Page 64 of The Unexpected

I stand up. The skirt of my dress tangles around my ankles, but I keep my balance. I put the glass down on the bench, careful not to spill. “I need some air,” I say, and it sounds like a lie, but it’s the closest I can get to the truth.

Lachlan moves to follow, but I hold up a hand, not looking at him. “Please. Just—give me a minute.” I walk, not run, through the columns and past the startled faces at the edges of the party. The music is back, the string quartet playing something feverish and fast, the rhythm matching my pulse.

As I pass the main bar, I see my father talking to the bishop. He glances at me, eyes narrowing, but he doesn’t move. He trusts me to handle myself.

The doors to the terrace are heavy brass, and they swing open with a sound like a tomb being sealed.

Outside, the night is cold enough to make me gasp. The wind bites through the thin dress, raising goosebumps along my bare arms and chest. I walk to the farthest edge of the terrace, past the pots of dormant greenery and the marble cherub spraying a trickle of water into the fountain. I lean over the balustrade, looking down at the empty parking lot, the city lights smeared in the wet, black glass of the pavement.

I breathe, and each inhale is a knife, but it makes me feel alive.

There is a shuffle behind me, and I brace for the sound of heels, the clack of a second set of footsteps, but there is nothing. I am alone.

I press my palms to the stone, the surface rough under my skin. I think about my mother, still inside, laughing with her younger brother, completely oblivious to what we’ve done. I think about Lachlan, sitting there, locked behind his perfect pastor’s mask, and I wonder what he’s thinking.

Mostly, though, I think about myself. About the kind of girl who would do what I’ve done. Who would keep doing it, even now. Who loves fucking her step-uncles, and being fucked by them in return.

The air is so cold that my fingers burn, but I don’t let go of the railing.

I stay there, alone in the dark, until I can hear the quartet playing the final movement, and I know the night is almost over.

And then I let go, and I walk away from the building, from the light, from everything.

Not because I am ashamed, but because I want to see how far I can fall.

22

NEGOTIATING THE FUTURE

Hunter

The cold outside the ballroom is chemical and instantaneous—like a splash of vodka to the eyes, burning away any sentimental residue left behind in the stink of lilies and the sticky gloss of fake candlelight. I come out hot on the heels of O’Toole, the doors shuddering closed behind us, and the air hammers home every ugly thing about this city: the sour smell of wet concrete, the brackish puddles that linger at the lip of every curb, the exhaust hanging over the parking lot like old sin. We don’t speak. We just scan.

I catch sight of her almost before he does—a slice of bare shoulder, the wreckage of her hair coming undone, heels digging divots into the sodden grass as she cuts behind the catering van. For a second I think she’ll make it to the street, maybe run straight out into traffic and let a city bus solve this the way the universe likes to tie off loose ends. But O’Toole’s got those long legs and he arcs wide, flanking her with all the subtlety of a military extraction. I let him run interference, following at a fast walk that’s all business, no chase.

She doesn’t scream. She just stops, her back to us, both hands pressed flat to the side of my black Mercedes as if she could tip it over with willpower alone. I move in, careful—like I’m approaching a bloodied animal, something feral and terrified that could bite down hard if you got too close too fast. She turns, and her face is a destroyed, yet beautiful: mascara cracked down both cheeks, eyes rimmed with that wet, inflamed red that only comes from the kind of sobbing you try to stifle in public. She won’t look at me. She won’t look at O’Toole, either. Her hands curl into fists, knuckles gone bone-white, and for a second I think she’s going to punch through the glass.

Lachlan is the first to speak. “Stella.” Just her name, but soft, the vowel drawn out, a lament.

She shakes her head once, violent, sending a fleck of snot off her upper lip.

“Don’t talk to me!” she rages, suddenly furious. “Either of you!”

I pop the lock on the Mercedes with a flick of the key fob. The taillights pulse in the dark like warning lights. “Get in the car, sweetheart,” I say, and my voice is calm enough to surprise even me.

She doesn’t move. For a full five-count she just stares at the door, breathing like she’s at the finish line of a marathon. Then, slow as a condemned woman, she folds into the back seat, her head bowing so low it almost touches her knees. O’Toole slides in beside her, his big hands useless in his lap, and I climb in up front, turn over the engine, and pull out of the lot.

No one says a fucking thing.

The city slides past in a greasy, slow-motion tumble. Every stoplight is a Rosary bead, ticking off the silence. I keep one eye on the rearview, where Stella is hunched against the far door, knees pulled up under her chin, the hem of her dress wrinkled and clotted with what looks like red wine or maybe just blood. O’Toole sits beside her, his clerical collar bright white, his face so locked-down that he looks sculpted out of soapstone. If you watched us drive by, you’d think we were a family headed home from a funeral—which, in a way, we are.

I take the long way, looping up past the river where the ice is already banded in dirty stripes, then cut through Northeast, letting the city’s neon blur the edges off the night. Stella doesn’t look up once. At some point, she starts to shake, just a tremor at first, then a full-body quake that rattles the seat. I want to say something. I want to stop the car, drag her out onto the median, and shake her until the feeling comes back to her face. But I don’t. Instead, I crank the heat, tune the radio to static, and drive.

We end up at O’Toole’s place—a squat, brutalist block of a building a couple blocks away from the church itself. The parking lot is empty except for a fleet of abandoned Camrys and a half-dead pickup with a busted taillight. I kill the engine, and we sit there, none of us moving, the tick of the cooling engine the only sound.

“Honestly, I have no idea what the fuck just happened,” I say. “Someone better clue me in.”

But Lachlan shoots me a warning look.