Cal closed his eyes and heard the door next to his click shut.
But though he waited for the second click, she did not engage the lock.
C H A P T E R
T E N
my sweet ruin
In the days following the incident in the mine and his encounter with Nadine afterwards, Cal found himself with an untapped reservoir of productivity. He answered contentious emails, made lists of suggestions most of his clients wouldn’t want to follow, and drafted various wills and trusts, losing himself in the bland labyrinth of clauses and codicils until he could very nearly fool himself into believing that he was distracted.
It was May and the festival was nearly upon them. Cal had had it blocked out on his calendar for weeks, and since he rarely took time off, one of the partners had made a joke about attending that hadn’t sounded entirely like a joke. With ice in his veins, Cal dismissed the event as a backwater obligation one step above a country jamboree, and he was gratified to see the interest in his boss’s eyes flicker and die out as he envisioned some tawdry carnival with hayrides and corndogs. “Sounds quaint,” he had said, in his usual deadpan tone, and he hadn’t mentioned going again, much to Cal’s relief.
Unwilling to remove himself from Ravensgate in a more permanent fashion, Cal endured the hellish commute to and from the office, waking up before the sun rose and returning when the windows were dark and even his father had ceased his circling. He ate most of his meals in the car, which had begun to feel like a cage, and when he did return home, all he could think about was bed—and her. The reason he was pushing himself to limits he didn’t even know he had.
She had to have noticed that he was avoiding her. Anxious as she was, he imagined she was taking it as a personal slight, thinking she had done something to upset him. She didn’t trust him, as she shouldn’t, but he suspected she did like him, probably against her own better judgement.
God help her. Now that she had stopped locking her door, he would go to her.Just to make sure she’s safe, he told himself, as if that would be enough.
It usually wasn’t.
I would come to you, little sparrow, he’d told her, and she had simply looked back at him with helpless confusion, unable to see it as the confession it was, or reconcile it with the tenderness of her body and her strange and fitful dreams.
Ben seemed pleased by his long absences, according to Odessa, who took his departure personally. She texted him all day, complaining of boredom and regaling him with the minutiae of the goings-on in his absence as if she didn’t have work to do of her own.
It’s so dull without you here, she wrote him.Ben’s stupid project got cancelled and he’s been inconsolable ever since. I’m tempted to take him out back and shoot him.
Cal resisted the urge to say what he was really thinking.Unlike you, I actually work for a living. Go irritate Ben. I’m sure there are more creative ways of putting him out of your misery.
You’re running away, was her blunt response.Which is very stupid, by the way. Your sparrow misses you. All she does is sulk around and look at your empty chair when you’re not here.
He was annoyed to realize how much that thought pleased him.Perhaps her new friend, the City Manager, will keep her company, he replied.Their relationship seems very symbiotic.
Don’t be petty, Baby Cal. Whatever you fucked up, I’m sure it can be fixed.
Who says I fucked up?he typed, nearly punching the keys.Perhaps I succeeded—too well.
Then stop boring me with your tortured lord of the manor act and finish what you started. You marked her, so claim her.Odessa’s impatience all but oozed through the screen.Otherwise, Father’s going to give her to Ben, remember?
Cal set the phone down, rather than meet her barbed riposte with one of his own.
It was annoying hearing his older sister sound nearly rational for a change. Particularly at his own expense. Their house breathed history, as he had told Nadine. At the time, he’d meant it as a warning. Now, it felt like a curse. The tenets his family upheld were exacting; they preceded them all and would likely outlast their own deaths as they fell one by one, like pillars.
Her words were convincing enough to bring him back to the house, and he was relieved when Nadine showed up to dinner, though she looked more wan than she had before he’d left. She was also wearing a belted linen dress he didn’t recognize, with a low neckline he could scarcely take his eyes off. Then he noticed Odessa’s satisfied smirk and knew who had given it to her.
The wine was strong that night. It usually was, but tonight it was going to his head. Not a lot, but enough to make him more relaxed than he should have been. Dinner had been light—potted rabbit and wild greens, all locally sourced. A stark contrast to the heavy atmosphere and Ben’s stony glare, broken only by the repeated motions of his wineglass to his mouth.
He drinks more, Odessa had told him slyly.He seems worried about something.
“It’s good to see you, Baby Cal.” He didn’t sound worried now. In their father’s absence, he had seated himself at the head of the table, like a nobleman staging a coup. The shadows of the chandelier cut scythe-like swatches of darkness over his face. In harsh, unforgiving tones that fell like the same cold concrete blocks he used in his neo-brutalist constructions, he said, “We were beginning to think we’d lost our prodigal son.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” Cal murmured.
“Nadine,” Odessa cut in. “I heard you’ve been looking at the trails. You should take Cal with you. He knows these woods better than anyone.”
Nadine looked at him in alarm. “N-no,” she said shakily, plucking at the straps of her dress in a way that he seemed tofeelbeneath the skin. “That’s okay.”
“It’s for the best. The woods are dangerous,” Ben said. “We have to set up barriers during the festival. Some of those trails are incomplete: they just disappear. It would be,” he paused briefly, meaningfully, “very easy to go missing.”
