I’d been so engrossed in that last entry I hadn’t even heard him come in. Shit, how was I going to explain myself? “I, uh, sometimes go into the closet...”
He nodded. “I know.” Of course he did. He noticed more than I gave him credit for, and how like him not to remark on my oddities.
I walked to the chair next to his, sitting a few feet apart with the corner of the table between us. The silence was thick and awkward. My hands became a problem, nervously flailing about like two injured birds. I tucked them under my thighs and glanced at Lucas.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” he said, voice measured and low.
“I’m sorry,” I said, carefully watching his face for any sign of emotion. It was cut in curving lines, the gently rounded chin and nose, hooded eyes, a beautifully blank mystery. Just looking at him made me want to recapture the last time we were together, the furious need and pulsing haste. It would be easy to lean over and take a kiss, but I didn’t because the conversation I had been putting off for the better part of a week was upon us.
Lucas split the silence, saying, “I rushed you, and that was a mistake. If you regret it, then we ca—”
“Wait,” I said, tossing up a hand. “What?”
“We slept together,” he said, his manner matter of fact. “You haven’t come near me since.”
“But it’s not because of the sex,” I blurted. He didn’t believe me, that much was plain. “I liked being with you,” I insisted. “It was perfect. I’m just not sure we should do it again.”
He crossed his arms, and on anyone else I would have labeled it a defensive gesture, but not Lucas. Who knew what he was thinking. “You’re breaking up with me.”
“Shit. No. Of course not,” I spluttered, wondering when the conversation started careening out of control. “Lucas, that is the last thing I want, but we do need to talk.” I rubbed my forehead, trying to dispel the building tension. “Elaine paid me a visit at Sterling’s last week.” The mere memory made me mad. Lucas shifted, and I hurried to speak, wanting to keep the conversation on track. “Just listen. I know that you have things you don’t want to discuss, and I get it. I would gladly give you all the time in the world, but we don’t have time. Elaine is here, and she’s scratching the scab, dropping hints and making veiled comments. I don’t want to learn about your past from her, I want to hear it from you.”
He stood upright, his tall frame towering over me as he paced around my kitchen. Emotionally there was nothing to feel, but I thought on some level he must be agitated.
“Why won’t you just tell me?” I asked, a pleading note to my voice.
He stopped, turning to look at me from the middle of the room. “You won’t believe me.”
Didn’t I know better than anyone about preternatural powers? “You’d be surprised,” I told him. “Please, Luke, trust me. I’ll believe whatever you tell me, I swear.”
He resumed his pacing, boots planting hard against the linoleum in slow, heavy steps, only this time words spilled out while he walked. “I told you that I wasn’t always like this. When I was younger I used to be hotheaded, easy to anger, that sort of thing. My father was an ugly drunk, so I guess being short-tempered just runs in our blood. Elaine’s family knew it. They saw me push her once. I don’t remember why I did it, we’d been arguing, we were always arguing, but when you’re young the drama only makes things better. So I shoved her and she should’ve dumped my ass, but she forgave me straight away. Her family never did though, and they never forgot it either.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, gearing up for the next part. Whatever Lucas was about to say, he was sure I wouldn’t believe him.
“Elaine’s family, the Morneaus, have a long history. They came over from France before the revolution, settling in New Orleans for a few centuries before moving up north to the Smoky Mountains. Their reputation followed them. I always thought it was a lot of superstitious nonsense, but people liked to gossip, calling them cursemakers, or sometimes witches. I dated Elaine for years, and not once did she try to convince me the rumors were true, not until it was too late.
“Elaine waited tables to save up for college, and one night after work she was hauled right off the road and raped in some dingy back alley.” I gasped, but Lucas didn’t hear, too caught up in his own story. “She staggered home after it was over, bruised and bloody. Her family must’ve questioned her, no doubt asking if I was involved, but Elaine was in shock, unable to answer, and they jumped to all the wrong conclusions.”
“They thought you did it?”
“Her great-aunt Esther thought we’d been arguing again, that things got out of hand and I forced her,” Lucas said flatly. “When I heard what happened I rushed over to see Elaine, but her family stopped me at the door and Esther came forward. She said that I felt too much, too hard, my emotions needed checking. And then she cursed me, saying I would never feel again.” He stared at me then, hard eyes probing. “And I don’t, Adelaide. I don’t feel anything at all.”
Yes, I was shocked by his story, and angry. I was angry at the injustice of his curse. But mostly I was sad, sad because I knew what came next. And while my emotions roiled within me, I saw their reflection on Luke’s face—the stunned look, the deep hurt—it was all there. I had my answer.
The curse that left Lucas a void of emotion must’ve made him a vacuum, because he siphoned my excess emotions and sucked them right up. I watched worry lines form in his face, knowing he could feel it coming.
“You are breaking up with me,” he stated.
“Yes,” I cried, hunching miserably over the table. “But not for the reason you think.”
“You don’t believe me,” he said, still as a stone and rooted in the middle of my kitchen.
“I do, Luke. I believe everything. Except I know you feel, just a little sometimes.”
“I thought maybe the curse was failing...” Lucas shrugged, uninterested in knowing the reason for his change.
“It’s me,” I explained. “Somehow I’ve been sharing my emotions with you.” It was time I told Lucas my own secrets. “I’m an empath,” I put plainly. “That means I feel what other people feel... well, everyone except you. I was intrigued by that at first, fascinated that I couldn’t feel your emotions, but I guess I always thought you had some. I mean, I didn’t think you were...”
“Empty,” Lucas said, his voice startling me for some reason.
“I don’t think of you like that.”
“But you still want to break up,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.
I scrubbed my face. If I didn’t want to make a mess of things then I had to get him to understand. “Luke, you don’t feel anything for me, not really. All your feelings are just an echo of mine. And while I never expected you to fall instantly in love with me, it at least needs to be in the realm of possibility.”
“Do you think it only goes one way, the intrigue, the fascination?” He began to pace again, my agitation and upset swirling through the room. “I think of you constantly. I want to be with you constantly. I find you extremely alluring, if not in my heart then in my head. That has to count for something,” Lucas argued.
“It’s not enough!” I exploded. “Finding out that I’ve been driving us all along, you my own little puppet, me unwittingly pulling the strings, it makes me sick! I can’t go on like that, always manipulating your emotions, it isn’t right.”
“Who cares?” Lucas asked. “I don’t care.”
I was furious at my position, having to be mature and break things off, when what I really wanted was to put the blinders back on and continue our relationship. Why was he making this so hard for me?
In frustration I retaliated. “Of course you don’t care. Finally, after years of nothing, you get to feel again. No wonder you didn’t question it—you knew it was too good to be true.”
“You think I’m using you?” Lucas asked, and I could taste the bite of my own anger.
I was doing it again, controlling the conversa
tion’s tone with my emotions. I was instantly doused, upset smothered under a creeping sadness.
“Elaine does,” I finally muttered.
“Who gives a fuck about Elaine,” Lucas said, but my mood had deflated the argument, and his words seemed to sweep themselves away, lost in our silence.
“Lucas,” I finally said, lifting my head to look at him. “I was falling in love with you. I wish— I wish th—”
He strode to the door, cutting off my words with his abrupt departure, only he stopped at the threshold. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
After all that he still didn’t get it.
“No, Luke, I’m sorry.”
The door clicked shut, and I was alone. My first relationship already over. It hurt. I collapsed into a heap, my body wracked with spasms and sobs. They wrenched their way out, one by one.
At one point, without really thinking about it, I called out for Smith. I don’t know why. I guess I just wanted comfort and he was so reliable, always there for me. But this time he didn’t come, and so, I was forced to face another hard truth, one that I’d been carefully avoiding.
Smith might never come again.
Chapter 32
Loneliness was quiet. The stillness of it seemed to seep in, stealing over my body and bones, holding me prisoner. I didn’t move at all toward the end. Things took on a dreamer’s edge, hazy, slinking in and out, unlatched from time. I didn’t feel pain or fear, indifference numbing them out. I didn’t even feel hope, nor hope’s more sensible cousin—nostalgia. My mind quit wandering toward my family, or happier times with them. I thought of without them. I thought of being alone, and how I had learned the true meaning of the word.
The clouds choked up the sun, and deep inside my chipped out tunnel the dirt grew cool and damp. It was setting in, the darkness of death. The tunnel seemed to grow, the walls turning from brown to gray, then black. I felt myself floating, bobbing aimlessly, unsure. My life had been short, this was the first thing I would face alone, without guidance, and how ironic that it should be my death.
“You’re not alone,” came a static hiss from behind me.
Feather light movement, a whispered touch, something was moving in the dark with me. How could that be? I remember, I remember I was dying.
“Not dying, just broken my peach.”
I searched the darkness, and as my eyes adjusted the dirt came into focus, gritty and veined with orange clay. Where did it come from, that voice?
“We’ve changed this memory of yours, but I was never in it. I’m in your head.”
There. Movement in the shadows, I squinted. Feathers for nails, a hard leather hand, reaching, it was reaching for me!
I screamed and reared back, slamming hard.
I was still screaming, my arms scratching the air as I thrashed about on my living room floor. I sucked in air, feeling winded, scared, disoriented. Wildly, I looked around, wondering why I wasn’t in bed. Then it all came crashing back, heavier and more horrible than my nightmare had been.
Lucas and I broke up.
No, I broke up with Lucas. Even worse. I crawled back onto the couch, having dumped myself off sometime during the dream. The cushions were uncomfortable, lopsided and loose. But I wasn’t in the mood for my comfy four-poster, choosing an uncomfortable makeshift bed instead, just as I had after my initial cry was over. I wanted to cry again, but the tears were paired with my denial, and I was more into the acceptance stage now.
For some reason awful things always seem to tie themselves together, unrelated things, that have nothing to do with each other. All night my mind replayed the breakup, conjuring up every word, every gesture and action. Like Luke cutting off my last words, not wanting to hear them. Or how he’d looked when he knew I was breaking things off. After exhausting those memories, after absorbing every painful bit, random things would then insert themselves into my brain. The nightmare came in flashes, having retained its power to scare me. Then my words echoed back, like ringing from a dream. They would haunt me nevertheless. “Whatever you want,” I’d said. Reed reveled in that slip of the lip. I cringed to think of it.
These thoughts drove over me ‘til morning, painful as they were exhausting. So I was feeling wrung out by the time the first rays of day slipped in through the big window. But I drudged myself up and went through the motions.
Breakfast. Shower. Clean underwear. Mascara.
I must’ve scared Ben, doing a zombie walk across the Sterling’s parking lot. He jumped up from the picnic table, intercepting me before I could reach the office. “What the hell happened to you?” His words were aggressive, but I could feel that they were tinged with worry.
“Lucas and I broke up,” I answered, voice stale and dry.
“Lucas?”
“My boyfriend,” I said, annoyed with him.
I didn’t need to jog anything, he remembered just fine.
“Stephen’ll be in today, no more cleanin’ for you,” he said, ignoring the boyfriend comment altogether. He wouldn’t have been able to help anyway. Romantic drama didn’t fall into his area of expertise, but then, I couldn’t think of much that did.
I moved around him, opening the office door. “You still have to replace the cart,” I called over my shoulder.
“Meh!” he grunted, annoyance clear as the door fell shut, closing off his craggy face.
I didn’t see him again after that. He must have slipped away, which was fine by me. My first order of business was to put in a call to Reed, and for that I wanted privacy. Being a Tuesday afternoon I didn’t have much trouble on that front.
“Karen speaking, how may I direct your call?”
“Put Reed on,” I said.
“Who, may I ask, is calling?”
She recognized my voice, I knew she did.
“His wife,” I said, just to screw with her.
“He’s not married,” she lashed back, unable to help herself. Her professionalism continued to crumble as she went on, “And he’d never marry someone like you!”
“Oh, I don’t know. He seems partial to motel clerks, but not secretaries. He would never date a secretary.”
Click.
She hung up! Crazy Karen was so getting fired for that, especially when Reed found out what I’d called to say. Seriously, she was toast. I cracked a smile, the first since my breakup. Had it only been the night before? It felt like a long time without Lucas. Separating myself from him was going to be difficult. I missed him constantly, a never ending ache.
Stephen came in a few hours later, wandering through the door much like his father had, a listless sort of drift. I hadn’t thought it was possible, but he looked worse than me. His eyes were sunken, red and runny, face leeched to white. Stephen had suffered a shock, that much was obvious, not some passing cold or flu.
“Shouldn’t you be home,” I said, thinking he definitely should be. “You don’t look well enough to be at work.”
“Neither do you,” he said, surprising me. Sure, Stephen was observant, but I didn’t think on this particular occasion he was in any shape to notice. “Besides,” he went on, “I had to come in. My mom was driving me nuts.”
That was more or less an invitation to ask more, so I didn’t feel bad prying. “What happened?”
“The police came by,” he said, circling around the desk for the clipboard. “They’ve been questioning her on and off because my dad didn’t leave us, we just found out he was murdered.”
“That’s awful, Stephen, I’m sorry.” I winced at the words, knowing they’d sounded rehearsed. They were. I paused, leaning sideways to get closer, to gauge his emotions. “You don’t seem...”
“Upset?” he asked casually, flicking through the list of rooms. “I was... but I, I didn’t really know him. My mom though, she’s taking it hard.”
He was telling the truth. I mean, sure, he was still a bit disturbed, but his emotions weren’t rotting. Sometimes when people didn’t grieve properly they walked around with chronic guilt, or mayb
e anger. It wasn’t healthy, and it felt subtle and insidious.
“Is there going to be a funeral?” I hadn’t meant to ask, but, well, I really wanted to know. “I mean, since you have to bury the... remains.”
Stephen snapped the pages shut. “I never mentioned a body,” he said. His lanky frame was no longer loose, but stiff, his walk robotic as he made for the office door. “You know,” he said, glancing back at me. “I knew you had something to do with it. The second I heard, I knew.”
This time the door was shut on me, Stephen closing me off. He was angry, I’d felt the snap of it, little sparks fizzling out as he moved away.
I was relieved to see him go, especially relieved that he hadn’t pushed for answers. I wouldn’t tell him anything, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. After I was plucked out of that well my entire family migrated to the hospital, waiting for me to get better. They were supportive... for a while. But I didn’t get better, I got strange. They didn’t understand, not even when I finally realized what was happening and tried to explain it. There was a herd of Graves, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts and cousins, but not a single one believed that I was an empath. If my closest relatives thought I was a lunatic, how was I going to get my friends to believe me? It was a miracle I’d confided in Lucas, and go figure, we broke up right after.
So no, even if Stephen suspected me, I wouldn’t tell him anything. He might grow to hate me for it, and all the secrets he knew I kept, but that was a risk I was willing to take.
I half expected Smith to waft into the office and punish me with his scolding emotions, heavy disapproval thick in the air. He was protective of his son, disliking my cold behavior at times. Just then I would have welcomed his silent reproach, but he never came.
* * *
Wanting to see Lucas again, I contrived fantastical scenarios to accommodate this desire. He broke an arm, no, a leg, and needed my assistance bathing and changing... that sort of thing. Little did I know that I was about to get my wish.
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