“The cabinet? I’m sure it wasn’t.”
“No.” She slammed it closed, emphatically. “Us—this. What if we never had to go back?”
“You shouldn’t say things like that,” Cal told her.
“I know.” Odessa gave him an enigmatic grin. “That’s why I do, Baby Cal.”
He stayed up late into the night, picking at takeout and scrolling through law firms while Odessa sampled the local flavor. “You could come with me,” she said, hovering by the door. She was wearing a flapper-like slip dress and so many bracelets that her wrists jingled like Christmas bells every time her arms moved. “It wouldn’t hurt you to have fun.”
He looked up from his phone, stretching out his long legs until he ran out of bed to stretch on and the splintery wooden frame of the twin was rubbing up against the backs of his calves. “I don’t think they’d enjoy my kind of fun.”
“That little blonde looked like she was considering it.”
“No.” A reluctant smile tugged at his lips, which he quickly worked to hide.What if it was always like this?He sat up, propping up a knee to rest his phone against, to conceal thesudden weakness in his grip. “Go terrorize the town without me.”
Her bracelets chimed in reproof as she raised her hand to flip him off. “You’re such a stick-in-the-mud.”
The silence that followed sucked at him like a drain. Despite all her bold talk, he suspected Odessa was just as troubled by their situation. It was there in how she picked up men who were drawn to her dark light like moths to combustive flame, quick to worship and eager to please, as far removed from a Cullraven patriarch as a daisy from a redwood.
She played with a different matchbook every morning as she fidgeted over her coffee, designer sunglasses covering her bloodshot eyes. They spilled out of her purse and onto the seat when she pulled out an old iPod and plugged the buds into her ears.
“Still having fun?” he asked, chuckling when she gave him the finger. The waitress set down their plates, her eyes lingering for a beat longer than was strictly polite.
“Why don’tyoulook like hot shit?”
“Because I sleep at night.”
Odessa snorted and pulled a flask out of her jacket pocket, tipping it into her coffee. She knew their parents would not approve of her behavior. Cullraven women did not dally. They remained in the background: part of the hunt, yes, but never the victor who brought the trophy home.
“You used to know how to have a good time,” she grumbled, stirring a heaping tablespoon of sugar into her mug.
“Yes, and how did that turn out for me?” His voice came out sharper than he’d wanted, the emotions too revealing.
She gave him a grim, knowing smile that made her mouth look bruised where the prior night’s lipstick had caked into her dry lips. “You were too serious. That’s your problem, Baby Cal. You’re a romantic. If you let yourself go once in a while, at least then you wouldn’t mope around with that hangdog face all the time. Can’t we stop for milkshakes after this? I’m hungover.”
“We’re not stopping again until we make it through the mountains.”
She sulked as he paid, while their waitress hovered over the bill. A romantic, he thought. Why? Because he believed love was final? So was a death sentence.
His thoughts were dark as the clouds cresting along the slopes of the Sierras, some of them still capped with snow. As they rounded the sharp curves of iron-rich granite, Cal felt the piercing lance of something too dark to be nostalgia but achingly familiar nonetheless.
They were home.
Ben’s car was in the drive. He and his wife apparently had returned prematurely. Odessa rolled her eyes at it, and at him, before making her way to the staircase. “I’m taking a bath, someone else can get my shit,” she announced to no one, leaving her luggage in a pile for the staff to deal with.
His brother, drawn by the commotion, leaned against the doorway. “So,” he said, looking him up and down derisively. “The prodigal children return.”
“And so does my father’s golden calf.” Cal sneered. “How was your honeymoon? Fruitful and multiplicitous? Or sterile and pointlessly erect, much like your preferred style of architecture?”
Ben twitched. “I suggest you dress for dinner and concern yourself with your own affairs.”
That was far from reassuring. If there was one thing his brother liked to do, it was gloat. Ben’s coldness and premature return did indeed suggest something was wrong.
His suspicions were confirmed at dinner that night. Noelle was a shadow of her former glory, with fresh lines on her pretty face. Gone was the vivacious woman he remembered from the wedding, who had looked to Ben for his approval; in her stead was a staid trophy not unlike the antique stuffed sparrow that decorated its bureau beneath its pitted glass dome.
Like a hothouse flower, she had been quick to wither in these harshly mountainous climes. Cal had no doubt the townsfolk had given her a cold reception, but that would pale in comparison to the fate that awaited her in this house if she was failing to please Ben.
But he shook off the thought. That was none of his business. She was Ben’s sparrow, not his.
