CHAPTER EIGHT #2
In truth, it did look good. A fresh garden salad with grated Parmesan cheese and sliced boiled eggs and a creamy dressing of some sort, laid over a bed of greens. I wished I could smell it, taste it. I bet it would taste better than any salad I’d ever had. It was certainly the most expensive.
But still, I shook my head and muttered, “I’m not a vegetable guy.”
“It took a long time for me to like vegetables,” she replied, continuing the conversation. “I’m more of a fruit person.”
“Same here,” I said.
“What are you talking about?” the voice of the small, wiry man beside her said, and I did turn to face him this time. “You love vegetables. You have a salad almost every night.”
The woman twisted her lips with momentary distaste. The guy beside her didn’t see the reaction, but I did. But just as quickly, she let it go and plastered an easy smile on her face.
“Yeah, I do now,” she countered. “But for a long time, I didn’t. I had to, like, get used to it.”
I felt I understood. Not in the same way, I was sure, but fresh fruits and vegetables, or good food of any kind, had become an acquired taste after I survived on the little bit I was allowed—or stole.
It wasn’t until Leonard introduced us to produce, roasted meats, and anything that wasn’t packaged in a bag or can that my brothers and I began to appreciate the finer things in life. And I had been well into my teens then.
Leonard had done a lot of things for us, but never once had I considered betrayal to be one of them.
“No man is above sin,” I remembered him telling me once, but I hadn’t thought he could be speaking about himself.
To me, Leonard was the closest thing I’d ever met to a saint.
A sorrowful ache grew in the pit of my stomach as the waiters encircled the table, removing our salad plates and replacing them with a bowl of some kind of brown soup.
Looks like that time I had food poisoning, I thought, and before I could stop myself, I chuckled out loud.
The woman beside me leaned into my arm, the soft, rounded curve of her breast pressed against me, and every bone in my body froze at the same time as every ounce of blood dropped south.
The innocent touch of a woman’s body against mine was foreign to me.
Everything before had been deliberate and devious, and ever since, I’d kept myself locked away with the purpose of avoiding people and the things they might want from me.
But now, with her against me, I started to consider that maybe I could find it in me to reassess, if an unintended touch could arouse me as much as if she’d grabbed me by the dick beneath this table.
“Something funny there, Jekyll?” she whispered.
Again with the nicknames, and it made me smile.
I cleared my throat, and in that fake, put-on voice, I replied, “This soup looks like shit.”
She stifled a giggle. “Oh God, it really does.”
I glanced over to watch her push a spoon through the mixture of liquid and lumpiness.
“Was it necessary to add corn?” I muttered, leaning closer to her, and I swore I thought I could smell something sweet, something undeniably feminine, through the mask.
She really did giggle then, and not only did she catch the attention of Dracula beside her, but of Gerald and his wife, Virginia.
“What are you laughing about?” Dracula asked.
“Nothing,” the woman beside me said, clearing her throat and schooling her emotions, but as she poked at the bits of corn floating to the surface of the lumpy brown liquid, her lips fought against another smile.
“Analise,” Virginia said, pulling my attention across the table, where I found Gerald’s wife’s eyes pointed directly at the woman beside me.
Analise.
The name rang out like church bells, as if it suddenly all made sense for that name to be hers.
As if my soul had known all along and it just needed to hear it spoken to be reminded.
And, oh, it was a lovely name. A fancy name.
Like this food, like this house. And I realized she belonged here, in this place that radiated wealth and beauty.
Very much unlike me.
Analise shoved a spoonful of soup into her mouth and murmured a, “Hmm?” in response.
An awfully unladylike move, I thought with a smirk, concealed beneath the mask.
“Benjamin mentioned earlier that he was looking for apartments,” Virginia answered, keeping her eyes on Analise as she very carefully lifted her spoon to her lips.
Benjamin. I furrowed my brow as I grabbed my own spoon to blend in. Who’s Benjamin?
“I heard,” Analise replied with a nod, turning slightly toward Dracula beside her.
Ah. I stored the name away as I drew circles along the soup’s surface with the tip of the spoon.
“Somewhere in the Boston area, right?” she added.
“Yeah,” Benjamin replied. “Maybe a little outside of the city, but somewhere around there. Depends on what I can find.”
I leaned forward enough to glance over in Benjamin’s direction, just in time to watch him shrug.
He feigned a look of nonchalance, but couldn’t hide the mischief in his eyes.
I knew that look. I’d seen it many times.
It was mean. Evil. Not the look of a boy up to no good, but a man who had every intention of doing something bad.
Ike looked like that sometimes, but I was able to reel him in.
Who reeled Benjamin in?
Did anyone?
Virginia folded her hands in her lap and sat up straight as she asked, “Will you be moving in with him?”
“Um … honestly, I hadn’t really thought about it,” Analise replied.
It was impossible to miss the change in her voice. The subtle difference in volume. The clipped edge to her tone. She didn’t want to talk about this—at least not now. Maybe ever.
“Well, I wasn’t expecting you’d move in with him right away,” Virginia amended, her eyes blinking rapidly. “But I assumed it would be on the horizon. Sooner rather than later, yes?”
Analise faltered for a moment before nodding as she dabbed a cloth napkin along her lips. “Well … I mean, of course. But … it just …” She swallowed and laid the napkin on her lap. “It feels very … early to be considering things like living together. We barely know each other. It—”
“What are you talking about?” Benjamin interrupted incredulously. “We know things about each other.”
“And, sweetheart,” Gerald’s prim and proper wife began with a humoring smile, “it’s like … well, look at Gerry and me.” She laid a hand against Gerald’s shoulder. “We were together for—how long before we were married?”
Gerald hastily swallowed a heaping spoonful of lumpy soup before replying, “Two months.”
Two months.
It had taken him just two months to secure his spot in this cushy life.
It was almost impressive.
How the hell had he managed that?
“That’s right. Two months. And as you get older, sweetheart, you need less time to know these things. And you and Benjamin, well—"
“It just makes sense,” Benjamin finished for her as he wrapped his arm around Analise’s shoulders. “Right, baby?”
“But nothing has to happen right away,” Virginia quickly threw in, smiling reassuringly toward Analise. “You have time.”
After that moment, Analise never said anything else throughout the duration of dinner.
She kept her head down as she finished her lumpy soup and ate the roasted chicken and mashed potatoes that came afterward.
No longer did she smile or joke around with me, and if I said I wasn’t saddened by it, I would be lying.
But she had been a distraction, and without her stealing my attention, I was able to refocus on Gerald and Virginia, who made small talk with everyone else around them … but never Leonard. And he, like Analise, remained silent. Eating his meal and keeping his head down.
He didn’t appear uncomfortable, but he also didn’t seem at all like himself. Subdued and silent, as if he was nothing more than a fixture in the room and not a guest at a party.
And all the while, warning bells rang loudly through my head, above the voices and clinking and clanking of utensils. Because something—many somethings—felt off in this place. Wrong. And I wished I hadn’t come. I wished I hadn’t gotten mixed up in it all.
But even as I longed for the ability to turn back time, sitting there beside a silent Analise, I couldn’t begin to know just how much I’d live to regret driving my hearse out to Hollow Cove.
***
All things considered, it was a beautiful night.
And as I stood on the terrace overlooking a hedge maze that looked like it was straight out of The Shining, an inkling of intuition told me to appreciate it. To breathe what little bit of fresh air I could through this mask, to close my eyes and cherish these moments of gentle calm.
But I knew it wasn’t what I should’ve been doing at all.
I should’ve been finding Leonard, pulling him aside and demanding he talk to me and explain himself. Even if it broke my heart, I needed to know why he was there, and I needed to hear it from him.
But it’d been impossible to get him alone after dinner. He wandered off toward the library to observe the artwork with Gerald. He mingled quietly amid the guests, making sure to be surrounded by others at all times. And I wondered if perhaps it had been done on purpose, to avoid being alone.
And, I figured, it was just as well. The party had begun to die down before I stepped outside. Guests were beginning to leave, and as soon as I was certain he’d gone home, I’d leave as well. I could always talk to him later, and for now, I could spare a moment to enjoy this view and breathe.
Because a storm was approaching—I could sense it—and I wished I had a cigarette.
“So …”
I turned from the view of the garden to watch as Analise approached from the French doors.
She had laid a shawl over her slender shoulders, its lengths draped and spiraled around her long arms. Her hair was now swept up into a messy knot at the top of her head, accentuating her slender neck and the sparkling black diamonds she wore around her neck and in her ears.