She wouldn’t have even been pregnant if not for me. It was easy to say her actions were her responsibility, but I had manipulated her for the exact reason of studying how she’d react. I did have culpability.
I didn’t feel guilty or even regretful, necessarily. I simply wondered if she blamed me. Even here in this inappropriate moment, I searched to understand the nuances of human psychology.
Celia broke the silence. “I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?” Coming after my internal dialogue, her apology was particularly out of place.
She blinked several times, and I realized she was crying. “You aren’t really the father, but I feel like I need to say this to someone. So I’m telling you I’m sorry. I’m sorry I killed our baby.”
Her tears flowed in gentle streams that she wiped at with the tips of her fingers. She was silent and her body still as she grieved. I watched her, taking it in. Not completely heartless, I did notice a certain melancholy wrap around me. It was refreshing almost, to feel something other than even. Though, it appeared to be much less comfortable of an emotion for Celia. That was unfortunate.
When the crying let up, she threw a glance at me. “It was fun for a moment, wasn’t it? Pretending it was ours.”
I tilted my head as I contemplated that. Our scheme had been easy to fall into. People had been ready to believe, and that had inspired a kind of secret delight. Celia had been in California for the majority of our ruse, but in the days before she’d left, I’d recognized her own euphoria. She’d tried to hide it behind the pretense of embarrassment and guilt, but I could read her too well.
“I feel like I understand you better now, Hudson.” She waited until I’d met her eyes with a questioning brow raise. “Why you play those games. Why you played that game with me.”
My heart stilled for a beat. I had to have misunderstood her allusion. I clarified. “What game?”
She let out an exasperated sigh, throwing her head back onto her pillow. “Let’s not do that right now, Hudson. Please? Be honest with me for a minute.”
Maybe it was the circumstances surrounding us or the lingering melancholy. Or perhaps the darkness of the room. Or the lack of sleep. Or finally a chance to speak with someone who was willing to hear. More likely it was the combination of all of the above that allowed me to step onto sacred ground and bare my secrets.
In a steady low voice, I let down the first wall. “They aren’t games.”
“What are they then?” She matched the tone and timbre of my voice, as though she understood as well as I did that this moment was unusual. That this conversation was unique.
“They’re experiments.” I trained my eyes on the steady blip of her heart monitor. “I don’t…understand…people.” Blip. Blip. “What makes them feel. I experiment to understand.” Blip.
“You don’t feel things?” Blip. Her heart rate didn’t alter.
Blip. “I don’t think I do. Not the way most people do.” Blip.
“That explains a lot.”
I met her stare. “Does it?”
“Yeah. It does.” She wasn’t accusatory. Simply matter-of-fact. We were alike, in a way. She understood things about people. She understood things about me, at the very least. “You’ve done it with more than just me then?”
I nodded once slowly.
“Have you learned anything?”
“I’ve learned a lot.”
“But you still don’t feel things?” She was curious but accepting.
“I don’t.” I gripped the arms of the chair and let them go again. “I don’t think that’s something that will ever change. It’s not why I do it. If anything, the more I experiment, the less I feel. Except with you. You…I don’t know.” It wasn’t that I didn’t want to share. I just didn’t have the words. “You’re too much like family, I think. So I have…I did feel…something.”
“You don’t know what, though?”
“No.” I’d tried to figure it out so many times. “Obligation, maybe. Responsibility.”
She fiddled with the edge of her bedsheet but kept her focus on me. “But with the others, you didn’t feel anything?”
“No.”
She let go of the sheet, turned and propped her head up on one hand. “Do you ever feel anything else?”
God, we were actually doing this, then? Examining all the pieces, letting all the walls down. Might as well get comfortable. I crossed an ankle over my jean-clad knee. “Not really. Anger sometimes. Disgust.”
“You’re never happy?”
“I’m often content.” I didn’t mention that the only excitement I felt revolved around the manipulation of others. I was stripping myself in front of her, but I didn’t need to be vulgar.
“What about sorrow?”
“It’s more like disappointment.” I cleared my throat. This was the closest to sympathy she’d get from me. “Right now, I’m disappointed for you.”
Though, there had been a moment—the moment that I’d learned Celia’s baby was dead—and the disappointment had been something else. Something more intense, more intolerable. It seemed to start in the center of me, the sensation so strong it sounded in my ears. Soon it reverberated in my bones, in my skin, until every part of me had…ached.
But all it took was a straightening of my spine and a decision to not feel it anymore. And with a whoosh, it was silent. Gone. I was hardened.
It had been a unique incident. One I’d never experienced. Perhaps it warranted a relabeling for Celia’s benefit. “Very disappointed for you.”
She bit her lip as if she were fighting a fresh set of tears. “What about guilt? Or compassion? Or love?”
I shook my head.
“You don’t love your mother? Or Mirabelle?”
“That’s more complicated.” It was difficult to explain my lack of emotion to someone else when I barely understood it myself. “I have a fondness for them. I feel an affinity toward them. But that’s all.”
She took in a ragged breath, and I could only assume this revelation disturbed her.
“Don’t get me wrong,” I added, “they do mean something to me. But it hardly measures the depths that I believe others feel for people they care for.”
“Does that bother you?”
“It intrigues me. Bother me? Not really.” I was grateful for the semi-dark room. It made the honest conversation less intense. “It actually makes me strong, I think. No one has the power to hurt me.”
This idea had itched at me for a while, but had never fully formed. Now that I’d said it out loud, I sat back in the chair and soaked in the revelation. This incident had actually been the best test of the notion. This had almost hurt me. Not quite, but almost. And watching the Werners and my mother and Celia bear the pain like a terrible fever with no relief was exhausting in itself. If I’d ever thought my impassivity was a curse, I didn’t now. It was my blessing.
Accepting this didn’t change anything—didn’t change me—but perhaps it propelled my interest in studying the human psyche. It gave me a mission. Because in learning why others behaved the way they did, I discovered more of my own strength.
“Hudson.” Celia’s small voice drew me from my reverie. “Teach me, Hudson.”
I raised a questioning brow.
“Experiment with me.”
“What? Why would you want me to…?” I didn’t know how to react to the insane request. “I’m not experimenting on people I know anymore.”
“Not on me. With me.” She sat straight up. “I want to learn how you do it. Teach me.”
Understanding her real intent didn’t make the request any less strange. “No. That’s absurd.”
“Please.”
“No.” But now she’d planted the thought, and I couldn’t help but explore it. “Why?”
“Because I want to be like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like someone who doesn’t feel.” She fell back into the bed. “I don’t want to feel anymore. I said I felt num
b, but there’s worse hiding underneath that. Jagged spikes of pain. I wanted that baby, Hudson. And before that, I wanted you. Not anymore, but I did. All that’s left from all that want is hurt. I tried to hate you, and I do a little. But mostly I can’t help but admire you. Your methods are impressive. Maybe you’re an example of evolution. Maybe a lack of emotion is what it takes to move the human race to the next level. Because I think you’re right—it is your strength. And I don’t know if you were born that way or if you turned into this over time because of your fucked-up family—sorry, but it’s true—but I think I could learn that. Or at least try. What’s the harm in letting me try?”
Her voice had strengthened as she talked, and now her words echoed in the quiet room. Honestly, there was little to refute. And the possibilities her monologue had inspired…
“Okay.”
She perked up in surprise. “Okay? Really?”
My mind was already swimming with plans. I never went looking for experiments. They’d arise out of situations and relationships around me that were interesting, that I wanted to explore. As it happened, there was a newly married couple that had just moved into my parents’ building. Though they’d recently pledged their lives to each other, I couldn’t help but notice the way he eyed other women. There was a lot I wanted to study there. Celia would actually prove helpful. “After Christmas. If you’re up to it.”
“I’ll be up to it.” She was excited.
My pulse kicked up a notch. How sick was it that her enthusiasm was a mental turn-on? I stifled my adrenaline rush by adding practicality. “There will be rules. Some we’ll have to make up as we go since I’ve never worked with a partner.”
“Of course. What’s the fun of a game without rules?”
“They aren’t games.” It came out harsher than I’d intended, but it was important to me that she understood the difference. “They’re experiments. It’s science.”
“Whatever you want to call it, Hudson. It’s semantics. There’s nothing wrong with having a bit of fun with it. I know you do.”
So it didn’t matter that I hadn’t told her the games excited me. She already knew.
And Jesus, I was already referring to them as games myself. If I weren’t so looking forward to the new phase of my research, I might have been irritated.
“Maybe,” I conceded. “There is an enjoyment at correctly predicting how people will react.”
She smiled—the first sign of joy since she’d awoken in the cold, sterile room.
“What have I agreed to?” But I genuinely smiled back.
She took a deep breath. Then her expression eased into something more solemn. “Thank you, Hudson.”
“You’re welcome.” Also genuine.
We settled into a comfortable silence. My mind swirled with ideas and notions. Perhaps good really had come from all of the Celia mess. Though somewhere deep inside of me, a warning bell sounded, and while it was quiet enough to ignore, it was persistent and left me with the slightest niggle of doubt and dread.
After a moment, she chuckled. “You’re so ridiculous, you know. You’re like the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz. All the time he doesn’t think he has a heart and yet he really does.”
“An interesting comparison.” I’d always identified more with Hannibal Lecter from the famed Thomas Harris series about a psychologically curious sociopathic serial killer. Though I wasn’t a serial killer, the way the character molded and manipulated others, studying and predicting their behavior—reading him had felt like looking in a mirror. “Except I don’t really have a heart.”
Even in the dim light, I saw her roll her eyes.
I tapped a finger on the arm of the chair and considered the basis of her analysis—she saw kindness in things I’d done, I guessed. Though she may have perceived benevolence, it wasn’t sincere. “You realize, Celia, anything that appears like an act of compassion on my part is simply that—an act.”
“Why act at all? I mean, with me, for example. Why claim to be my baby’s father? Why let me bully my way into your ‘experiments?’” She used quote fingers when she said the word experiments.
There were a handful of answers I could have given, some with a bit of truth, some downright lies. The fact of the matter was that I felt obligated. It was the one emotion I owned, and as such, I owned it well. If my sense of duty was going to be the reason for most of my existence, then I’d make sure I lived up to it with all I had. I was responsible for Celia’s predicament—there was no doubt in my mind of that—and for that alone, I was obligated to her, no matter how strong the alarm of doubt in my gut.
“I see you formulating a response over there, Hudson. Don’t bother. If you aren’t going to answer honestly, don’t answer at all.” She looked up at the ceiling. “I’d prefer if you just said you didn’t know.”
So that was what I chose to say. Because it was easier. “I don’t know.”
The nurse arrived then, and I slipped out. It was near seven and I had to get home and changed before heading into work. A night with no sleep was going to make for a miserable day at Dad’s office, but worse would be a day with my mourning mother.
The nursery was on the way to the elevators, I told myself, when I found my feet heading in that direction. A lone male figure dressed in a suit and tie stood peering in the windows, and even down the hall, with his body half-turned away, I recognized him.
I didn’t say anything as I approached the windows next to him. I forced myself to look in, forced myself to gaze at the newborn babies. Forced myself to recognize that there had been a loss in this world—in my world—and there should be at least a moment of grieving.
The disappointment from earlier returned. But that was all.
For my dad, though, there was more. Tears streaked his face, and I realized I’d never seen a grown man cry, let alone my father.
Without any greeting, without looking at me directly, he asked. “Was it mine?”
Perhaps it was appropriate that he was the one in mourning. But the facts surrounding his bereavement—the too-young daughter of a friend that he’d knocked up, the wife he’d driven to drink, the secrets that required him to be there incognito in the early hours—angered me too much, overwhelming all else.
“I didn’t sleep with her,” I said, confirming his suspicions. “But that child was never yours. Don’t ever speak like it was anything but mine again.”
He closed his eyes as a new wave of pain furrowed his expression.
I left him there at the windows and headed for the elevators. Left him to struggle through his regret and guilt and sorrow and heartache—all those ridiculous emotions that made him weak.
Chapter Fifteen
After
I only have a few minutes before Alayna returns from the bathroom. I’m supposed to be waiting for her naked on the bed when she returns, and I will be. I’m already half-undressed and full-hard. But as I finish shucking my pants and briefs, my mind sifts through a vacation’s worth of thoughts at lightning speed.
This room, this place—I’m overwhelmed.
Mabel Shores holds a lifetime of memories, yet the prominent ones right now are the summer with Celia’s experiment. It taints every wonderful thing that has happened here in the Hamptons this weekend with Alayna. It buzzes in my ear as a reminder of my faults, of my flaws, and there’s very little I can do to silence it.
My father’s presence here this weekend doesn’t help. While I should be grateful that he is a counterbalance to my mother’s bitchy welcome, I don’t trust his motives with Alayna. I don’t want him to befriend her as he has. Though she would never betray me the way Celia did, though he’s never made a move on anyone I’ve known in the years since, I can’t stand the idea that he might try something with Alayna. It frightens me, and I’ve never been one to scare.
The memories haunt others too. My mother is constantly reminded, and she takes it out on Alayna. Her unwillingness to move past Celia’s miscarriage and embrace Mirabelle’s pregnancy as
her first grandchild makes me suspicious. In the back of Sophia’s mind—does she know? Does she suspect the secrets that surround Celia’s baby? Probably not, but how can she not feel that there is something off about it?
I suspect that’s why she brought it up again today, throwing it in Alayna’s face. I understand that the recollection doesn’t let my mother go—it doesn’t let me go either. But it’s no excuse for the way she hurts Alayna. The way she hurts me. It’s another new emotion that has cropped up in my repertoire in the last few days, but I’m not sure of its name. Sympathy? Compassion? It’s a pain that digs deep into my chest whenever Alayna is hurting, and I’m desperate to prevent it—not for my sake, but for hers.
And the way I had to dig myself out of that revelation with Alayna…
I’ve vowed to be as honest with her as I can despite the one lie—the huge lie—that I carry with me always. So when she asked about the baby, I told her what I could. For the first time, I wanted to tell her all of it, but I didn’t know how I could without exposing the worst parts of me. Yes, she knows of them, but she doesn’t truly know how awful I’ve been. Where does Celia’s baby’s story end, anyway? At her miscarriage? When she asked me to teach her how to be like me?
The only thing I could do was beg for Alayna to trust me. She’d given me her trust before, and I had no right to it then or now, but she gave it to me again. It’s another brick in my pack of guilt. How long can I drag this around before it weighs us both down?
And it’s not just the guilt pulling me down. There’s more—the emotion. There’s so much of it wherever Alayna’s concerned. It’s all new and intense, and it feels like a smear of colors on a painter’s palette—all of it so blurred that I can’t identify any colorful emotion for what it really is. Sometimes from the look in her eyes and the soft pressure of her lips and the way she gives and gives and gives—I wonder if she doesn’t feel it all too. I’ve told her, I’ve warned her that this can’t be real. But is she as powerless as I am in all of this?
Isn’t that just the question Celia’s putting to the test?
Hudson Page 18
