Grace of Day - BK 4 of the Grace Series

by S. L. Naeole

  “Grace? Oh God, what the hell did you do?” Lark was here, her face filled with dismay and concern as she pried my hand away from my chest, examining it and shaking her head.

  Graham stood opposite her, his eyes throwing daggers at Lem, who still seemed unable to utter a single word. “What did you do? What did you do to make her hit you, man?”

  “Graham-” I interrupted, but the pain cut me off.

  “We need to get you to Robert,” Lark announced, her eyes searching mine, her thoughts weeding through my head. “Lem, can you carry her?”

  He looked at me with trepidation clear on his face. “If she doesn’t mind.”

  “You don’t mind, do you Grace?”

  “I-I guess not,” I replied, though there was noticeable doubt tingeing my voice.

  Lark and Graham ran to his car, while Lem took my hand and pulled me into the shadows. I said nothing, didn’t even let slip out of me a cry of surprise when my feet left the ground and I was in the air, my body cradled against the firm and broad chest that belonged to someone other than Robert.

  This was different from flying with him. Robert sailed through the air like a bird, as though he and the sky were meant for each other. Lem’s movements were jerky, turbulent even though the sky was still and no cloud could be seen. In the faint glow that radiated outward from his skin, I could see the tenseness in his jaw, see how rigid he held himself as he tried to hold me as carefully as he could; he was afraid that he would break me. I sensed it.

  “You don’t have to be so quiet,” I said to him. “You can talk to me if you want to.”

  “You’ll forgive me if I find it a bit…difficult to do so. I’m afraid that I can’t quite fly and talk at the same time.”

  I chuckled. “That’s okay. I can’t quite do anything and talk at the same time. Everything else, I’m golden, but when it comes to talking, I’m a total klutz.”

  A small twitch pulled at one side of his mouth, and I reveled in that small victory. “Besides, you need to keep my mind occupied, otherwise I’m going to start thinking about how much my hand hurts—and it really, really, really hurts.”

  When he said nothing, when the tiny smile disappeared, I tried another tactic. We can speak this way if it’d be easier for you.

  His head jerked down to look at me, surprise marking his face. You would do that? To make me comfortable?

  I nodded. Does it?

  He smiled, a glorious smile that made me feel that familiar twinge inside of me that…well, it frightened me, actually. “I think that if you’re willing to open your mind to me, I should be willing to attempt to have a conversation in the way that makes you most comfortable. But I thank you for your attempt.”

  “Y-you’re welcome?”

  He laughed, and a rush of warmth filled me at the sound, the musical quality of it a symphony to the silence that I’d grown accustomed to this past week. I was so stunned by the effect it had on me that a tear formed and fell from my eye.

  “I’m sorry—did I say something wrong?”

  I shook my head at the perplexed tone that drenched Lem’s voice. “It’s not you. It’s just me being a stupid human.”

  “You’ve spent far too much time with Lark I see.”

  It was my turn to laugh, and my head bobbed up and down in agreement. “It’s that obvious, huh?”

  “Very. You could probably do with more humor in your life—hanging around an undertaker or gravedigger might do the trick.”

  “What?”

  “Hey, they’re some of the funniest guys around; they have to be in order to do what they do.”

  “I guess that’s true.”

  I felt our descent—more like drop—as we approached Robert’s home, and our conversation ceased, silence once again filling the space between us. The house was dark, and I fumbled in my pocket for the key to open the front door as Lem set me down. He walked in front of me and grabbed for the knob, turning it with ease, the lock giving way beneath his silent manipulation.

  “Well, I could have done that…if I had like…powers or something,” I mumbled, following him into the darkened foyer.

  “You’re right handed, Grace. You couldn’t get your key out of your pocket because it’s on your right side—and if you couldn’t get the key, you wouldn’t have been able to open the door,” Lem pointed out as he waved a hand, sending the lights all flickering on and filling the room with their hollow glow.

  “Oh sure, point out my flaws; that’s exactly what girls like,” I quipped as I walked past him and headed towards the kitchen, flipping the light on with my elbow.

  “Now see, that is something I could not do,” he remarked behind me, watching intently as I pulled open the freezer door with my foot and removed the ice box from its holster. Kicking the door shut, I opened a drawer and removed a towel, filling it with several cubes of ice before pulling the corners up and twisting it on the counter, creating a makeshift icepack that I soon placed on my throbbing hand.

  “Ahh,” I sighed at the soothing chill.

  “You’re quite self-sufficient, aren’t you?”

  I glanced at his face and saw the look of awe that covered it, and felt my mouth twist up with annoyance. “All I did was get some ice for my hand. That’s not exactly being self-sufficient. Any idiot could do it.”

  “But you did it with one hand—and a foot. You did it as if it was all automatic. You didn’t even need to think about it, as if there was no choice for you.”

  “Well, there really isn’t. Robert’s not here, and who knows when he’ll be back. I’ve got to keep this swelling down otherwise I’m going to have to go to the emergency room, and if Ambrose isn’t working then I’m going to have to figure out a way to explain why my hand is the size of the Goodyear blimp, and why it looks like black glass.”

  I held up my hand to emphasize my point and saw his face pull back in disgust. The honeycombed bruising had extended past my wrist and was nearing my elbow now. If it was allowed to continue, I’d be purple by sunrise.

  “That is not…that is not normal,” was all that Lem could say before he turned away, the sight obviously too much for him.

  I couldn’t help but compare his reaction to Robert’s, the acceptance and concern unquestionable with him, whereas Lem’s back was stiff, his aversion to the human injury obviously not something he could tolerate. I reached into the towel drawer and pulled out another towel, placing it atop of my hand and covering it.

  “You can turn around; I covered it,” I said to him, my annoyance growing by the second.

  When he did, the relief on his face was so evident he couldn’t hide it or deny it. Instead, he issued an apology, his hands held out in supplication as he stepped forward, his eyes avoiding the towel that was draped on my hand, water from the melting ice dripping beneath it and onto the floor.

  “I’m sorry. I should have a stronger stomach for something like that, but it looks too much like…”

  “Like the skin of an Innominate, right?”

  When his eyes widened, I felt my face give off a visible shrug. “I know what it looks like, Lem. I’ve seen it on Sam, as well as on Robert. This is what happens to me when I get hurt. When Robert comes back, he’ll make it go away. Until then, I’ll just keep it here beneath this towel because I really don’t like the way it looks either.”

  His shoulders lowered as he relaxed, my assertion running in line with his doing much to set him at ease. “Why are you so different?”

  My eyes narrowed at his question. “What? What do you mean by that?”

  “Well, you’re unlike most humans. You’re nervous, you’re jittery and uncomfortable, and yet you still try to make others feel less uncomfortable, pushing your own feeling aside as though they don’t matter. You’re unnaturally patient, even now, when Robert has not yet arrived despite knowing what has occurred. Anyone else in your position would be in no condition for pleasant conversation, much less attempting to ease anyone else’s discomfort.”

  Fee
ling sheepish, I felt my mouth pinch up, my bottom lip swallowing my top in some vain attempt to mask my embarrassment. “I’m sorry. I get defensive every time someone says that to me. I don’t know why I am the way I am. I guess I’ve always based how I felt on how others felt; if they weren’t feeling alright then I wasn’t feeling alright. I don’t know any other way to be.”

  Lem turned my body around, forcing me to look squarely at him as he spoke. “You’re not just human, Grace. Remember that. Your mother was an angel, no matter what she had become when you came into being. She passed on to you her divinity, the part of her that makes any of us as good as we are. What you are isn’t different. I used the wrong term and I apologize for that.

  “No, you aren’t different. What you are is empathic. You feel what others feel more deeply, more completely. When they hurt, you hurt; when they’re happy, you feel it, too. It’s how we feel things. Love, anger…passion; as a human, it’s amplified in you. Even now, you feel what I feel only you feel it ten-fold.”

  His hands on my shoulders burned, and I opened my mouth to ask what he meant by that when he disappeared, leaving me gaping at the empty space that still smelled of softness and warmth and smoke, like a cozy fire that had been put out by the morning rain.

  “Well, I’ve got a knack for driving off male angels,” I muttered to myself before the sound of a car pulling up and doors slamming could be heard from outside. Graham ran into the kitchen, his eyes darting back and forth as though looking for some danger that I was unaware of.

  “Did Robert show up?”

  His question answered itself when Robert arrived just moments afterward, his face filled with dark anger that, for a fraction of a second, sent a chill of fear through me before it was replaced with another emotion altogether.

  “What have you done to yourself now?” he asked, the biting sting in his voice and the accusation acting like a slap in my face.

  I pulled the towel off of my hand and raised it, unsure if I even wanted him to look at it, much less touch it.

  “For Heaven’s sake, Grace, couldn’t you stay safe for one week?” he grumbled as he removed the icy rag and wrapped his hands around my broken fingers.

  “So you’ve noticed that it’s been a week? One week without my husband?” I threw back at him, unable to take the accusatory tone in his voice.

  “Grace-” he began, but I cut him off.

  “You think I hurt myself on purpose, don’t you? You think I did this on purpose to bring you back here, don’t you?”

  He tried to deny it, but I saw that my words had more than truth in them, and it hurt. God, did it hurt. “Oh. My. God.” I pulled my hand away from his and stormed down the rear hallway, opening up the bedroom door and slamming it shut behind me.

  I collapsed onto the bed, angry, destroyed...broken. The soft knock at the door went unanswered. I stared away towards the window, ignoring the slow creak of the door swinging open, and the soft click of it shutting. I pretended that I didn’t feel the dip in the bed as a weight pressed down on it, a body moving up against mine, arms enfolding me in an embrace I neither wanted nor wanted to be free of.

  “I’m sorry,” the voice whispered into my ear.

  I closed my eyes to it, not wanting to believe it and yet needing to believe it. “You hurt me, Robert.”

  “I know.”

  “We’ve been married for a week and I’ve spoken to Lem more in one night than I have you these past seven days.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “This isn’t what I thought marriage was going to be like—I didn’t know what marriage was going to be like—but if I did, it wouldn’t be this. I’ve spent every single night alone.”

  A hand, warm and strong, covered my bruised one, and I felt the heat flow through it and into mine as his other hand reached up to press against heart. I knew that he could feel every shuffle of my heart as his words replayed themselves over and over in my head, each turn hurting me just as much as the last.

  “I’m sorry, Grace.”

  “Stop saying you’re sorry.”

  “What would you like me to say?”

  I turned my head so that I could see him. Kinda. “Don’t say anything. Just stay with me tonight.”

  “Grace, I can’t.”

  Defeated, I turned away. “Fine.”

  “Grace…”

  “I said fine. Go. Leave.”

  The throbbing in my hand was already easing, and I knew that in a few hours it would be completely healed, with or without Robert there, so I moved away from him, standing up and heading to the dresser. I pulled open the top drawer that had been reserved for my things and pulled out a set of keys.

  “What are you doing?”

  He was beside me, my intent clear even if I hadn’t said a word—or thought them.

  “I’m not going to stay here alone another night, Robert. You might see nothing wrong with it, but I do. I can’t be alone, night after night. I’m going to my dad’s. If you want me, you can find me there.”

  He grabbed for my shoulder, but I knew him. I knew him too well, and I moved out of the way at that same instant. “Go and do what you need to do, Robert. I understand it, I accept it.”

  “Then why are you leaving?”

  “Because I don’t want to waste my last days on this damn planet going to summer school and then coming home to an empty house. I don’t want to have to worry about getting hurt and having my husband come home and accuse me of doing it on purpose just to bring him back.”

  “I said I was sorry-”

  I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. We can stop pretending that we’re not married, Robert, because there’s nothing to fake.” I stepped towards the door and I could see Graham standing at the end of the hallway, his eyes shadowed, Lark’s relaying of my thoughts damaging him in the way only a best friend could.

  He held his arms out to me, and I walked into them, allowing them to pull me away, my feet moving of their own accord through the kitchen and past the living room and finally outside. I felt myself being lifted into the front seat of Graham’s Buick and buckled in.

  I stared out of the window, telling myself that the blur that I saw was summer rain hitting the glass.

  FELINE INTUITION

  “Are you sure you’ll be alright?”

  “Dad, I’ll be fine. It’s just to the school.”

  “I still say you should let me drive you.”

  I stood in the driveway, my feet planted on either side of my bike, and I shook my head at the suggestion. “I’ve got babysitters floating around here somewhere, Dad. If anything happens, they’ll be there.”

  “I still don’t like it. Robert should’ve never agreed to this. Busy or not, he’s your husband and you should be with him.”

  A rough sigh passed through me and I gritted my teeth at the lie Dad repeated back to me, the lie that I had told him to explain why he came home from the hospital to find me in the kitchen cooking breakfast two days ago. I couldn’t tell him that I had left because after only a week, my marriage was an absolute failure. Not after he had accepted Robert into his life. I wouldn’t do that—to either of them.

  “Dad, he’s got his priorities and I have mine. You said it yourself, I have to graduate. I can’t focus on school if I’m stuck there worrying about him, and he can’t focus on what he’s got to do if he’s worrying about whether or not I’m doing okay in school.”

  Another lie. It twisted up my insides to have to say it, but there was no hope for it now. I had dug myself a hole that would only get deeper—I wanted it to get deeper. At least there, I was safe. My lie was a small comfort because I felt if I repeated it enough, if others believed it as firmly as I hoped, that it would become true and banish the truth that I refused to admit.

  “How about I drive behind you? Make sure for myself?”

  My eyes rolled, and I grimaced at the idea. “D-A-D!” I groaned, each letter turning into its own syllable. “Do you actually think having a car comi
ng up behind me is going to make me feel safe?”

  He paused for a moment, his response hanging on the tip of his tongue, and then sheepishly closed his mouth, suddenly aware of his mistake. “I’m sorry. You’re right, it’s a terrible idea.”

  “Thank you. Now I’ve got to get going before I’m late.”

  Kicking up the bike stand, I took several steps backwards, the bike rolling beneath me, until I was in the street. I waved goodbye at Dad, the concern still marring his features, and then began pedaling down the road. My legs began to burn less than five minutes into the ride and I knew it was because I had grown lazy, and I cursed myself for that.

  My breathing soon grew haggard, and sweat stained my shirt as the morning sun grew angry above me, burning a red swatch down my arms. By the time I reached the school, I was a bag of sunburned jelly. I stumbled off of the bike, clumsy in ways I didn’t know possible, and it took me several tries to get the lock on the bike before I collapsed in a heap on the sidewalk, unable to move or breathe without it hurting.

  “Do you need help, Grace?”

  A dark silhouette stood above me, the sun blocking out everything save the shade of hair that glowed a deep wine color in the soft orange haze.

  “Hey Mrs. Deovolente. Could you give me a hand?”

  I reached up and took hold of the firm grip, pulling myself up to my feet, wobbling a bit before righting myself and thanking the woman who stood next to me now, her face filled with amusement. “It’s been a while,” I said, a rather bland explanation but the only one my lungs could manage.

  “At least you didn’t forget how,” she joked before starting her stride towards the school doors.

  “At least.”

  Together we walked into the cooled hallway of Heath High, the clicking sound of her pumps echoing in the strange emptiness. “I’m glad that I caught you before class started. Do you think we could talk…about the night at the party?”

  “What about?”

  She looked around, checking to see if anyone else was around, before she lowered her head, her voice lowering in kind, and whispered, “The tattoo.”