Chapter 3 Arthur
Arthur
You.” Eva stepped back, her voice thickening with sudden emotion. Accusation filled her eyes as she raised her finger and thrust it in my direction. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Something squeezed inside my chest, and I opened my mouth to speak, only to choke on dead air.
Luckily for me, Izzy swooped in before the awkwardness could grow. “Impeccable timing, Fairy,” she chirped. “We were just talking about your arrival.”
My eyes zipped from her face back to Eva’s, a question budding on my lips, when the size of the figure that had stepped from the workshop registered in my mind.
My pulse leapt in recognition. There was only one man on this mountain as impossibly large as he.
I hadn’t been sure when I’d dialed if the number was still accurate, and part of me had hoped it would ring and ring, that I’d never have to hear his voice again.
But Jack had picked up right away.
Doubt tugged at me. This was a mistake. How could I walk back in after all this time? I couldn’t face them. Not now. Maybe not ever.
It wasn’t too late to just turn around and go. Mom’s ashes had been delivered.
“In the loosest sense of the word,” the monster chirped.
I gritted my teeth in annoyance.
At first, I’d thought to ignore Mom’s last request and send her ashes through the mail, which had only convinced the monster that I must have been deep in the throes of grief.
Driven by a desire to curb my self-destructive tendencies, it had…
changed. Grown bolder. The monster had forced me to sleep, dreamless.
It had tried to force me to eat to keep up my strength, but despite the gnawing in my belly, everything made my stomach churn.
When the monster had started hunting again, I’d caved to Mom’s wishes, and had set a course for Audrey, Pennsylvania, desperate to do whatever it took to soothe the beast into submission.
To prove I was fine.
“Arthur.” It wasn’t a question that fell from Jack’s lips, rather a confirmation. The monster cemented our feet where we stood, preventing me from acting on the impulse to run. Jack stepped from the shadows of the workshop into view.
I froze, my mouth parting in shock. The sight of him stole my breath.
What was I looking at?
A tangle of branches fluttered with leaves. A tree. A tree in his—No, that… that wasn’t possible.
But denying it did nothing to change what I saw. Where there once had been only a seed, now a whole sapling was lodged in the honeyman’s chest.
I gaped, aware of my rudeness but unable to stop.
The monster’s wonderment filled our mind. “Is that an aspen?”
The question nauseated me. We’d left the farm before we understood what we’d seen growing inside of Jack. For years, I’d tried to forget and move past that night, but the monster’s curiosity had festered deep inside me.
“I know, Fairy. First time’s a shocker.” Izzy took a step toward me and plucked her shoes from the grass. “You’re welcome to come in—”
“No.” Eva’s stout refusal drew all our attention to where she stood, ramrod straight and twisting the end of her shirt around her finger. Waterweeds spilled from beneath her shoes. “He’s not.”
“Honeybee,” Jack intoned softly, reaching for his younger daughter. Eva stepped back. “Wait!”
But Eva didn’t wait. She ripped her gaze away from me and bolted down the path. Jack grimaced.
“That could have gone better,” I said weakly.
Izzy shrugged. “Could have gone a lot worse, honestly.”
I’d expected a fight. Eva had never shied away from conflict before. Even angry, she had always been warmth. A burn or a balm. She had never frozen me out.
“Is that Lottie?” Jack quietly asked.
I nodded. “Yes, sir.” Guilt washed over me as I took in the shattered blue urn.
Jack winced.
I’d imagined this moment many times during my drive, but none of my mental rehearsals had featured me spilling my dead mother’s ashes onto the honeyman’s sacred soil.
Maybe that was a sign. I was stupid to think the monster would give a damn about her last request. Stupid to think coming here would stop it from donning me like a fucking glove.
Stupid to hope for relief.
Silence heavied the air with awkwardness, until Izzy cleared her throat. “Tea?”
I swallowed hard, searching for a protest. They didn’t have to do that. Play the host. Pretend. We didn’t have to be fine.
“Tea,” Jack agreed with a nod.
It made the hollow in my belly twist. I couldn’t help it.
Everything in this family circled back to honey and tea, tea and honey.
Jack told me once that healing started with a simmering pot and a spoonful of gold.
In this house, tea was a love language all its own, and it spoke when words and other medicines failed.
I crossed on stiff legs to the cottage’s front door, stealing glances back to the winding aspen lodged in Jack Moreau’s chest. My hands still cupped the ashes I’d scooped off the stepping stones, the breeze teasing away a wisp of the dark cremains.
Our approach startled a trio of gray-and-white kittens out from beneath the bushes. They dashed across the yard and out of sight.
After all this time, coming back should’ve felt like an intrusion.
Instead, the second I stepped into the mudroom, the knot between my shoulders eased.
The creaks of the floorboards were a song I didn’t expect to recall, the nicks in the wallpaper worn into my memory.
I hesitated on the trick step a moment before I realized I still knew it was there.
I didn’t expect that, for the house to be so deeply ingrained.
But I guess time couldn’t steal everything.
I’d first found the Moreaus the way a cocklebur found the knit of a sock, too eager to stick where I didn’t belong.
A weed like that—like me—was hard to pluck out, no matter how long I’d been away from home.
This wasn’t home.
I couldn’t forget that. No matter how familiar and inviting, the cottage and the family within weren’t mine anymore.
Izzy threw a sharp glance over her shoulder and guided me into the kitchen. I tried not to care when she bolted the lock. Of course, they didn’t want anyone from town to know I was here after everything that had happened.
“You hungry?” Izzy glanced out the window as she spoke, clearly trying to be gracious in light of Eva’s sudden flight.
“No, thank you.” But even as I said it, my eyes flicked to the honeypot on the top shelf. Not the one Jack kept hidden in the vent but the everyday pot I’d dipped into time and time again, to slather on toast or stir into tea.
Sometimes I dreamt of it. On bad days, their honey had been one of the only things I could stomach. My summer here had ruined me for other honey. I’d tried other brands and farms, but nothing compared.
I’d spent the last eight years chasing the way it had made me feel. Warm. Alive.
“Why not ask to take some with you? Jack wouldn’t begrudge you that.”
I gave a minute shake of my head. No, we couldn’t beg for favors. We couldn’t owe Jack anything more, even if the very thought of raw honeycomb made my mouth water like an animal’s.
Izzy plucked a carved wooden box off the side table in the parlor and dumped the contents—pencils and stationery, by the look of it—into the junk drawer beneath.
She motioned for me to uncup my hands and let the ashes in my palms pour into the box’s velvet-lined interior.
I did as instructed, a lump in my throat.
Izzy latched the box shut and rushed from the room. A tap squeaked on in the bathroom, and she returned with a damp rag in hand. She passed it to me, careful not to touch my skin. “You’ll stay for dinner?”
I swallowed my guilt and shook my head. This place was a drug. I had to get out before it wormed its way back into my system. I’d spent too many years looking back on that summer with a hole in my gut. “I can’t, Iz.”
Izzy’s mouth pressed into a frown. “You just got here,” she said softly.
The sadness in her protest took me aback. I didn’t deserve her affection after all I’d put them through. But then, the Moreaus had a thing about taking in strays.
“She’s right,” Jack said as he filled the kettle and set it on the stove. “Sit down a minute, son.”
A flare of heat startled to life in my chest to hear him call me that. Jack’s tone brooked no argument, so, like a moth to a flame, I plopped onto the nearest chair, wincing at the discomfort to my injured tailbone.
I cast my gaze over the familiar walls. I’d always loved this warm, close room.
It was the kind of rustic, lived-in space that made you set down all your worries.
Antique gold frames were littered across cherry-print wallpaper, anything that could be cast iron was cast iron, and the burnt-orange tiles featured timeworn cracks like stars that mapped the floor in a tale of teatimes past.
Sometimes I wondered if the Moreaus were too wrapped up in their family bubble to see their own magnetism. They drew people in, even those who didn’t want to be drawn, those who fought tooth, nail, and claw to be free of them.
“Like us?”
“You still like it with milk?” Jack asked, ladling a generous spoonful of honey into a mug.
My breath quickened. It was pathetic to want like this.
Too often, I felt like an empty bucket that couldn’t get full.
Moreau honey had a way of curbing my appetite, just as its keepers had always been able to quiet the monster in my head.
“Should I check on Eva?” Izzy asked softly.
Jack shook his head. “She won’t go far.”
The words fell like a slap and a soothing hand at once. That was one of the things I liked about Jack’s youngest daughter. She was roots. She was soil.
And my return had upset her. Of course it had.
“Where do you think she’ll go?” Izzy asked.
“The pond.” I didn’t realize I’d said it aloud until Jack and Izzy swiveled to face me. My cheeks burned with a new kind of heat. But if Jack remembered my youthful indiscretions with his daughter, he didn’t care to rehash them. Small favors.
We sipped our tea, tension brewing in the building silence. Jack swirled his teacup. “So.”
My chest panged. “Yes?”
Why had I agreed to this? The room was steeped in discomfort. What could we even talk about? The tree bursting out of his half-buttoned flannel shirt? The pile of ashes spread over the grass?
It would have been so much easier if Mom had simply had her ashes sent to Jack directly. What had she been playing at by playing us like this?
Jack took a sip. “I didn’t see a car.”
I nodded. Right. Yes. That was a safer topic. “I blew a tire.”
The weight of my camera bag no longer felt like an anchor. Instead of grounding me, it made the muscles in my shoulder pinch. I switched it to the other side, blinking through a sudden wave of dizziness. When was the last time I had eaten something besides those honey sticks?
“If you have to think, it’s been too long.”
“Where?” Jack asked.
“Not far. Quarter mile down the road?” I hesitated, discomfort collecting inside me. I didn’t want to ask them for help, but Jack guessed anyway.
“You need a ride.”
I hated that he was right.
“I can take you in the morning to get it patched. The garage is closed now anyway,” Jack said. “Why don’t you take your old room tonight?”
The monster perked up. “We’re sleeping over?”
I blinked, setting down my teacup to hide its shaking. “Jack,” I started, his name a bitter dreg on my tongue. “I can’t.”
“You can’t go anywhere else,” Jack said calmly, the leaves of the aspen fluttering in tune with his breath. It made the sapling feel that much more alive. Not only forest but flesh too, human and wilderness twining as one.
I shuddered.
Jack Moreau had always been a little wild. I’d seen him pluck strands of grass from his beard. I’d seen roots pushing from his soles. I’d seen him bleed red-green.
But this was different. This time, I couldn’t help the budding fear that this was all my fault. A thundering pressure heavied in my chest. I couldn’t stay here when I was the reason their lives were so utterly changed.
“I can drive you to the valley,” Izzy offered.
Guilt breathed its spores into me. “No. It’s fine.
” The drive down to Cumberland Valley was nearly an hour long.
I could wait until morning. Just a few hours, a quick tire patch, and then I could leave.
If I was lucky, I wouldn’t see Eva at all.
I wouldn’t have to figure out if she really did have more freckles or if I’d simply forgotten some of her constellations.
Jack crossed to the window over the sink and hauled it open, reaching through to pluck a scarlet bloom from the rosebush just outside. I cocked my head. Odd that it didn’t bloom where he touched it.
Jack snapped off the thorns and held it out to me. “Take it before you pass out.”
The monster eagerly stretched up my spine. “Yes, please. I’m so hungry.”
“I don’t want it,” I said, tapping the side of my leg.
Maybe, if I’d had more time, more courage, I would have told them about the monster that summer.
The Moreaus knew I killed things with a single touch.
They knew I hated it. Worst of all, they knew that sometimes killing was the only thing that made me well again.
Be it flower, mouse, or snake, they didn’t question it, saying I was good inside when the truth was, I was rotting.
Jack held the bloom out, stem toward me. I tried not to look at the tree, or to register the new emerald saturation in his irises, which used to be as blue as Eva’s.
The instant the delicate flower touched my skin, its petals shriveled. My vision steadied as the taste of rose spread over my tongue.
Jack stepped back with a crisp nod. “Right. Help yourself to a shower if you like. We’ll get a new pair of sheets on the bed. You let us know if you need anything.”
“Wait.” Beneath the taste of rose, the bite of ashes was still acrid in my mouth. My stomach clenched as I forced out the words. “Can I borrow a broom?”
Pain flashed across Jack’s face, there and gone so quick I almost missed it.
“I got it,” he said gently, bucketing my shoulder with a large hand.
The weight of it, the human warmth, shocked my protest away.
He was careful not to touch my skin—Jack was always careful—but the pressure alone, the comfort of it, woke in me an old ache.
“I’m so glad you’re here, Arthur,” Jack said.
Something flickered, deep inside me. Guilt, of course, my eyes flicking to the place where his tree disappeared beneath a mound of torn, scarred flesh.
Grief, too, for the pain I remembered seeing on his face that night. Grief for the years I might have had here, the home I might have built, if everything hadn’t gone so wrong.
Still, I wasn’t his prodigal, or a stray that had simply wandered off. I’d put myself in exile, and for eight long years I had buried every desire to come back or call or write a damn letter.
I’d been the one to insist on separation. A clean cut was better, I’d thought.
So why does it all still hurt?