He put the empty cup back down and stared at it like it was not quite trustworthy. To Silas, he said without looking up, “Do you really think so?”
“Yes,” said Silas without elaboration as he refilled the glass.
Freddy watched the rest of the little bottle fill his glass and made a careful, slow show of finding his way back into the seat of the chair. He blinked a few more times, perhaps to prevent anyuntoward emotion from spilling out of his face and distressing Silas, or perhaps just because it was one of the few motions he trusted himself with just now.
“The letter,” Freddy said, nodding toward it. “That’s the letter I wrote? The day he was born?”
Silas nodded, pushing it gently across the table. “Yes.”
Freddy reached out to touch it but hesitated, his hand hovering in the air as he returned his gaze to Silas’s. “I don’t even remember what it says,” he confessed with a grimace. “That day is … was … a bit of a blur.”
“Understandable,” said Silas, leaning back and sipping at his own juice. “I thought about giving it to Claire a few times over the years, but it never felt quite right. She was always so … well …”
“Yes, I know,” Freddy said with a dry chuckle. “I understand.”
“She is acting very odd, just so you are aware,” Silas continued with a raise of his brows. “She is never this silent. She never misses dinners. She never avoids attention. I don’t know this woman here with us just now, but I do know that she is only present because you are, Freddy.”
“I know,” Freddy repeated, letting the ghost of a smile find his face. “It’s nice to feel important, isn’t it?”
Silas only sighed, but he did not look reproachful for once. He looked almost approving, actually.
That was also new.
“I’ll give it to her,” Freddy said, this time letting his fingertips fall all the way to the aged paper of the envelope. “When it is time.”
“That’s what I was hoping you would say,” Silas replied, this time pleased enough that his smile included a flash of teeth. “I am proud of you, Freddy.”
“Stop,” said Freddy as he snatched up his juice and took another long quaff. “I can only handle so much tumult in one day.”
CHAPTER 11
Claire had come to fear sleep.
For the third time in recent memory, she found herself deep in a pit of altered memory, living through a moment both past and present, both imagined and real.
He kissed her cheek softly, just a brush. Then her jaw. Then her throat. She felt his tongue, his teeth, his hands circling her wrists and pinning her to the mattress.
She woke up gasping for air, hot and shaking and desperate. Desperate to escape him. Desperate to pull him back.
She could smell him like she’d summoned his shade into her bed. She could feel the brand of his lips on her body. She could sense the exact weight and warmth of his fingers, twining through hers.
“Stop,” she breathed to herself, turning her face into the pillow and squeezing every muscle in her body before she could feel anything more, anything that might be too delicious to release in favor of reality and consciousness. “Stop it.”
It wasn’t as though she hadn’t been having these dreams all along, she reminded herself. There had been many nights in the last several years where she’d fallen into Freddy’s arms in her dreams, where she’d remembered his bed, his kiss, his body. Sometimes, when she awoke from those dreams, they would haunt her for hours; they would taint her entire day.
This wasn’t new!
She kept telling herself it wasn’t new.
She’d recovered from it a thousand times already. She’d navigated her life without letting herself be shattered by it. She’d accepted it was nothing more than a dream, and dreams were sometimes cruel.
So why was it sitting atop her now, weighing down her bones until they creaked in distress? Why could she not shake it now, no matter how many times she got up and plunged her hands into the icy water in her windowside basin?
Why would he not simply leave her be?
He was in the house now, she knew. He was only a few feet of mortar and plaster away from being back in her bed for true.
That was why.
