LITMIR.BIZ

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‘I didn’t know you wanted any. You don’t usually eat dessert.’

      ‘It’s fine,’ she said loudly, wheeling out of the room. ‘I just…the bathroom.’ She rounded the corner into the hall.

      It was probably silly to feel slighted over banana bread. More than that, Joanna just felt too weird sitting there, looking at vacation houses, chatting about work, ignoring what was obvious, especially with Scott fiddling about with the stereo one wall away. Nothing seemed to ever get to the Bates-McAllisters, though. Joanna certainly hadn’t been raised like this. If Scott was her brother and her parents were faced with such a scandal – and if her parents were still together – at least they would confront the problem head-on. Her mother would be a hurricane of panic, making sweeping what-will-the-neighbors-think-of-us statements. Her father would be smacking a fist into an open palm, declaring he’d never wanted to live in such an arrogant, stick-up-your-ass part of Pennsylvania in the first place – he was from the western part of the state, where what one drove and where one shopped and the way one pronounced certain vowels didn’t matter as much. His anger would just make her mother panic more – If only you would’ve tried harder to fit in, Craig, this might not have happened, she might say – and that, in turn, would stoke his fury, and they’d circle each other like two worked-up dogs, their bad energies becoming so toxic that a bite was inevitable.

      Joanna walked down the house’s grand hall, which was lined on both sides by heavy, gold-framed oil paintings of scenic vistas of foxhunts, Scottish moors, and generals on horseback. Charles had first brought her to Roderick to meet his family two Julys ago, and though she’d been building up the Bates-McAllisters and their estate in her mind long before she and Charles met – though Charles didn’t know anything about that – the house had lived up to every one of her expectations. Sylvie’s assiduously tended-to garden had been abloom, the tiki lamps by the pool cast soft shadows across the slate patio, and there was a full moon over the roof, so perfectly centered that it was as though Sylvie and James had commissioned it to hang there for them alone.

      She’d been blind to the house’s imperfections for a long time afterward, too. She didn’t notice the wet wood smell. She didn’t see the chips in the leaded glass or the stains on the intricate woodwork or the large brown patch on the ceiling from a previous leak. It didn’t occur to her that the highboy was water-warped or that the oil paintings needed a professional cleaning or that the chandeliers were missing many of their crystals. And so what if one of the rooms was filled with nothing but piles of papers, old, cloth-wrapped paintings and a piano with chipped, yellowed ivory keys? So what if the library had a mouse hole the size of Joanna’s fist? So what if the oil painting of Charles Roderick Bates, Charles’s great-grandfather, which hung over the stairs, freaked Joanna out every time she passed by it? All old aristocratic homes had charming idiosyncrasies. And this was Roderick.

      But lately, something in her had changed, and she’d begun to see the house as, well…old. Unkempt, even. The rooms were always too cold, especially the bathrooms. The cushions on the living room couch were kind of uncomfortable, a sharp spring managing to press into her butt no matter which position she tried. Some of the unused rooms smelled overwhelmingly like mothballs, others like sour milk, and there were visible gaps amidst many of the bathroom floor tiles, desperate for grout. The most unsettling thing, though, was that when Joanna walked into certain rooms, it was as if someone – or something – was following her. The house and everything in it seemed human, if she really got down to it. And not like a sprightly young girl, either, but a crotchety, elderly man. The pipes rattled like creaky bones and joints. When she sat down in a chair – any chair – there was an abrupt huffing sound, like a tired laborer collapsing from a long day’s work. The radiators wheezed and coughed, and even spat out strange hints of smells that seemed to be coming from the house’s human core. A whisper of soapy jasmine seeped from its plaster skin. An odor of ham and cloves belched out of an esophageal vent.

      She stepped down the hall now, gazing at the black-and-white photographs that lined the walls. Sylvie had taken the pictures during a trip to the beach when the children were young. In some of them, Charles and Scott, probably about eight and six, were flying a kite. Charles had such a look of concentration as he held the kite’s string, as if a judging committee was watching. Scott was looking disdainfully off toward the waves. In the pictures of them in the ocean, Scott ran happily toward the waves, his arms and legs outstretched like a starfish, his skin so dark against the white sand. It was startling to see a photo of Scott so young and carefree, enjoying the same simple pleasures everyone loved. James skipped out to the ocean, too, equally exuberant, but Charles hung back, his expression timid and penitent. The last photo in the row was a close-up of the three of them. Scott and their father were soaked, but Charles’s hair still neatlycombed, bone-dry. Two smiles were genuine, the third seemed forced.

      ‘See anything interesting?’

      Joanna jumped. Scott stood at the bottom of the stairs. His hands were hidden in his sweatshirt pouch. His eyes glowed, like she’d turned a flashlight on some wild animal in the woods.

      Joanna pressed her hand to her breastbone. She could feel her heart through her thin sweater. ‘H–How did you get here?’

      Scott gestured with his thumb toward the front door. The easiest way to get to the main house from his quarters was to exit through the door of his suite, walk all of four steps, and enter the house through the mud room, which led to the kitchen. Instead, Scott had walked the whole way around the outside of the house to this door, the front door. He had to know that Joanna and Sylvie and Charles had convened in the kitchen. The smell of banana bread was overpowering, even penetrating the thick walls.

      So he’d avoided them. Of course he had. He didn’t want to see them. Was it because he didn’t want to answer their questions about the schoolboy? Although that was laughable – they wouldn’t ask him questions. One never asked Scott questions. Sylvie would flutter about, shove a piece of bread at Scott and hover over him obsequiously until he ate it. Joanna would make small talk, busying her hands with the bread knife or the catalogues. And Charles would sit silent, seething. Scott wouldn’t have to face anything. They tiptoed around him even when he hadn’t done anything wrong.

      Scott raised his chin, gazing at her unflinchingly. Perhaps he knew what was going through her mind, what she was trying to figure out. She dared to peek back. He looked the same as he always did, disheveled and self-assured and lazily handsome. He obviously looked nothing like the other Bates-McAllisters, with their wide eyes and thin lips and ears that stuck out slightly. While Charles and Sylvie’s skin was pale, Scott’s was more of an olive tone, always easily tanned, never blotchy. And his facial features were a curious, intriguing mix of cultures, too. It was among one of the many things the family never talked about – that Scott, when it came down to it, wasn’t one hundred per cent white. It both was and wasn’t there for them. They acted as though it didn’t matter, yet Joanna wondered if, subconsciously, it affected their every reaction.

      Scott didn’t seem any different, either. Certainly not weighted down by a boy’s death. Certainly not guilty about anything. The shame would be written all over his face, wouldn’t it?

      Joanna lowered her eyes, realizing she’d been staring for too long. ‘I should…’ she said, ducking her head and grappling, idiotically, toward the kitchen.

      ‘Leaving because of me?’ he teased. When he smiled, he showed off long, wolf-like incisors.

      ‘Oh, no. No!’ Joanna halted. Her face felt hot. She scrambled for a pressing reason to be back in the kitchen but came up with nothing. That was the thing about people like Scott, she’d learned: they knew exactly how intimidating they were. And they seemed to thrive on it, predatorily, gleefully.

      Then Scott stepped forward until he was just inches from her. He remained there, appraising Joanna, making up his mind about something. He was so close that Joanna could smell cigarettes and soap on him. She could see the v-shaped fibers in his sweatshirt, and that the drawstring for the hood was tipped with silvery metal. He breathed in and out. She barely breathed at all. He could so easily reach out and grab her wrist and push her down. She felt very small next to him. Hummingbird-frail.

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