My feet moved quickly and quietly down the grand staircase, my eyes darting, looking for the movements of others. Where would Caleb be? No lights were on in the library, but he might be in the kitchen.
When I pushed through the swinging wooden door into the kitchen, he was there. Standing at the counter he finished buttering a piece of toast before looking up at me. When his eyes met mine he smiled and said, “Good morning.”
I thought about my earlier promise to myself, I will forget Hayden. Without thinking, I moved through the kitchen to Caleb.
“Are you hun…?” he started but when I moved into his immediate space his expression changed, like he was trying to figure out what was going on. “Charlotte?”
He was so tall now, I reached up and placed both my hands on his cheeks. Caleb looked around, unsure, but bent towards me anyway.
I looked directly into his soft blue eyes—This is what I choose. I choose Caleb—and kissed him softly.
Caleb’s butter knife clattered loudly onto the kitchen counter as his arms wrapped around me and pulled me closer. When we pulled away from the kiss, he held me in his arms and I rested my head against his chest. His heart thundered in my ear and I felt his lips press against the top of my head.
“I missed you,” I whispered.
“Jesus Christ!” A voice boomed behind me. I jumped from Caleb’s arms and spun around. Aaron sat at the kitchen table eating a pile of eggs and sausage. “Am I going to have to put up with watching this crap all the time?” He shoveled a large bite of food into his mouth.
Embarrassment surged through me, “What are you doing?” I wailed.
Aaron smirked at me and shrugged, like maybe he was enjoying my mortification. “I’m just trying to eat my breakfast,” he said through a mouth full of food.
I turned in a rush back to Caleb, “I didn’t know he was here,” accusation crept into my tone.
“You didn’t give me the chance…I didn’t know you would…” Caleb shook his head and turned back to his toast. Picking up the knife, he resumed buttering, “I don’t even care,” he smiled. He looked at me and I could plainly see how happy he was, “I don’t care who saw or sees us.” He leaned towards me and kissed my forehead. “I’m just so happy you’re back.”
I couldn’t help it, I gave him a crooked smile and mouthed the words, “me too.”
“Are you hungry?”
I nodded my head.
“Tea?”
“God, yes.”
While Caleb moved through the kitchen fixing my breakfast, I turned back to the table where Aaron sat devouring his food like a starving walrus—he rolled his eyes at me.
I ignored him and sat down. I wished he would finish his breakfast and leave but as he took another leisurely bite and scrolled through his phone, I could tell he wasn’t moving anywhere fast.
“Have you seen Grace this morning?” I asked Caleb.
“She and your uncle are in with Franzen,” Aaron replied before Caleb had the chance. He didn’t bother to look up from whatever he was reading on his phone so the dirty look I gave him was completely wasted.
Caleb placed a plate of scrambled eggs and toast in front of me along with the tea. “Did you want me to go get her?” Caleb asked.
I shook my head, “Thank you.” I picked up the steaming mug and took a sip while he sat down beside me. It was still too hot and I flinched when it burned my tongue. “Are you busy today?” I asked.
Caleb shrugged. “Not really. Why, what’s up?”
“I need to go into Glastonbury,” I placed the book I carried down from my room on the table between us. Even though his face was buried in his phone, it felt like Aaron was listening, intently, to our every word. I lowered my voice, “Remember the psychic we saw last year, Eve?” Caleb picked up the book and inspected the cover. “I borrowed this from her and I want to return it.”
“The Modern Alchemist?” Caleb read aloud. “Did you finish it?” he asked opening the book and scanning the table of contents.
I shook my head and felt my cheeks burn as a familiar rush of ineptitude overcame me. When it came to understanding difficult things, Caleb had this way of sometimes making me feel less than able.
His eyes scanned the first pages, “How come? This actually looks like it might help explain some of the more esoteric stuff I’ve come across just lately.”
How come? Great question. Why didn’t I finish it? Because it was hard and I didn’t understand it. I would read pages and pages and have no idea what was being said. Worse, I knew I probably needed to understand this book in order to know just what was happening to me and my family. Why Emerick was so threatened by Franzen. Why Franzen and my mother needed to go into hiding and how on earth a man could physically age fifty years in the span of ten months.
But I didn’t want to tell Caleb any of this. I didn’t want Caleb to think I was stupid. I shrugged, “I didn’t get around to it.” I wanted more than to just return this book, I wanted to ask Eve about Alchemy. I was hoping she could help explain it in a way I could begin to understand without all the pressure and half answers my mother had provided.
“Huh,” Caleb said still reading. “This is fascinating,” he shook his head. “Man I wish I’d realized what this book was before you left last year.”
Clearly, I was just an idiot.
“Well,” Aaron interjected. “I’ve just cleared it with the boss, so we can leave whenever you’re ready.”
“What?” I turned on him.
Aaron slipped his phone into its belt holster and stood up. Some of his breakfast sausage had left a greasy stain across his belly. “I just sent him a text, your uncle said Glastonbury was fine…so long as I’m with you.” He reached his fleshy arms high above his head and stretched his back left, then right until a loud series of pops and cracks erupted from his vertebrae.
“Caleb is taking me,” I protested.
Aaron smirked. “I don’t care if your boyfriend comes, but you don’t go anywhere without me.”
“Says who?”
Aaron held up his fingers one at a time, “Says your uncle, says your mama, says Franzen.”
I seriously doubted Franzen, given his current condition, said anything but pointing this out for only the sake of argument seemed cruel. “Why?”
“Protection,” he said.
I watched in disgust as a large burp erupted up through Aaron’s chest and escaped silently through his pressed lips.
“Think of me as your personal secret service.”
The thought was so utterly ridiculous I almost laughed in his face. My memory of Aaron lumbering down the beach looking like he was ready to have a heart attack was like the anti-image of a controlled, well pressed—fit—secret service agent. A sloth had faster reflexes than Aaron.
“It’s not a bad idea,” Caleb interjected. “Another set of eyes watching out for you can’t hurt.”
I sighed. I had been hoping for some time alone with Caleb during the car ride into town. It would give us the opportunity to talk about last year, and what was happening now, but if Aaron was coming it would have to wait for another time. “Whatever,” I surrendered. “We better get Sophie as well then. If we leave her behind she’ll be mad.”
Caleb sat back down. “In that case, I’ll have another cup of tea. There’s no way she’ll be ready anytime soon.”
The only good thing about Aaron coming with us was not having to worry about Caleb’s car dying on us halfway there. Once he backed my uncle’s Mercedes out of the garage and I realized Caleb and I would now be able to at least sit together, I bridled my annoyance over Aaron’s butting in. He wanted to be our driver? Fine.
Caleb sat with me in the back of the car, our hands joined on the seat between us while Sophie annoyed Aaron with her ever changing music selections in the front. For most of the drive, I peered out my window watching the green hills and fields punctuated with the occasional rural home. As we neared Glastonbury, I could see the large grassy hill that was The To
r, with the ruin of Saint Michael’s church reaching up to the sky, in the distance. Caleb had pointed out the landmark last year and had promised we’d climb to the top. But witnessing Camilla, the Wriothesley’s maid, run down in the street in front of Cyberzone had changed our plans.
I squeezed Caleb’s hand and when he leaned towards me I pointed out the window. “I want to go there,” I said. “After we see Eve.”
Caleb smiled and nodded. “It’s beautiful,” he whispered. “You’ll love it.”
Aaron parked the Mercedes and we all headed up High Street towards Eve’s shop. I held Caleb’s hand and Sophie rushed ahead of us to peek through a boutique window. Aaron lagged behind us and when I turned my head to see what was slowing him down, I saw him trying too hard to look nonchalant.
He hissed at me, “Don’t look right at me.” He glanced furtively left and right.
I stopped walking and stared at him, “What are you doing?”
Aaron stopped still fifteen feet away and looked angry. “Surveying the scene…from a distance,” he seethed.
I stared at him a second longer then rolled my eyes. My personal secret service agent. “Right,” I said and kept going.
“He’s only trying to help,” Caleb added.
“It’s ridiculous,” I said. “Any tourist could tell what he’s doing.”
Caleb looked back over his shoulder and I heard Aaron’s angry instruction. “Stop looking at me, act natural.” Caleb turned back but as we continued towards Eve’s, I could tell from his rigid hand and tense gait that he too was now, ‘surveying the scene.’ I sighed, the only person acting natural was Sophie who flitted from one store window to the next. If Emerick did have people here watching us, I imagined them laughing themselves stupid at the sight of us.
“Oooo,” Sophie crooned. “Those are the most delicious boots.”
I glanced through the window at the faux leopard skinned, platform boots that extended up past the mannequin’s knees and tried to imagine Ms. Steward’s expression if she ever saw Sophie wearing such a thing. “They are delicious,” I offered even though it would never, ever occur to me to say so if not for Sophie.
“They’re absurd,” Caleb said.
I elbowed him and Sophie stuck out her tongue. Aaron had stopped two shops away and pretended to be seriously considering the purchase of a scented candle.
On the next block over, Eve’s neon sign illuminated her blacked out window. She was there, I only hoped she would remember me from last year. Glastonbury hosted an enormous music festival every spring and attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors from all over the world drawn to the myth and history surrounding The Tor, the legends of King Arthur, the Holy Grail, and Joseph of Arimathea. Since my last visit, I had learned many believed Glastonbury was the site of the Arthurian island of Avalon. With all those tourists, Eve had probably met at least a thousand new people since the last time we met.
I was about to drag Sophie away from her boots when I saw Eve’s door open. Expecting to see a customer leaving, I was surprised when Eve herself poked her head from the door. She looked left and right and then settled her gaze on a woman sitting on a bench next to a stroller near where Aaron was watching his scented candle being carefully wrapped in paper, he’d actually bought one, and placed in a small shopping bag. Eve stared at the woman a moment more, a concentrated worry furrowing her brow, before looking directly at me. “Hurry up,” she mouthed and motioned with her hand for me to get inside her shop.
On an impulse I looked behind me, mostly expecting to see the person Eve was really talking to come rushing past me and into her shop, but there was no one besides Caleb and Sophie next to me. When I looked back, her eyes were wide with impatience. “You,” she mouthed pointing to me and then at her feet, “Now.” She gave one last look to the woman with the stroller who was rifling through a diaper bag balanced on her lap. The woman pulled a cell phone from a side pocket and held it out in front of her. Was it my imagination or did she seem to be pointing it in my direction?
“Come on,” I said to Caleb and Sophie. “Let’s go.” Once she saw us moving towards her, Eve shrank back inside her door. When we were halfway across the street, I glanced back to see if Aaron was going to follow us inside or not. The woman with the stroller turned away from me at the last moment, stuffed something large and black into the diaper bag now slung over her shoulder, and left, pushing her stroller up the street.
Aaron had disappeared.
At Eve’s entrance Caleb stood to the side and opened the door for me and Sophie. “I don’t see Aaron,” I whispered to him.
We stopped and scanned the street for a moment, “He’s probably just staking out the joint,” Caleb smiled.
“I don’t think so,” I said keeping my expression serious. “Did you see that woman with the stroller?”
Caleb frowned, “What woman?”
“The one taking pictures of us.”
“Where?” he said too loudly and craned his neck to look back down the street. “Are you sure? I don’t see anyone.”
“Stop,” I hissed and pulled him inside. With the blacked out door closed safely behind us I turned on him. “You can’t be that obvious Caleb.”
“What are you talking about?”
I craned my head high above my neck, “Where?” I mocked. “I don’t see anyone.”
“Well I didn’t see anyone.”
“Well I did. We were being followed and photographed probably from the minute we got out of the car.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do know that Caleb. I’ve spent the last ten months being followed and photographed.”
“You’ve spent the last ten months being paranoid.”
I sucked my breath. Is that what he thought?
“Not everyone who pulls out a cell phone is photographing you,” he continued.
“You have no idea what—”
“You’re right! I don’t have any idea Charlotte because you left. Instead of staying here like everyone asked, you were five thousand miles away doing God knows what with God knows whom.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, “What are you talking about? I’ve been alone, completely cut off…followed by strange men with high powered camera equipment, rushing from my car to buildings because I’m worried someone might decide now is the time to stuff me into the back of some windowless van. What on earth do you think I’ve been doing, going to the movies with boys? Giggling with girls over slices of pizza?”
Caleb turned away from me then, “Forget it,” he said and slumped miserably onto Eve’s waiting room couch.
“What do you mean, forget it. How can I possibly forget it?”
Until now, Eve and Sophie had been watching silently. Sophie suddenly spoke up. “You don’t know,” she whispered.
“Know what?” I turned to her in frustration.
“Hayden,” the name was barely audible and yet it filled the whole room with its presence. I froze, suddenly terrified of what Sophie would say. All my memories from last summer came rushing back, a tsunami of guilt that swelled even larger because even my recent dreams of Hayden left me wanting and confused.
“What?” I breathed. “What about Hayden?”
Sophie gave Caleb a careful look, clearly worried that her brother would not survive such an awful subject. But Caleb’s head was thrown back, resting on top of the low backed sofa cushions, his eyes closed as if waiting for the worst.
Sophie swallowed. “After you left,” she started. “A few weeks before school started back up. Hayden dropped out of Eaton.”
I shrugged, “So, what does that—”
“Charlotte, he dropped out because he moved to the States,” she said. “He moved to California.”
CHAPTER TEN
Eve
I stared at Sophie and tried to make sense of what she was saying. “What?”
She sighed, “Right before Caleb was supposed to go back to school, my friend Nadia told me she had heard a rumor th
at Hayden Wriothesley had dropped out of Eaton and had moved to California. She said his father bought him a beach house in Malibu and hired a private tutor to finish his schooling, giving the excuse that Hayden wanted to attend an American college and that it would make it easier for him to do so but…”
“But what?” I pressed.
“But everyone gossiped that the real reason he had left was because he was,” her eyes slid over to her brother again. “Was because he was madly in love with you and couldn’t stand to be so far away from you. All year, everyone yammered about how you two were so in love, how romantic it was, how amazing that your parents were actually letting you live together…”
I stared at her, disbelieving, my mouth hanging open from the shock of what she was saying. Slowly, my head began to shake back and forth. “But none of that is true,” I finally managed to protest. “It’s ridiculous to even think. Living together? That he would have even moved to California in the first place…and because of me?”
At this, Caleb lifted his head. “He did move there. He moved to California, that part is true.”
The look in his eyes, I could see it now. For the last ten months I had been followed and photographed by strange people and Caleb had been half crazy with the fear that the gossip might be true. Tortured with the thought of Hayden and me together, five thousand miles from him being able to do anything about it, and no way to confirm or deny if any of it was true.
“I never saw him. Not once. I didn’t even know he was there.”
Caleb closed his eyes, I could see his lip tremble. I went to him, brushed his hair back from his forehead. “I swear Caleb.”
He leaned forward and rested the top of his head against my stomach, his hands gripped my waist. I held his head against me, ran my fingers through his hair. “It killed me,” he said softly. “Every day, the worry, not being able to call you. I almost did…so many times. But I was too afraid your uncle was right, that you would be in even more danger if communication started back up between us. He said Emerick’s people would think you were somehow back in contact with your mother and Franzen through us.” He shook his head and then looked up into my eyes. “I just wanted you back.”
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