Chapter Eighteen
Todd stared after Meredith in dismay. “I’m sorry, man. I was just having fun. Thought this’d be a way to get to know you guys a little better.”
David sighed and ran a hand through his hair (once again making a mental note to have it cut soon).
“It’s all right.” It wasn’t, but he could hardly blame Todd.
In fact, it felt about a hundred times worse than all David’s unreciprocated insults combined, even though he’d not uttered a single word in malice.
“He’s just a bit on edge at having a houseful of his relatives, I think. ”
“Should I go talk to him?” asked Todd.
Somehow David couldn’t imagine that improving matters. “No, no. I’ll go sort it out. If you could keep an eye on things down here for a moment?”
He started toward the staircase, then, on second thought, made a brief detour down the hall. After retrieving the nearly empty jar of Mrs. Jupiter’s healing salve, he climbed the stairs and tapped on the door of the second-floor bathroom. “Meredith?”
Silence.
“I know you’re in there.”
“No, I’m not.”
“I’m opening the door.” David found Meredith sitting in the empty bathtub, injured hand pressed to his mouth as he glared up at him. The way he held his arm cradled against his chest put David in mind of a bird with a broken wing.
He held up the jar. “Looking for this? You left it downstairs last week.”
When Meredith refused to answer, David took a seat at the edge of the bathtub, opened the jar, and gathered every last bit of remaining ointment before taking hold of Meredith’s wrist. He didn’t resist, and let David lift his hand.
“You poor silly little bird.” David tried his best to be gentle in both tone and touch as he applied ointment to the cut.
The wound was deep, and the bleeding had lessened but not stopped.
“Of course I know all about you. I know you call yourself a surrealist, but you take just as much influence from expressionism, and you adore Ralph Steadman. I know you can’t do math to save your life, and you can’t discriminate between good and bad beer.
I know you’ve got a remarkable memory for verse, you sing beautifully, and you make the best shortcrust pastry I’ve ever had. ”
At Meredith’s look of suspicion, David said, “Cross my heart. I’d never lie about pastry.
” He’d finished with the ointment but didn’t let go, and found he didn’t want to yet.
As he went on, he studied Meredith’s hand, soft and pale with remnants of black nail polish around the cuticles and bands of even paler skin in place of his absent rings.
“Your handwriting is dreadful, but you can do lovely calligraphy because you think of it as drawing and not writing. You love thunderstorms, but blizzards make you uneasy. If I were to ask your favorite flower, you’d say you could never choose, but,” he went on quickly, curtailing Meredith’s protest of exactly that, “I know that really you like common wood violets best.”
David did release his hand then, and Meredith tipped his head back against the tiled wall. In the subdued daylight filtering through the small high window above the bathtub, the dark circles beneath his eyes were more evident than ever.
“I do still like all them things you said before,” he admitted wearily, “even if they’re not my most favorite.
Only—I mean it’s not your fault, only I s’pose I sort of wished—you see, Florian’s found s-somebody who cares enough to know all that about him, and it all just reminded me that I haven’t. ”
Once again, David found himself struck by that awful breathless, crumpled feeling as though his lungs, or something thereabouts, were being crushed by some invisible force.
To buy himself time to formulate a response, he rose and went to the sink to wash the traces of blood and healing salve from his hands.
When he couldn’t put it off any longer, he turned back around and dried his hands.
“I hadn’t realized.” That much was true; he hadn’t imagined sibling rivalry to be at the root of the matter, but it fit with the picture becoming increasingly clear in his mind, like a developing Polaroid photo or a jigsaw puzzle beginning to take shape. “I’m sorry I got it wrong.”
Meredith shook his head. “Nah, it was a stupid game. I’m sorry, too. I know sometimes I can be a bit high-st-st-strung,” he finished, forcing out the word.
#100: Sometimes—
David paused. Even if it was true that sometimes was the understatement of the year, he couldn’t bring himself to hold it against him, not right now.
“And I can’t even sp-speak properly.”
Frowning, David returned to sit at the edge of the tub. “Hey,” he said, softening his voice. “Hey, now, none of that. Although if you’ll forgive me asking—I mean to say, I’ve never heard you speak with a stutter before. Not so that I’ve noticed.”
“I don’t. I mean, I haven’t, not in years. It used to be pretty bad when I was a kid, but now it’s only when I get st-st-st—” Meredith closed his eyes, and made a rolling go on motion that conveyed far more resignation than words ever could.
David waited.
“Stressed,” Meredith concluded in a small voice.
David would have been stressed himself if half of his extended family descended upon Midnight Cottage, and he actually got on with his relatives. He was not so sure that was the case here.
“Come now,” David said encouragingly. “It can’t be as bad as all that.
” True, there seemed a degree of unspoken tension between Meredith and his mother.
Neither did Lisl impress him as an especially pleasant woman, brief as their interaction had been.
As for Florian—David still didn’t know what to make of him.
He couldn’t say he liked the remarks he’d overheard earlier, but, he reasoned, anyone could become abrasive in the face of sufficient frustration, and surely Florian couldn’t be that bad if Adalynn Cartier had chosen to marry him.
In all likelihood, it was simply an off moment.
In any case, the whole lot of them would be gone in a few hours more.
“David?”
“Hmm?”
“Thanks for not laughing at me. About—” Meredith made a vague gesture toward himself, but David understood exactly what he meant, and it sent a hot stab of rage through him. No matter how ridiculous Meredith might be, something like that was absolutely off limits.
“Don’t you dare—”
Misunderstanding, Meredith interrupted, “No, no, I didn’t mean to s-s—” He gave up and amended, “Imply that you would, only—”
“No,” said David, “don’t you dare thank me for showing you the most basic decency.”
“Oh,” said Meredith. It was a sad little sound, as though he’d been chastised—which he had, David supposed, though he hadn’t meant it that way.
“December the twelfth,” he said suddenly. “Your birthday, it’s December the twelfth.”
Meredith stared.
“Oh, come on, don’t go making those big saucer eyes at me.
Of course I knew it all along,” said David, with more confidence than perhaps was warranted.
But it had been there in his memory, somewhere or other, buried beneath a heap of petty grievances.
“It just threw me, being put on the spot like that.”
Feeling much better, he gave Meredith’s shoulder a reassuring pat and got to his feet. He’d left Todd in charge for far longer than he’d meant to. “I’d best be getting back. Come down when you’re ready, okay?”
“Yeah,” said Meredith, and offered a weak smile. “Be right down.”
—
By the time David returned to the living room, Todd had dozed off on the sofa, and Genevieve was showing Lisl and Mrs. Schwarzwelder in from the deck.
As David hastened to descend the last few steps, Todd jerked awake.
Mumbling a bleary apology—something about werewolves, as far as David could make out—Todd slipped past him to make his escape to the second floor.
“There you are,” said Genevieve. “I wondered where you two disappeared to. I was just going to help Mom and Aunt Lotte find the restroom.”
“My apologies,” said David. “Meredith went upstairs for a moment to, er…” He couldn’t imagine that Lotte Schwarzwelder, or anyone else for that matter, would want to hear, Your son has just stepped away to have a crisis in the bathtub.
He was not, in fact, sure any longer whether son was the correct term.
Nor was he sure he ought to share—besides which, the situation had been resolved. Everything was perfectly all right now.
“Throw a tantrum,” supplied Lisl. “Of course he did.”
“Oh, I’d hardly call it that. It was—” David stopped. He also didn’t want to admit that Meredith had fled upstairs because of something he himself had said.
Lotte exchanged a look with her sister. “Look,” she said with an air of resignation, “I love my son, but I’m not blind. He can’t stand not being the center of attention.”
David frowned. Though he would be the first to concede that Meredith’s relatives surely knew him best, the two of them had lived together for a considerable period, and David was confident in his assessment of him.
Meredith was scatterbrained, mercurial, arrogant at times, a bit self-absorbed—but not particularly attention-seeking, and certainly not calculating or malicious.
Lisl scoffed. “If you ask me, you should’ve—”
“Mom,” interrupted Genevieve with a pointed look. “Come on, Aunt Lotte, let me show you where the bathroom is.”
“Down the hall to the left,” supplied David, and Genevieve nodded. He wasn’t sure whether he imagined it or whether she threw him an apologetic glance as they passed by.
Left alone with Lisl, David racked his brain for some light topic of conversation. When she folded her arms and scowled, he decided he oughtn’t to press his luck after all.
Then she caught sight of Bianca, and her face twisted in disgust. “Rhinestones!”
“I beg your pardon?”
(Bianca, perhaps sensing the hostility, took refuge behind the sofa.)
“Rhinestones, he’s put on that little ankle biter. Just has to go prancing around shoving it in everybody’s face that—”