Wildalone (49 page)

“I want to take you home and be naked with you again. Actually, home's too far.”

We ran out without saying good-bye to anyone. He parked the car in the thick darkness of a nearby street, pulled me on top of him, and made love to me right there, refusing to stop, whispering into my skin things I wanted to
believe, whispering them endlessly. Then he drove without letting me out of his arms, not even when we reached his house and the key came out of the ignition. They held me with the beautiful, strange insistence I had always loved about him, keeping me within him until the last possible moment, and then finally opening to let me out, but not until he had asked me to promise—and I had promised—never to leave him.

M
ISS THEA—”

I opened my eyes and saw the butler next to me. An oddly thin figure. Standing still, against the dark frame of the French doors.

“I believe Master Rhys is ready.”

Ready. Of course he was. I remembered the rules he had once explained to me:
I don't object. I don't make her wait. I don't refuse anything.

“Sorry, I must have dozed off. What time is it?”

“Close to nine.”

We were alone in the living room. The rest of the house was dark and quiet. “Where is he, Ferry?”

“Upstairs. And Master Jake is on his way. Ten more minutes, perhaps.”

His voice was buttery soft. The usually detached face—transformed. Animated by a cautious, almost fatherly warmth.

A knot in my stomach tightened.
Just go upstairs. Smile. Kiss Rhys and let him leave.

I could barely hear my own knock but he was already at the door when I
opened it. Black jeans. A lapis-blue track jacket. Looking incredibly sexy, no matter how much he had tried to downplay the outfit.

“Don't be upset.” He pulled me into his arms. “I'll be back before you know it.”

“When do you have to leave?”

“I should have left by now.”

My eyes were tearing up and I looked down, so he wouldn't see it. His jacket was zipped, but not enough to hide the bare skin underneath. No shirt. And not even buttons. A zipper—the easiest thing to rip open with a single gesture.

She can do anything to my body. That's the deal.

“Thea, I can't leave like this. Talk to me.”

Talk? About what? About how I spent countless hours trying to guess the things she would be doing to him, and everything she had done already? Twelve months a year, for fifteen years. It meant 180 full moons, so the scenarios were endless. My obstinate mind started with what I had seen under that tree, then gradually increased the dosage—until there wasn't a spot on him that she hadn't touched, kissed, claimed, fucked.

“Talk to me. Please.”

“Just go.”

“Maybe I shouldn't, if that's what it will do to you.”

At first, the full meaning of his words didn't reach me. “What are you talking about?”

“About taking my chances. I am told she'd come after me and kill me. But there's only one way to find out.”

“Don't even think about this. Ever.”

I couldn't imagine the world without him. And if his existence depended on it, I would have given him up to Elza—every night, for the rest of my life.

“Rhys, ignore my moods. Just go and come back to me when it's over.”

“I won't be long, you'll see. Ivy has a party later. I told Jake to take you there.”

“Not tonight.”

“Yes, tonight. It's Christmas Eve and you're not staying in.”

“I'm fine, don't worry.”

“I do worry. And I won't leave unless you promise to go out and have a good time.”

I promised. But a party would make no difference. The thought of him with her—holding her, kissing her, practically being her slave the entire night—cut through me as if someone was twisting a knife in my chest.

“Look at me. Thea—” He pushed my chin up. “There is nothing for me outside of you. Nothing. I go to her only because I want another month with you.”

Then he kissed me. And in that brief moment, the world was just as we wanted it—with no one else in it.

N
OLLAIG SHONA DUIT—”

The voice made me turn away from the window: Jake had just walked in.

“—it means Happy Christmas in Irish.”

“Hi, Jake.”

What else could I say?
Happy
was the one thing this Christmas wasn't going to be, for any of us.

“I know it's hard.” His hand pressed on my shoulder. “But Rhys never stays with her long. He'll be back soon, you'll see.”

Soon? Only minutes had passed since the dark figure had crossed the lawn and disappeared through the trees. Now the only thing I could detect out there was an ominous silver disk, beaming its stare down from the night sky.

“Thea, come. Let's have dinner.”

It was the same table at which I had eaten my first meal at Pebbles. Once again, candles quivered all over it, filling the empty crystal glasses with the illusion of water stirred up by reflected light.

Ferry pulled my chair out. “Merry Christmas, Miss Thea.”

“Merry Christmas, Ferry. I'd try to say it in Irish, but that would only butcher it.”

“How does it sound in Bulgarian?”

“Vesela Koleda.”

“Ah, yes, there is a certain music to it.” He lifted the table's centerpiece (a white candle surrounded by holly leaves), and placed it in front of me, together with a box of matches. “In Ireland, we consider this to be the Christmas light. It must be lit by the youngest member of the family.”

I looked at him and Jake—the human half of my new family. It was with the other half, Rhys and Elza, that my life had taken a crazy turn.

I lit the candle. Ferry observed, with a ceremonious smile.

“After dinner, we shall leave the light by the window, to guide the lost souls on their path home. But until then, it will bless our Christmas meal.”

The meal itself was understated: fish, plum sauce, cream potatoes, and all sorts of salads. After the cutting of the Christmas cake, Jake pulled an envelope out of his jacket and handed it to Ferry.

“Merry Christmas. From all of us.”

The old man opened it, glanced through the contents, then slowly folded everything back in. “With all due gratitude, I'm afraid I cannot accept this.”

“The gift is more than well deserved, Ferry. And way overdue. You've been running this household for decades; now it's time to have a home of your own.”

“My home is with you and Master Rhys. Always has been.”

Jake smiled. Took the envelope back and slipped it into his pocket, producing another one in its place, still sealed.

“Plan B, in case you decided that Ireland would be too far. Which, frankly, was what Rhys and I were hoping.” Then he clarified for my benefit: “That's the deed to the house next door. Starting tonight, Ferry is no longer in service with us. He'll be our new neighbor.”

The piece of paper fluttered as Ferry's hand began to shake. He thanked Jake, excused himself, and came back a few moments later with a gift-wrapped box (for me) and a larger flat package (for Jake).

“These are from Master Rhys. He wanted to surprise you in person, but when he found out that he had to . . . that he wouldn't be present, he asked me to deliver them for him.”

“You go first.” Jake's eyes flashed in my direction, somehow managing to avoid both my face and Rhys's gift.

I opened the box. Inside was a smaller lacquer box, lined in black velvet, holding a bracelet of golden poppies matching the necklace I had on, and the volume of Rimbaud's poems, this time inscribed:

To my windkissed girl,

Rhys

Jake flipped his own present over. On the other side of the thick brown paper was an address label but no postage stamps—the package must have been delivered by courier.

“That's odd. My brother didn't bother to open it?”

“I believe Master Rhys made a point of not seeing what was inside.”

“You mean Rhys bought me a gift without knowing what it is?”

“He considered it a coincidence. ‘Lucky aberration' were his exact words. About two months ago, he happened to be home when a phone call was received for Mr. Estlin, extending a second-chance offer to one of Christie's most valued customers.”

Jake froze, but his fingers had already ripped the paper. From across the table, I could see a dark wooden frame—probably an artwork.

“They told Master Rhys that the order had been placed in mid-September and then canceled within days. The item in question was among the priciest acquired by Christie's all year—and among the rarest in the market to begin with—so they wanted to confirm the cancellation before putting the lot up for auction. Since Master Rhys had never placed such an order, he figured the only other Mr. Estlin must have really wanted the piece, having been ready to pay a fortune for it. Naturally, he acquired the mystery object on the spot, but requested to not be given any details so that the gift would be a surprise for both of you on Christmas Eve.”

“Except the gift wasn't for me. It was for Thea.” Jake said it with the even voice of a man resigned to anything, dropped the frame in my lap, and left the room.

Under the glass I saw two pieces, not one. But neither was an artwork. On the left, faded and creased with time, lay a sheet of music. Music written by hand, in clusters of meticulous, tiny notes: the Nouvelle Étude in F minor. At the top was a signature. An
F
directly over the
C
, its vertical line unfolding in ripples below the entire name like the curved trajectory of a whip—

The signature of Frédéric Chopin.

Next to it on the right, completing the symmetry, was a second piece of paper—this one unblemished and white—that Jake must have sent to Christie's, to be framed with the étude. Its thin border in orange and black framed Chopin's name, and my own. Under them was the date: September 14, 2007.

While I sat there in shock, I heard a gasp. Ferry had come behind me and was now looking over my shoulder, lower lip twitching—with anger, or horror, or whatever else hadn't found outlet in his wide open eyes. Then he walked away. Carried the Christmas candle to one of the French doors and placed it on the floor.

“We should go.” Jake was standing in the hallway, holding my coat. “I promised my brother to take you to Ivy tonight.”

I waited for Ferry to say something. Anything, at least a curt good-bye. But his eyes continued to penetrate the darkness outside, searching it for lost souls who might detect the flicker through the night.

IVY WAS LOUD AND UPBEAT
, but it must have been just the swimmers and their friends—everyone else had left for the holidays. People came and talked to us (Jake spoke, I pretended to listen), while the minutes slipped through my mind like mute waves, indifferent, having touched nothing.

“What are we going to do when Rhys comes home?” I asked, once we finally had a moment to ourselves. He didn't answer. “Jake, what are we going to tell him?”

“The truth, what else?”

“But I don't think he'd understand. He'll think we betrayed him.”

“Of course he will; that's exactly what we did. I was determined not to let it happen. And I screwed up.”

“If anyone screwed up, it's me.”

“We all did, including Rhys. He should have come clean with you from the start.”

That didn't make me feel any better—Rhys's mistakes were no excuse for my own. Besides, there was something else. Something I couldn't say out loud: that I was blown away by Jake's gift. Not because it was the priciest item acquired by Christie's all year, but because, once again, he had found his way into my heart and Rhys hadn't. Jake was the one who had figured out what I loved and tracked it down. Whereas Rhys, after nearly four months with me, was still giving me what
he
loved. His poppies. His poetry book. An attempt to fix my literary tastes, maybe?