“Then why did you inhale my food?”
“I was taught to never waste.”
“Yes, because when I think of your family, ‘modesty’ and ‘penny-pinching’ are the first words that come to mind.”
“That’s adorable; I think of yours whenever someone brings up ‘healthy coping mechanisms’,” he quips, looking maddeningly pleased with himself at having the last say.
No. Absolutely not. “Bold statement from a man who short-circuits every time he gets an email from the king and then eats his body weight in slap chips.”
The line slips out before I can stop it. I wait for a flicker of wounded pride, but it never comes. Not even a twitch of irritation. His smile spreads slowly, eyes narrowing in amusement when he offers me a look I’ve only seen referenced in mythology: the way his mouth twitches at the sides, unsure whether they should be expressing mirth or fully committing to awe. Trapped in Philip’s hijacked car, I feel like the first flicker of heat in the world, and Eric watches like he knows he’s stolen something Redford tried to hide.
The edges of him blur, and he’s Prometheus, reaching for the wild, reckless thing he’s just discovered.
“You’ve been hiding this mouth the whole time?” he asks quietly. Heat licks the back of my neck, and I imagine the water dripping there sizzling. “Never would’ve guessed you’re this sarcastic.”
I make an attempt at indifference, but the heat has now crawled towards my cheeks. My mind replays the previous hour, and I realise that I have been babbling through every minute. I’ve insulted the list of cafes he Googled, gone on a tangent about lasagnaandmocked his order. Running my mouth like I’veforgotten there are cues and scripts I have to stick to. My fingers worry with the napkins, wiping grease that’s no longer there.
He notices.
Of course he notices.
“Hey.” He flicks an empty sauce container at me, and it lands in my empty takeaway box. “Don’t climb back into the coffin.”
Language flees me, and my brain manages to download only one word. “Okay.”
He doesn’t push for more, just backpedals slightly and tells me, “At least you got something out of this trip—permission to depose me.”
It takes a few seconds for the implication to land. When it does, I turn to argue, to chase his teasing, pin it down and rename it. But he’s already shovelling our dirt into the takeaway bag and climbs out. Wet asphalt and petrichor rush in, soothing lungs that momentarily forgot the taste of oxygen. He crosses to the bin right at the edge of the lot as rain, having slowed to a light mist, hits his figure. I exhale, gaze dropping to the empty cupholders in search of my phone. That’s when I notice the menu peeking out from beneath my boot, the receipt stapled to the cover.
Must’ve fallen when we fought over the last strip.
I grab it with the intention of forcing him to make a second trip to the bin because I need every opportunity to recompose myself. Something catches the light at the back of the receipt.Ink. My heartbeat slows a little at the assumption that a server scrawled her phone number on it for him to find. I tell myself I’m not bothered, and yet I rip it from the menu anyway, turning it over until the scrawl stares up at me.
It’s not numbers, though.
It’s words.
Francesca,
It’s beginning to get a little chilly in the northern woods. Do be a dear and take Gabriel a blanket. He always hated when his hands were cold.
I stare at the writing until it blurs. Casual cruelty delivers a swift punch to my sternum, reminding me who I am. The paper crumples, and I gaze towards the building as though I can peel back the walls and catch the spectre watching. The fear hibernating within my ribcage opens its eyes and refuses to turn in that direction. Fingers trembling, I wrestle with the idea of showing this to Eric, but despite what Percy says, he belongs to the world of the living, and I belong to whatever wrote this note.
And each swirly loop in the penmanship reminds me I’m not alive.
Every stroke saysnot yet.
Not while Godwyn still knows where to find me.
By the time Eric settles back into his seat and starts the car, I’ve already reburied the girl who had the nerve to think she was free.
27
PHANTOM OF DELIGHT
ERIC
After forty-two days in Sheffolk, I’ve got to concede, grudgingly, that a blank journal is an insufficient gift for somebody like Francesca. At best, the quick diversion to the cafe served as a last-ditch effort to give us both some air untainted by Redford’s happenings.
