Starling House, page 25
Panic chokes me, turns my voice into something like a plea. “He wouldn’t make it a year.”
Gravely blinks rapidly. Baine lifts and drops her shoulder again in that delicate, maddening shrug.
I wet my lips and observe, conversationally, “I’ll kill you.”
“Difficult, once you’re jailed for arson.”
She’s goading me, watching me with idle blue eyes while she screws with my whole life, and I’m sick of it. “Jesus, just leave us alone. I don’t even work for Arthur anymore, thanks to you!”
Baine leans back against fake leather. “I know.”
“And even if I did, even if I begged—” An image of Arthur interrupts me, the way I saw him last: on his knees, eyes closed, like some ancient penitent. I swallow. “He wouldn’t give me the keys.”
A flash of humor in her eyes. “No?”
“No.” Arthur might want me, but I’ve seen him put his fist through a window rather than reach for what he wants. He won’t falter, won’t bend. I swallow again and meet Baine’s eyes. “I can’t help you.”
“I know.” She’s still perfectly serene.
“So are we done?”
She gives me a small, patronizing smile. “No.”
“Why not? What exactly are we doing here?”
Baine turns her wrist to check her watch again. “We’re waiting.”
A current of trepidation moves through me. I ignore it. “No, you’re waiting. I’m leaving.”
Before I can even edge around the table, there’s a deferential tap at the door. “Missus Baine?”
“Constable Mayhew?”
“Another visitor is here.” Mayhew sounds relieved to be reduced to a mere butler in this production.
Baine smiles at me as she says, “Finally. Show him in.”
The metallic jangle of keys, a low voice. Then the door opens, and Arthur Starling walks into Conference Room C of the Muhlenberg County Detention Center.
* * *
I’ve never seen Arthur outside the grounds of Starling House, and I can’t say I like it much. He looks awkward and over-tall, as if his dimensions don’t agree with ordinary rooms. His face is meant for slanted sunlight and old amber bulbs; beneath the overhead fluorescents it looks pale and lumpen, like an old bone pitted by the rain. His lip is freshly split and one eyebrow is misshapen, swelling fast.
His gaze spins wildly across the room until it lands on me with the quivering certainty of a compass needle, and God, he should not look at me like that where Baine and Gravely can see, and I shouldn’t look back. The two of us are a pair of clumsy card players, showing our hands to the whole table.
“You goddamn fool,” I breathe.
Arthur doesn’t flinch, his eyes moving from my face to my scorched shirt to the painful angle of my shoulders. His jaw tightens. “Why,” he grates, “is she handcuffed?”
Elizabeth Baine is smiling at him like he’s her firstborn son, fondly indulgent. “The keys, Constable?”
Mayhew unhooks a key ring from his belt, but hesitates. “I recommend against it, ma’am. This one committed petty theft the same day her mother drowned herself.”
I bare my teeth at him. “She didn’t drown herself. And maybe if you got me more than a Happy Meal I wouldn’t have been picking your pocket, you cheap motherf—”
I’m interrupted by Arthur, who makes a sound remarkably like the hellcat and snatches the key from Mayhew’s hand. He crosses the conference room in two enormous strides and kneels behind me. I can feel the heat of him at my back, but nothing more; my hands are swollen and nerveless, like plastic gloves blown into balloons.
There’s a metallic tick and my arms fall forward, shoulders grinding in their sockets, blood pulsing in my palms. My flesh is a shiny, unpleasant pink, deepening to purple where it swelled around the cuffs.
I turn and find Arthur standing so close that my eyes are level with his throat. Jagged lines cut across his carotid, lurid pink and puckered. I wonder if he’s been keeping the wound clean or letting it fester.
I swallow hard and hiss up at him, “Did you let Jasper take those notes? Because if you did, I’ll slit your throat again.”
“No. Crime runs in the blood, apparently.” Arthur’s voice is pitched low, lips barely moving. “Is he alright?”
“I think so.” I fight a reckless urge to lean my forehead against his chest and burst into exhausted tears. I bite the inside of my cheek instead. “He wasn’t there when it happened.”
Arthur’s voice goes even lower. “Are you alright?”
“Yes.” He lifts a hand to the matted crust of blood and ash on my cheek, fingers hovering just above my skin. I bite my cheek harder. “No.”
“It’s my fault. I’m so—I tried to stop them—there were two this time, and one of them—”
I can’t stand this. The grief of him, the guilt that hurls him into battle after battle and leaves him bloodied and bruised.
I push my cheek into his hand. “It wasn’t your fault. None it ever was, okay?”
He chokes.
I take a step backward. “What are you doing here? What are you thinking? You know what these people want—”
“I’m glad you could make it, Arthur.” Baine lobs her voice like a polite bomb between us.
Arthur’s hand falls back to his side. His spine hardens. “Of course,” he says, and his voice is the careless sneer I remember from winter. Gravely is watching him with an expression of sick satisfaction, but Arthur keeps his eyes on Baine.
“Thank you for your assistance, Opal. You’re free to go.” Baine dismisses me with a cordial nod, as if we’re at a business conference or a job interview. She gestures to the empty seat at her side, beaming at Arthur. “Take a seat. Let’s talk.”
I brace my feet, preventing Arthur from stepping around me. “He doesn’t have anything to say to you.”
Baine nods to Constable Mayhew without looking at him. “Escort her out, please.”
He tips his stupid hat to her and comes clomping toward me, and I don’t know how much hell I can raise with hands like a pair of boiled fish, but I’m prepared to find out when Arthur says, tiredly, “Opal. Go.”
“Oh my God, will you stop telling me to leave?”
But two other uniformed men have appeared behind Mayhew, approaching me with a wariness I would find flattering if I wasn’t busy glaring at Arthur. Hands close around my elbows, hauling me away from him. I swear and stomp, tennis shoes sliding off heavy boots, knuckles too swollen to make a proper fist. The last glimpse I see of Conference Room C is Arthur taking the empty seat, shoulders bowed, and Elizabeth Baine, smiling.
TWENTY-FIVE
The parking lot is dark except for the yellow rings of streetlights, thronged with moths and mayflies. There’s a familiar pickup near the entrance, parked with admirable disregard for the white lines, and a Volvo not far away. Two women lean against the driver’s side, shoulders barely touching. They look up when the detention center door slams behind me.
Charlotte calls my name. Bev is already moving, breaking into a run. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Bev run for anything—I bet she didn’t even run out of her office when it was on fire—but she’s running now, for me.
She stops awkwardly before me, her arms half-raised. She says, gruffly, “You okay, meathead?”
I nod, more out of habit than conviction. Then I throw my arms around her and squash my face into the warm muscle where her shoulder meets the collar of her tank top. Bev says, “Oh, Jesus,” with considerable disgust, but her arms fold around me, and if she notices the damp smear of snot on her shoulder, she doesn’t say anything.
I think: It’s been eleven years and who-knows-how-many days since someone held me like this, but that’s a lie. I’ve never been held like this, sure and steady, for as long as I need; Mom only ever held me as long as she wanted.
It occurs to me that I’ve been mourning two people all these years—the mother I had, and the mother I wish I had—and that neither of them was the one who kept a roof over my head.
“Bev, I’m so sorry. It’s my fault, the motel—I didn’t think they would do anything like—”
She murmurs, “Hey, shut up,” into my hair. I shut up.
Bev thumps my back twice when I pull away, as if I’m the hood of an unreliable car, and scrubs her eyes hard against her own shoulder.
She shepherds me to the Volvo. “C’mon, let’s head over to Charlotte’s, get you a shower.”
“I can’t.”
“Hon,” she says, not unkindly, “you smell like a burning tire.”
“Look, I still don’t know where the hell Jasper is because he won’t answer his damn phone, but I’ve got to find him, and she’s got Arthur in there—”
Bev squints. “He that big scarecrow that went running in a few minutes ago?” I nod. “What’s he to you?”
“My…” I begin, but I can’t think of an accurate noun. The possessive hangs.
Bev says, “Screw him,” at the same moment that Charlotte says, “We’ll wait with you.”
Charlotte produces a cardigan and a sleeve of peanut butter crackers from the backseat, like a true librarian. She drapes the cardigan fussily over my shoulders and daubs the soot off my face with a T-shirt that says KIDS WHO READ, SUCCEED! on the front. I lean on the bumper, eating crackers with clumsy hands, watching the detention center door. Bev and Charlotte settle on either side of me like a pair of gargoyles or guardian angels.
After a silence, I say, “So, you two are…”
Charlotte says, “None of your business,” at the same time that Bev says, “Yeah, for a couple years now.” I feel their eyes meeting over my head, a pair of wry smiles colliding.
“And here I thought you brought my library holds to the motel out of the purity of your spirit.” I cluck my tongue. “But really you just had the hots for my landlord.”
“At first I came in spite of her,” Charlotte admits. “But then she started requesting her own holds, and we started talking…” Charlotte lowers her voice to a stage whisper. “Did you know she likes poetry? Like the really corny stuff, we’re talking the Romantics.”
Bev flaps her hands as if sentiment is a mosquito she can shoo away. “I was just trying to impress you, I told you.”
“I’m sure you were, sweetheart,” Charlotte says, insincerely, and I have the disorienting experience of watching my landlord blush.
I give Bev a doubtful squint. “Are you sure, Charlotte? I mean, she eats Vienna sausages straight out of the can. Like an animal.” Bev thwaps the side of my head. “I’m just saying, you could do better.”
“Maybe I could,” Charlotte says, speculatively. Then her eyes meet Bev’s, soft and sober, and I feel abruptly as if I’ve walked in on them kissing. “But maybe I don’t want better.”
It’s a good thing Bev flips me off and says, “So eat it, kid,” because otherwise I might cry again.
We wait in silence after that, except for dull buzz of bugs against the light bulbs and the rustle of the cracker wrapping. There’s a weird stillness in my head, a muffled tension like a pillow pressed over a screaming mouth.
A silhouette moves on the other side of the glass door, tall and narrow. I’m walking toward him before the door is fully open.
Arthur doesn’t look hurt, but there’s something weird about the way he’s moving. His shoulders aren’t hunched around his collar, and his stride is wide and easy, as if he recently put down some immensely heavy object. He meets my eyes across the parking lot and I catch the white sickle of a smile. If he’s trying to reassure me, it doesn’t work. A chill skates down my spine.
He stops beneath a streetlight and waits, hands tucked in his pockets, wearing the fey smile of a man who has recently pulled the pin from a grenade. The indentation in his left cheek is deeper than I’ve ever seen it. I scowl at it.
Arthur is unfazed. He tucks a gritty, ashen lock of hair behind my ear, casually possessive, as if he’s done it a hundred times before. As if his fingers don’t leave a phosphorous streak across my cheekbone, white-hot. “Nice cardigan,” he says, and I restrain myself from grabbing his shoulders and shaking him very hard.
“Did she drug you? Are you alright?”
He answers with a shrug, loose-boned and easy. I am going to shake his teeth loose from his skull. “What happened in there? What are they going to do now?”
“Nothing.” There’s a calm certainty in his voice that makes the hairs on the backs of my hands stand up. “To you or to Jasper. Ever again.”
“Arthur.” I’m close enough to see the tiny flicker in his eyes when I say his name, a flash of something like physical pain. “What did you give them?”
Another smile, and I resist the impulse to set my thumb in the black curl of his dimple. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Don’t worry about it? Don’t worry about—”
A muffled ringtone interrupts me. I whip back to face Bev and Charlotte. “Is that my phone?”
Charlotte is already holding out a plastic baggie, lit pale blue by the glow of my screen. “We talked the receptionist around.”
I run back and rip the bag open, swiping up without looking at the caller. “Where the fuck are you?”
“Wow, okay, where the fuck are you?” At the sound of Jasper’s voice, my legs go for the second time this evening. I catch myself against the Volvo, my back sliding down hot metal, my throat clogging with tears.
“Jesus, Jasper.” My voice comes out thin and wavery. “Why didn’t you answer your phone?”
His sigh is a gust of wind through the speaker. “I turned off my ringer for like one hour and everybody has a heart atta—”
Then both of us are talking, trampling one another’s sentences. “Listen, I’m so sorry I said—”
“Did you really burn down the motel? Because—”
“Who said that? Of course I didn’t, God, Bev would murd—”
“Is she okay? Did she—”
“Yeah, Bev’s fine. She’s right here. Where are you now?”
“The library.”
“Why are you—never mind.” I inhale carefully, forcing my legs to take my weight. “Stay there, I’m coming to get you.” I hang up before I can do anything I’ll regret, like cry, or call him terrible names, or tell him how it had felt to see the smoke and know I was too late.
Bev and Charlotte both start asking questions, but before I can answer I hear a faint, metallic jangle. Arthur is facing me with his arm outstretched, a key ring dangling from his fingers. I see the faded Chevy symbol, the tiny plastic flashlight that doesn’t work.
I reach for the keys, but pull up short. I keep a careful ledger in my head, a tally of debts and favors, but I no longer know what he and I owe each other. He ruined my life and then tried to repair it; I saved him and then ran from him. We’d achieved a miserable but tolerable species of balance between us, until tonight. Until he showed up at the detention center and made some terrible bargain on my behalf—I don’t know what kind of deal he made, but I know a devil when I see one—and offered me his truck. Again.
I meet his eyes, looking for the catch, the price. He looks steadily back at me, asking nothing, offering everything.
I take the keys.
Charlotte touches my shoulder before I turn away. “We need to talk, after you get Jasper. I found something in the Gravely papers that I think you ought to—”
“I already know,” I interrupt her, gently. “Everybody did, apparently.”
Her face crimps with confusion. “I’m not sure they did, Opal. I have to take it up to my lawyer friend in Frankfort but I really think—”
But I don’t have time to worry about the Historical Society. I kiss Charlotte once on the cheek, give Bev an awkward high wave that might be a salute, and head for the truck.
Arthur follows a half step behind me. I slide into the front seat and he leans into the open window. “Get him out of Eden. Tonight, if you can.” The eerie giddiness has drained away from his voice, leaving it flat and low.
That sense of premonition returns, the chill settling low in my stomach. “I will.”
“Good luck. He’s…” Arthur’s mouth makes a wry twist. “A lot like you.”
“Yeah, a meathead.”
“I would say strong-willed.”
I tick my chin at the passenger door. “You coming?”
A short shake of his head. “I have to get back to the house.” Arthur pulls a wallet from his back pocket and reaches across me to drop it in the cupholder. His hand stops on the steering wheel and grips tight. “Opal, go with him. Leave Eden.” He looks up at me and his throat bobs. “Please?”
I study him for a long second. “You know, don’t you?”
“Know what?”
“My last name.”
A pause, and then a terse nod. “If I’d known sooner, I never would have let you inside the house. No matter how strong-willed you were.”
I say, softly, “I’m glad you didn’t know.” It’s the truth. Those months in Starling House were—God help me—the happiest of my life.
Arthur swallows. “Go, Opal. And don’t come back.”
I meet the black of his eyes without blinking, without even tucking my hair behind one ear. “Okay,” I tell him, “I will.”
And I can tell—from the desperate relief in his face, from the way his fingers unclench from the wheel and lift to touch my cheek in fleeting, awful farewell—that he believes me.
* * *
I see Jasper before he sees me. He’s waiting outside the library, neck bent toward his phone, hair combed and carefully parted. He’s wearing slacks and a button-up he must have borrowed from Logan, the collar stiff, the cuffs tight. I know it’s my God-given duty as his sister to laugh at him, but I don’t feel much like laughing. I feel a weird ache behind my eyes, as if I’m watching something infinitely precious vanish over the horizon.
I pull up too fast and leave the brights on, silhouetting Jasper against the brick like a criminal in a black-and-white TV show. He squints into the light and flips me off. The ache recedes a little.
