Not knowing what else to do, I kissed his forehead and shut the door. He made a discontented grumble, but curled up in a ball.
Mom called me into the kitchen. She stood at the table with some pajamas and underwear in her arms.
“Only the undies are clean, but you need to change out of that.”
Looking down, there was a little bit of blackish goo on my chest. Yelping, I jumped to my feet as if to escape from it, sending a chair clattering to the floor behind me.
Gently, she put her hand on my shoulder and shushed me. Without words, she pulled my shirt off over my head and ushered me into the laundry/bath room off the kitchen. “Go put these on, honey. And shower if anything got on you.”
I shuddered when I saw tiny spots of black on my previously solid blue bra from where the ooze had soaked through. Snapping it off, I saw a small black stain on my skin. I fought a fresh wave of panic as I turned the tiny shower on and jumped inside. I scrubbed myself raw until the hot water ran out.
I should have felt relief to be clean, but all I could feel was an emptiness so deep I felt hollow inside. I redressed and took a moment to try to breathe, but couldn't seem to catch my breath as my feet shuffled back into the kitchen chair on autopilot.
Mom took the seat next to me. “Are you okay, sweetheart?” she asked in the kind of soothing voice I'd seen paramedics on television use to talk to injured people in shock. Reaching across, she started to play with my hair as she'd always done whenever I was upset since I was in kindergarten and Joey Watson stole my favorite teddy bear. It hurt just a little, but I needed the contact.
Unable to form coherent words yet, I shook my head. Just then, my father came into the room carrying a bundled-up bath towel. He didn't meet my eyes as he walked through the kitchen and into the back yard, but he didn't have to tell me for me to know exactly what was in that towel.
Mom stood, kissing my head, and began to rifle through the cabinets for cereal. It certainly wasn't a bacon and pancakes kind of morning. I cringed when I heard the door of the tiny tool shed in the back yard slam shut and just couldn't stand to be there for another second.
“I don't want breakfast,” I murmured as I pushed away from the table to leave the room. I wasn't sure if she'd heard me, but if I'd spoken any louder, my voice would have cracked.
Where was I going to go now? I couldn't just go to church like any other Sunday. I couldn't go to work since the coffee shop is never open on Sundays. I couldn't even bring myself to go into my own bedroom to get dressed and see my bed again. I couldn't pretend that everything was okay and put on a happy face. There was only one place that I could go to feel safe and not have to carry the heavy weight of a cheerful facade— Lexie's house.
Wearing nothing but house slippers and a mismatched pair of fleecy pajama bottoms and a thin camisole, I stepped outside into the bitingly cold early morning air. By the time I hit the bottom of the stairs, I was running as quickly as I could for the Baxter family mansion on the famous Bellevue Avenue. I took our long-established shortcut between our houses, cutting through town and the woods, it was no more than a mile to reach the palatial Versailles-style chateau nestled amongst the trees on a cliff overlooking the Rhode Island Sound and ensconced by a massive, carefully manicured garden.
Soon, the eight-foot-tall, solid concrete wall that served as a fence around the grounds of the Baxter House came into view. Hearing an intruder, her family's guard dogs, Spot and Ed, were barking their heads off on the other side.
Paying them no mind since I'd known them both since they were puppies and they loved me like one of their own, I climbed the branches of a scraggly black pine tree that grew right alongside the edge of the wall. From here, one could climb the tree, jump over the top of the imposing wall, and land in a blind spot between it and the box hedges which were planted along its interior.
As I peeked my head over the top, the two Belgian Malinois at the base of the wall quieted and excitedly wagged their tails. Motioning them away so I wouldn't land on them, I leaped from the top of the wall. A practiced landing on all fours had me safely on the ground. Until, of course, I was promptly hounded by the energetic dogs for ear scratches and belly rubs.
The barking must have alerted the “groundsman,” Mr. Miller, because he burst through the hedges with a canister of mace in one hand aimed directly at my face and the other reaching to the small of his back. Upon seeing me sitting on the ground under a literal dog pile, he relaxed and put the canister back in its holder on his belt.
“You know, you coulda just hit the intercom on the gate, and I'da let you in. There's no need to get the dogs all riled up like that. You coulda got yourself shot doin' what you just did,” Mr. Miller griped in his thick, Southern drawl, as though he was the kind of man to get scared. Though the lines around his eyes and his salt-and-pepper hair said that he was in his mid-fifties, he was still a very imposing man, standing well over six feet tall and weighing more than two hundred pounds. But it was more than his sheer size that made me think he wasn't the type of man to get scared by an intruder: it was the ice that was permanently in his steely gray eyes that said he'd seen the worst of human nature and was quite comfortable there. It wouldn't have surprised me if the Baxter family had hired some retired, black-ops bad-ass to be their glorified house sitter.
Knowing that he was just blowing smoke and wouldn't actually have shot me, I shrugged. Normally, I would have offered some sarcastic quip to rankle his chains, but I just couldn't today. “It's too far to run around the entire property.”
Exasperated, he offered me a hand up. “What're you doing here dressed like that?” he asked as he escorted me across the expansive back yard that could have easily grazed an entire herd of sheep.
“I need to see Lexie.” Now that I was no longer running, the icy air seeped into my heated, sweat-dampened skin.
“I don't think she's up yet.”
“Too bad for her,” I said as we passed the swimming-pool-size fountain of a bronze cherub frolicking with a dolphin and reached the back patio. He left me to resume whatever he was doing earlier, confident in the knowledge that I wasn't a thief, kidnapper, or litterbug and that I didn't need an escort here.
Opening one of the French doors to the breakfast room, I looked around to see that none of the usual staff members were up yet except for Mr. Miller, who never seemed to sleep. No matter how many times I came here, I never truly got used to the sheer opulence of the Gilded Age manor, where everything from the ceilings to the table made me feel like a Lilliputian… or a plebeian.
Lexie's house truly was like a time capsule. Everything from the wood paneled walls to the lushly polished mahogany chairs and the centuries-old art was so well preserved that it was just like the houses the Preservation Society owned.
I jogged up the sweeping marble stairs of the grand entry. From there, it was a long trip down the hallway to reach Lexie's room. Hers was the only room in the house that wasn't filled with priceless antiques. Instead, she'd stripped the burgundy patterned wallpaper that probably cost a fortune from her oval-shaped bedroom and had painted the walls around the white wainscoting a pastel pink. Aside from the original ivory-canopied bed, her furnishings— although still expensive— were contemporary.
In lieu of a flourished gilt brass Cartel clock hanging above the mantel of her fireplace, a large flat-screen television was mounted above it. In the place of small sculptures on her mantel were several video game stations and a single picture frame, hand decorated with stickers, that displayed a photo of us holding each others' diplomas at graduation. A glass-top desk overlooking the gardens below held the most advanced technology in the entire house, the elaborate array of computers and monitors she used mostly for gaming and harmless hacktivism.
I flopped onto her bed, being sure not to squish her. “Wake up!”
Yelping, she shot straight up and looked around the room with a bleary, panicked expression. Finding me, she exhaled with relief. “Good grief, for a second there, I
thought Caesar Milan was leading an army of little blue Godzilla monsters to ransack the house.”
Normally, I would have laughed, but today, I couldn't muster the mirth. A blank stare on my face, I asked, “Did you have pizza before bed again or something?”
She stretched and smiled sheepishly. “Double chocolate cheesecake.”
“You do remember that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results, right?”
She shrugged as she threw the comforter off and half-stumbled to the bathroom in her traffic-cone-orange panties and mellow-yellow tank top. After the flush of a toilet, she called out from the bathroom, “So what are you doing here so early, anyway? Don't you have church this morning?”
“I just couldn't.” Involuntarily, I curled myself up a little bit on the bed and pulled her down comforter around me. Low enough that she may or may not have heard me, I muttered, “Not after….”
She furrowed her brows as she plopped herself down next to me. Her voice kidding and casual, she laughed, “Did the church burn down overnight or something?”
I shook my head and told her what had happened to cause me to miss church for the second time in my life.
“Oh my God,” she gasped as she put her hand comfortingly on my knee. “Do you want a hot bath?”
“No thanks. I showered in the downstairs bath at home.” I was still cold deep in my muscles from running in the frigid morning air in nothing but my pajamas and slippers, but I needed the comfort of my friend more than I needed warmth right now.
She jokingly cringed. “The one that runs out of hot water in two minutes?”
I nodded.
“Do you want something to eat?”
I shook my head again.
“Have you eaten anything yet today?”
I continued the previous head shaking.
“Well, come on, you and I both need to eat something, and Rosemarie was going to make poached eggs this morning.” She dragged me to my feet by my arm. Rosemarie— the family's live-in cook and Lexie's pseudo-nanny— made the most amazing eggs, but I didn't know whether or not I'd be able to eat anything.
Lexie kept my hand and pulled me out of her bedroom to the kitchen on the bottom floor. To get to the basement, we had to use the claustrophobic, spiral servants' staircase which was so narrow that we had to move in single file to keep from scraping the walls and keep our hands tucked close to keep from knocking them into the window casings. Rosemarie, a slender woman in her sixties with silver-streaked brunette hair stood with her back to us at the large, antique, six-burner gas stove on the other side of the white-tiled kitchen.
“Morning, Rosemarie. We need an extra plate of eggs today.” Lexie shoved my butt onto one of the stools set around the long, butcher-block island in the center of the room.
“We?” Rosemarie turned around from her boiling pot and sizzling pan. “Oh, hello, sweetheart. I didn't know you were joining us for breakfast. I'll fix another plate.” Her warm smile crinkled the lines around her dainty mouth.
Though I wasn't hungry, I accepted the plate of poached eggs and maple sausage links that was set in front of me. No sane person refused Rosemarie's cooking, not only because she was a masterful French chef, but because she would give anyone who didn't eat in her kitchen a terrifying evil eye. Nobody left this room with an empty stomach.
“Are you going to be okay?” Lexie asked from around a mouth of food.
“Do not talk with your mouth full, Alexandra Cornelia Baxter. You aren't five years old anymore,” Rosemarie admonished from the other side of the room as she went about preparing breakfast for the rest of the household staff. A house of this size required an army of maids and gardeners just to keep it clean. “What's wrong, Constance? You seem sad today and I've never seen you here on a Sunday morning before.”
“Goliath brought her a gruesome present from the garden, so she's not feeling so hot today,” Lexie answered for me, kindly omitting the fact that it was Thumper.
Rosemarie nodded her head and made a sympathetic noise. “I've had Spot do that with sparrows on occasion— the poor little dears.” While I appreciated her concern and attempt to empathize with me, I couldn't help but feel kind of patronized. Consciously, I knew she didn't know that it wasn't some unlucky bird or frog and I couldn't fault her for that, but I still couldn't squash that tiny prickle of anger.
It scared me. Normally, I was one of the last people to anger, but today wasn't normal. I wasn't normal and it was so frustrating that I didn't know what was wrong with me. Maybe I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.
“I'm not hungry.” I pushed away from my plate just a little too forcefully and turned for the stairs. Behind me, I heard Lexie get up to follow me, but I didn't stop or wait for her to catch up. Even though I knew better, I took the steep servants' stairs to Lexie's bedroom too quickly and ended up falling forward onto my face midway through the second flight. I banged my forehead just above the hairline into the corner of one of the hardwood stairs.
“Constance!” I heard Lexie yell from somewhere below me.
Propping myself up on one arm, I groaned loudly to let her know I was still breathing and felt the tender and throbbing spot on my head with my free hand. When I opened my eyes, the plants visible through the tiny window in front of me blurred into one big, colorful blob. I closed them again, preferring blank blackness to the dizzying colors.
Lexie's footsteps grew closer until they stopped right next to me. “You idiot.” She picked up my arm and pulled me carefully to my feet. “Come on. Let's go get you horizontal.” Tentatively taking one stair at a time with my bleary vision, we slowly made our way up the rest of the stairs and into Lexie's room.
She set me down on the cream-colored sofa and sat on the coffee table in front of me before passing me one of her fuzzy, white throw pillows to rest my head on. “How many fingers am I holding up?” She held up up only her middle finger.
“One.” I smiled, even though contracting any of the muscles on my head made the throbbing more intense.
“You're fine. Stupid, but fine.” She nodded with a told-you-so look on her face. “What is wrong with you? You know how steep those stairs are.”
“I'm just off my game today.”
“Really? That's kind of an understatement. You completely dissed Rosemarie. I know that finding Thumper in your room was traumatic and all, but you've been acting really weird today.”
“He wasn't just in my room, Lexie,” I choked, pulling the fuzzy pillow over my face. “He was on the pillow next to my face. Right where he used to sleep every night.”
Lexie's face contorted with sympathy and she reached out to comfort me.
“Goliath wouldn't have put him there. Whenever he leaves anything— whether it's a stick, a rock, a squeaky toy, a frog— it's always in his toy box, at the foot of someone's bed, or on the kitchen floor.”
“Well, they knew each other for years. Goliath probably brought him to where he knew Thumper liked to sleep,” Lexie explained, though the wavering voice betrayed her uncertainty.
I shook my head, leaning back to rest on the pillow.
She sighed, giving up. “So you really aren't going to church today?”
“No.” Truth be told, going to church might make me feel better. It had always been an inviting, comforting place for me where I could go to be alone, think, and pray. But today was the Sunday morning service. Everyone in my community would be there and it would be too difficult to keep a happy face on and pretend I was alright. God might take me as I came, but everybody else was a different matter. Lexie and my mom were the only other people that I could get that unconditional acceptance from and both of my parents were probably pretty angry with me right now.
“What are you thinking about doing tonight? Your dad will be really mad that you didn't show up. You could stay here— problem solving by avoidance. We could loaf around and play video games all day. I just got that new fantasy one th
at everyone has been raving about.”
It would feel so weird to do nothing but play video games. Even though the Philter was closed on Sundays, it didn't mean that was a day off. After church, it was my responsibility to wrangle the younger children for our after-service brunch. Then it was back to the shop to handle all of the week's paperwork and invoices.
It was strange enough to take a day off yesterday, but to do nothing today, too? On the other hand, I didn't think I'd be able to focus on paperwork and I didn't trust myself to do any important math right now. My finances were terrible enough without any misplaced decimals.
“Sounds like a good idea.” I rubbed my forehead. “First, though, I need to go apologize to Rosemarie.”
4
My shrill, chirpy, and aggravatingly cheerful cell phone alarm tone jarred me from my peaceful oblivion before dawn the next morning. Lexie and I groaned simultaneously as I felt around blindly through the soft, warm sheets for the tiny device. Finally finding it on the floor by the bed, I hit the snooze button.
“Gotta pee, but I don't wanna budge,” Lexie announced with her face still buried in her pillow. Not that I was judging. I was in the exact same, very difficult predicament.
Stretching my arms and legs out, I listened to and felt the satisfying cracks in my joints as I came awake. After yesterday's marathon gaming session, I did feel much better. As long as I didn't sit still and ruminate, I could avoid thinking about what had happened yesterday. At two in the morning, when we were so tired that our thumbs could no longer hit the correct buttons, I'd asked Lexie if I could just spend the night. Truthfully, though, I'd decided that I would probably stay the night much sooner than that. I really didn't want to have to face my father's anger over missing church any sooner than I had to. I loved him dearly and he was a great dad, but he had always been very strict about church attendance— rain or shine, in sickness and in health. Before yesterday, I'd only ever missed church a single time and that was nine years ago, when I was fifteen and had to spend the night in the hospital after having my appendix removed.
Unus (Stone Mage Saga Book 1) Page 4