As Daniel was excused from the stand, August leaned close to my ear from behind, asking, “How are you?”
“August,” I said, lost, watching Daniel stride to his seat, sit down beside Kate, and receive a pat on the back from his father, who caught my eyes. Pale and sharp, he grinned. Shivering, I said, “I have no idea how I made a baby with that man.”
Chapter 23 - Apples for Alligators
Solomon and Miss Justine made a house call the night before my big day on the stand. It was Sunday, so I made a dinner of pasta with chicken in a cream sauce and blackberry cobbler for dessert. I ate little, but it was nice to have people around my table. It was Sunday, after all.
The only person I had left was Vi. I watched her as she teetered on the kitchen step stool and reached for my hiding spot above the fridge.
“I need a drink. A real one,” she declared. It had been a very long evening of questions and drills. She climbed down with a bottle in each hand. She jiggled the bottle that held vodka. We both needed to decompress but in different ways. I drew my hair back and wound my hair band around it. I needed air.
“I’m going out for a walk.”
“Do you want some company?” she asked forlornly.
“I’m good alone.” She didn’t protest. I gathered up a coat and pulled on tattered work sneakers.
The cold air hit me as I exited my lobby. It was bitter out, but I couldn’t be bothered by temperatures. I let my feet carry me. I finally stopped and sat. I’m not sure how much time passed, thinking of nothing and everything.
Unrelatedly chilled and numb, I didn’t notice footsteps until they were upon me. Taking my attention from the distant blackened sky. I looked up from the bench.
August approached me, looking contrastingly warm in a tan cowl-neck sweater over a blue and white small checked shirt, navy pants, and a wool coat and scarf. He stopped before me, uncertain of his welcome. Lazily, I observed the two tortoise toggle buttons at the V of the sweater glint faintly from where they nestled in cable-knit. Snappy dresser, this one was.
“I thought I might find you here,” he said.
“How’d you know?” I asked, giving him a wan smile, but I supposed it was no mystery this spot was just a few hundred yards shy of where Tristan slept. Likely the closest I could get without breaking some sort of custody law. It crossed my mind I should feel self-conscious for being caught here on a number of fronts, and I mentally sighed at my growing aversion towards societal norms.
“A guess,” he decided and sat. I scooted a bit and noticed him observing my exposed leg. I was wearing athletic shorts under my mid-length coat, paired with the beaten shoes.
“You’re cold,” he said. “Take this.” If he’d asked, I’d have refused, but he knew that. He removed his heavy wool blazer, draping me, leaving his arm casually rested on my shoulder. Settled in together, I spoke.
“They’re going to destroy me tomorrow.”
August didn’t deny it, which I appreciated. Finally the hand that had been meditatively rubbing heat into my shoulder through the coat paused and he asked, “I saw the articles,” he admitted. “Are you ready?”
“As I’ll ever be,” I non-answered.
I watched dust motes swirl in the air, glowing in the haze of the lamp. They reminded me of fireflies in moonlight near the creek I grew up beside. After a while I began lazily sweeping my feet, legs crossed at the ankles, letting my soles lightly scrape the pavement, and there was something comforting in the act. Like Violet and I used to do on the porch swing, and that’s what it felt it like; it was that kind of night. If it was only a mirage, the calm before the great storm, I was willing to take it. Finally, August broke the silence.
“Gabrielle?”
“Hm?”
“We could get married,” he said, and I looked at him. I was going to make light and tease that he was taking the ‘beard’ arrangement a little too literally, but when I looked at him, I stayed silent.
Quietly, he continued. “I could love you,” he said, but it wasn’t an offer. “As a man loves a woman. In every way.” I searched blue eyes; honest and deep, becoming more lidded as they closed in until I couldn’t see them anymore.
“August…” I spoke as he broke away, in prayer and appeal. Slowly, like the kiss, he watched me, waiting. I begged the silence to speak and say whatever it was I couldn’t, to say anything at all. Because I couldn’t say. I couldn’t speak.
His arm lifted from my shoulder and he stood, glancing out at the park, gathering himself. I looked down. He turned back to me on the park bench that now felt like a single square metal desk in a very large and empty space. I watched him helplessly.
“Can I see you home, Gabrielle?” he asked, bravely smiling, golden head haloed in the lamplight. He extended his hand, palm open in acceptance this time. His eyes held no ultimatum, willing to see me safely home, his hand in mine; his heart back in his pocket. My own had finally stopped pounding.
Being his partner in public hadn’t been an orchestrated deception, it was an organic evolution, sensing a need and filling it instinctively—as he’d done for me; father figure to my son, and sometimes to me. I had a slight rush of vertigo when I realized, studying him now under the sodium light, I had no such paternal thought.
Often, we communicated without speech—we were connected. It should have been a natural thing, taking his hand, his kiss, coalescing into a new arrangement. A warm familiar key—that hand—that’d lead me to a place where I’d erected shelter, now revealing a path unknowingly conjured in the halls of contentment. Not altering, just adding—expanding. Still, I answered the only way I could.
“Thank you, August,” I said, swallowing a lump. “But I’ll find my way.”
When he was gone I somehow didn’t feel alone, but I spent the next hour with my face buried in my sweater anyway.
Then, someone new arrived. Daniel must have come through a trail in the woods behind me. A shadow cast across me. The shadow assumed the seat beside me. I knew it was him without looking up. Finally, I sat back in my seat, expelling a lungful of air. It came out a vaporous cloud. I knew it was very late now. I swiped my cheeks, tugging the collar up around my face, and spoke when my voice would hold.
“What is it with you and this park?” I asked, aggravated, pushing back an imaginary hair. The air bit on my cheeks where the tears had stained, leaving my face patchy and pink. I was trying for intimidating, instead of exposed.
“I could ask you the same,” he countered. I looked at him then. His profile. His sight was fixed on the distance. He wore his heavy long black wool coat with its collar upturned over black silk pajama bottoms I recognized. Scrolled gold monograms adorned his black house loafers. DBH. Kate was right; what lie hidden beneath the shiny apple was darkest.
My eyes narrowed back to his face. “I know something about you, you know. I have proof. I wrote it down. I know you were on drugs. I know you were trying to kill yourself,” I seethed. “I could expose you.”
“Do what you must,” he advised simply, as if I’d threatened to show the judge a heinous middle school photo from a phase he’d since moved past. He kept his eyes trained out to the opening of field. Completely impenetrable. Taking swings made me feel like an emotional jack-in-the-box—out of control and a little bit crazy.
My brows pinched together. “Why. Why were you here? Why were you trying to…end yourself?” I probed, not knowing why I asked or why I’d bothered being delicate about it.
“A person died,” he replied. “It was my fault.”
That gave me pause.
“Who?” I asked, the pinch in my brow deepening.
“My mother.”
I blanked. I slid forward on the bench and tilted my body towards him, suddenly more concerned about someone else’s gravity more than my own.
“Daniel,” I denied slowly, “your mother was in court on Friday.”
“Her name was Fiona,” he shared importantly. My mouth snapped shut. When I didn’t speak he co
ntinued.
“She had hair like yours,” he said, glancing at me, at my pulled back hair. “Not the color but the same.” His expression became more at peace than before. More at peace than I’d seen maybe ever. He looked as though he had resolved something he’d thought for some time and had been waiting to say.
Yes, he sounded sincere. More than that…rule #158.
He was telling the truth.
Whatever he was saying, this was real to him.
“Tell me.”
“We used to play together. She was just thirteen years my elder. Her father was the horseman. She was the housekeeper and my nanny. My parents, the ones you see, were often away, so Fiona spent a great deal of time with me. She dressed me, prepared meals, she tended to me,” he paused like he was searching for an expression. “She raised me.”
“She loved you,” I said point blank, knowing what it meant to raise a child.
“Yes,” he said sadly. “She loved me.”
“What happened?”
“As I grew, I pushed away from her. My schoolmates came over one day. They shamed me for our closeness. She was the help.”
“That did it,” I concluded.
“No. I threw them out. I made them walk miles home.” Something close to a mischievous smile crossed his face briefly. It faded. “But it stuck with me. The next week, I came downstairs in the middle night searching for her. I’d woken and didn’t find her in her quarters. I’d remembered we hadn’t tied up the horses properly. I went to her then. I found her in the kitchen. With my father.” The way he’d finished the last statement made it plain they weren’t making eggs.
“You didn’t know.”
“No. She looked happy. She was happy. She loved my father, though that’s not how it started,” he looked down. At thirteen, I’d imagined not. I shivered thinking about it. Hawk taking advantage of such a young girl. A child.
Finally, I said, “And she loved you, too.”
He gave a half turn of his lip, a small smile. “She had found peace but in secret. Her child, her lover. But I didn’t know any of this. I only knew Sophie as my mother. Sophie and I were never close. After that night, I blamed Fiona for that. For a few things. I treated her very poorly afterwards.”
“Did your father love her, too?” I asked, optimistically, hoping to inject some happiness into the tale.
“No,” he condemned. “She was a thing to him. Like all things. A tool. Sophie granted him the entirety of the kingdom but not the heir. He told me later he’d simply gone into the barn one day while Fiona worked and seized her. I doubted that her father protested because I don’t believe he was better. Colum was an abusive man. Known to discipline the animals more than was necessary. My father said there was no harm in the deed since he wasn’t the first. He said he’d spared her from worse.”
“Dear God,” I whispered.
“Her life was hell. I know that now. Her affection for my father grew under his misuse of her, but in the beginning she could have run away. She was still young, still beautiful. Not yet tied to him, emotionally. She stayed for me. Then, when she’d finally come to a contentedplace in her life, in our home, raising me, I ripped it apart.”
“Daniel, nothing you could have done could have been worse than—” He turned to me brow raised, his features were still, shadowed, and sharp. Cutting me off completely. I waited for him to continue.
“My father told me the same as my friends had,” he continued. “She’s nothing. Why care for her? And I began to believe she was the reason Sophie was a stranger to me. I was not kind to her, Gabrielle,” he said, that dangerous edge returned to him.
Warily, I asked, “How are you responsible for her death?”
“I shunned her. I disgraced her. Our house was the only home she’d ever known. The small happiness she’d created there, I shattered. I came home from boarding school when I was fifteen with mates. When I arrived, I could see she wanted to rush and welcome me home. I could see she’d missed me. I was fond of her still, but I resented her now, too. The show of affection from the housekeeper would have been…inappropriate regardless. She was not equal in the eyes of the world. I instructed her to get back to her chores and called her a whore.
“Later that night, I woke from a noise. I came downstairs and my father was with her again, in his office this time. This time was different. She was rejecting him. Then, she saw me.” He paused. “She’d tried to make me good, to do what was right. I could have helped her. I was stronger than him by then, but she didn’t make a sound. She only looked at me,” he broke off. “If she had screamed, I would have intervened. She had to have known that, but perhaps she was afraid for me,” he said sounding despondent. He looked out in the distance. “Because that’s what I saw in her eyes: Fear. So much fear. She was crying. And there was blood. I left her there with him.”
I could hardly speak. “Did Hawk kill her?” I croaked.
Not without bitterness, he replied, “In his own way, yes. The way he kills everything.”
What he’d said weighed heavily on me for the pain of what he’d been through. But in an immediate sense….
“Knowing everything you do, through all this, you would allow my son,” I corrected myself, diplomatically. It needed to be personal. “Our son to be near him? How is that protecting him from anything?”
“Tristan will be safe with me,” he said certainly “I have made mistakes, Gabrielle. I know what it is to have loved and lost. For the last time,” he vowed. Then he turned and met my eyes, intoning dangerously, “No one will ever harm him, Gabrielle. On my life. I would kill for him.” It was no empty threat.
But I wasn’t impressed.
“That makes two of us,” I assured him, a flame kindling upwards inside my chest. When I reached a few feet from the bench, I stopped.
“You think we had something,” I paused letting the words fill the air. “That night. But maybe, you were just out of your mind. I was definitely out of mine, and there is just one good thing that came from it. And you do not deserve one good thing. See you tomorrow, Daniel,” I said in departure. I flagged a cab when I was a few blocks away and jogged to its door. It was time to go home.
Chapter 24 - Swimming in the Rocks
I was nearly inside the courthouse. I heard a strange whistle, like a bird call.
“Hey gal,” he said as I walked towards the pillar he leaned against. “‘Member me?”
“Yes, I do, Hunt. My sister does, too. She’s wondering why you didn’t wake her up.”
“Get focused,” he said, seriously. “You need to win this thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“Whatever you got, fire away. You got me? Win, any cost.” He wore a generic heavy brown coat, the kind sold from a bin at a big box store. The mill men wore them by the dozens. It was over the same outfit I’d met him in.
“Yeah. I thought you said you could help,” I said, irritated.
“The help you need is a lightning bolt,” he said. “I could kill him, that’d help. But I don’t particularly want to. Or I could kill his daddy and help you both.” He looked over my head, as though considering the latter option. He knew about Daniel’s father, Hawk. Maybe the same thing I knew.
“You know Daniel really well, don’t you?” I asked. Hunt nodded, and I snapped, “Then you can’t be any type of good person and you’re just bringing me bad luck. Beat it.” His eyes narrowed. I walked away.
In we went, and we got right to it.
“Mr. August King. You have spent a great deal of time with this child. What is your motivation with Mrs. Valentine and her son?” Alec Kord asked August.
This was the end of the line. I sighed from my seat, rubbing my sweaty palms on my crossed knee. I thought my nerves wouldn’t get the best of me until my name was called. Seeing August up there on the stand was making me prematurely quake.
“She is a very good of friend of mine,” August said. “We met when she was pregnant and have grown closer over time.”
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“Close indeed. Have you two been in a monogamous relationship all this time?”
“No. I wouldn’t put it in those terms. We are family. When we met, we were instantly family.” He smiled.
“But not husband and wife,” Alec asked. “Why is that? You are listed as the emergency contact on every form, have taken them on many nice vacations, you are even co-signer on Ms. Valentine’s very nice luxury apartment.”
“I want to help her in any way I can. Tristan has been like a son to me. I wanted to be sure they were cared for as she was establishing herself in the city. Which she has done and is no need of financial help from anyone,” he emphasized, making eye contact at Daniel’s table. I refused to follow his line of vision and kept my eyes fixed on him. He continued, “As for marriage, I asked her just last night and she turned me down,” he announced proudly.
There was a disruption in the back of the courtroom. I glanced back to see a woman shrouded in sunglasses and scarf who’d been sitting in the back row leave through the courtroom doors. I swiveled my head back to August. As I did there was a snap sound and I heard Kate gasp. It looked like Daniel had snapped an ink pen, some ink spurting on Kate. The attorney approached his desk at the same time and picked up a thin stack of photographs and returned to August on the stand.
“You asked her to marry you? Interesting timing, Mr. King,” Daniel’s attorney, Alec Kord paced. “Mr. King, do you know a man named Marcus Faircloth? What about Olivier Garcia?”
August swallowed. “I know the individuals.”
The attorney smirked. Then he handed August the photographs. “I’m glad you didn’t deny it. We know you know them. Mr. August, both men have given us statements that they’ve had sex with you. Mr. Garcia states he carried on a sexual relationship with you during your so-called friendship with Ms. Valentine. Everyone else who knows you claims your relationship with Ms. Valentine has been the picture of the happy family. So, are you a gay man who is a fraud, or a bi-sexual man who is cheater?”
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