I don’t know what to do with that, and right now,I don’t have time to figure it out.
Scarlett…
In the weirdest housewife way, I walk Wallace to the door and say, “Have a good day at work, dear.” He doesn't seem to get the joke, giving me another dry peck on the cheek as James the butler steadfastly looks the other way.
“Why don’t you have Gio take you over to Mom’s place?” Wallace asks.
“Not tonight,” I say. “Your mom is so sweet and she’ll worry about me, and you, if she knows what you’re doing. Worrying about your dad’s recovery is enough.” He kisses me one last time on my forehead, like he’s a kindly uncle and I’m an impetuous niece, not like husband and wife, and disappears into the night.
***
The days blur together. Wallace leaves before I wake up in the morning in a suit, and comes back in the evening to change again. I get a few minutes in between when he slips into bed, still smelling faintly of smoke.
After a week of this, I’m frayed down to the last nerve.
“This is ridiculous! You can’t keep this up, Wallace. I doubt your father and Alec want youtodie, trying to be Super CEO by day and arsonist by night.”
He looks at me, and all I can see is indifference. I’ve seen impatience on his face several times over the last few days, irritation, too, which cuts deep. Now, he’s eyeing me like he can’t understand why I’m talking and wasting his time.
“You don’t know what they want, because you don’t really know them, do you?” He steps closer and I bump into the door. “You don’t know anything about what is happening here.”
Wallace isn’t yelling, he doesn’t even look particularly angry. More like I’m a nuisance, which is somehow so much worse.
“I could help if you’d let me-”
“Yourjob, Scarlett, is to stay here, look pretty and keep quiet. Hearing you whine every time I come home is making you yet one more problem I have to deal with.”
It would have hurt less if he’d slapped me.
Chapter Thirty-Three
In which the gap grows wider.
Scarlett…
Wallace doesn’t come home at all for three days.
After his cruel little speech about me turning into a “problem,” he left without a single look back.
Whenever something awful would happen back on Beacon Hill, I’d call Morgan and she’d commiserate, or offer to wield some terrible spell on the Wicked Steps. I can’t tell her about this. Just remembering his cold expression and thosewordshe’d said makes me hot with fury, then frozen with shame.
I make Gio go out with me every day, even if it’s just to take a run in the park nearby, or go to a bougie coffeehouse. Murder Mittens always accompanies us. She’s back to being wherever I’m at, always curling around me protectively or carried in my backpack, her little head poking out, gazing haughtily at passers-by. Fortunately,Sorcha likes cats and the staff at The Clinic know better than to say a word about it.
I’m still forcing myself to go to The Clinic to keep Sorcha company. It’s not her fault that her son’s turned into a cruel stranger. This afternoon, Isobel’s in the room, too.
“Hey, nice to see you!” she says. “Mum says you’ve been coming every day, thank you.”
“I wish I could be doing something of actual substance, but…” I hold out the pink box I brought in from an insanely tasty French bakery Gio and I had found while wandering around the neighborhood.
“The bringing of desserts is always substantial,” she says, happily biting into a palmier, spraying buttery bits of puff pastry in all directions.
“I used to make these,” I say wistfully. “I love French desserts.”
"Wallace’s house has that enormous chef’s kitchen,” she says. “Why aren’t you covering every surface with flour and sugar?”
“Because his butler looks like he’s going to have a stroke if I do more than use the microwave.”
Isobel shrugs, taking another big bite. “It’s your house.”
