.”
“You've had a difficult month,” he says, gently. Then, leaning close over the counter, I get his real voice, flat and cruel: “You're being stupid. There are people in this arrangement with a great deal less patience than me.”
And it's fear that makes me lean in too.
“I know all about our family’s arrangement. Every account, every one of your little shell companies with the pretty names. Imagine if I went to the press. I could burn it all to the ground.”
Corbin glares at me for a second, then it's smoothed away. He straightens his cuff, and takes his latte.
“You should discuss this information with the lumberjack who’s glaring at me through the window there,” he says.
“Although you might first ask him why he's been in communication with a man named Dane Oakley.
Recovery specialists. Your father's hired them.” He tips his head at my confused expression.
“Oh. You didn't know. Well. It seems everyone makes decisions for you, sweetheart. At least I do it to your face.”
He drops the fifty in the tip jar and walks out, the bell ringing behind him. Nora appears at my elbow, takes the milk pitcher out of my hand, and looks at the door with a face I haven't seen on her before.
“That was not a good man. You want me to get Holt? I saw him outside”
“No,” I hear myself say. “Don't call anyone. I need five minutes.”
I untie the apron with trembling fingers, and walk out the back past the proof box into the alley. The cold hits my face and I stand there among the flour pallets breathing to calm myself from panicking, the way I taught myself at seventeen in cloakrooms at my father's parties.
Corbin found me. That was always coming at some point, though I didn’t expect it so soon.
But Holt knew. Holt has been talking to the people my father sent, for days, and never once thought the woman in his bed should get a vote.
I'm not crying; I’m awake.
They're all still making decisions about me. Every last one of them is about to find out what I'm like when I make my own.