Eyes Like the Night

by Emma Accola

  My insides were twisting in knots. Micah was pulling the curtain away from the part of me that I always kept hidden. “It’s a stretch to go from picking locks to picking pockets.”

  “Sweetheart, you aren’t the only smart person in the room.”

  I gave Micah a scolding look. “You presume too much.”

  “I presume exactly the right amount. Now show me what you took from Harry Spice last night in front of the restaurant.”

  “Who says I took anything from Harry Spice?”

  Micah gave me a half-mocking, half-forced smile. “I’m saying it because I’ll never underestimate what lies beneath the face of an angel. You’ve always been able to hide all you are under your pretty face—except to me.”

  “Then you must think I’m able to commit criminal acts.”

  “What I think is that you have the courage and resolve to do what you believe you have to do.” Micah pulled me in closer. When I tried to shrink away, he kissed the top of my head. His voice fell to a murmur. “I’m not scared of that part of you. With me you’ll never have to twist yourself into someone that you think I want you to be. Everything you are at this moment is what I want.” He picked up my hand and kissed the finger that held my engagement ring. “Here’s your proof.”

  My left hand curled into a fist.

  “It’s okay,” Micah whispered as he slowly loosened my fingers and then kissed my palm. “Before you met me, you believed that the only person you could turn to was the one who was hurting you. Everything is different now. You can trust me to accept all that you are.”

  But could I? So much of who I was had been wrong before, not only with Leonardo but with my family. My eyes had always noted the pursed lips, the averted glances, the jerking chins. I hated how the bruised part of me shouted its disbelief. Taking Micah at his word would be so wonderful because it took so much energy not to be genuine.

  Seeing my hesitation, Micah laid his palms on the sides of my face. “I’m not interested in turning you inside out, but I am a little curious how and why you learned to pick pockets.”

  My face tingled as it began to pale. The fact that he had figured out my odd and criminal skill wasn’t the part that scared me. My head jerked from Micah’s grasp as I fought to keep from crumbling in anguish. There was a reason that I could pick pockets, and it wasn’t a good one. Micah clutched my hands.

  “Gracie, you’re shaking. It’s not a big deal.”

  The anxious concern on his face almost made me come undone. “Ask me,” I whispered. “Make it one of your twenty questions.”

  “What? Why?” he asked, growing alarmed.

  “So that I have to tell you.”

  “For the love of—”

  “Do it.”

  He looked incredulous and then exhaled sharply. “All right. Fine. Can you pick pockets?”

  “Yes.” My breath caught in my throat. I plucked up my courage. “I learned because I wanted to steal from one person and only one person, my brother. I stole his drugs and paraphernalia in the foolish hope it would help keep him clean and sober. He never figured that out about me because he was usually too wasted to know when he’d been robbed. The man who taught me was one of the managers at the winery who’d learned the skill in his misspent youth. He asked me why I wanted to know how to pick pockets. When I told him, he said that no one can save an addict and it never counts when you do the wrong thing for the right reasons. That man was right. I’m an idiot.”

  Micah didn’t waver. “You’ve never been an idiot.”

  When I risked a look at him, I expected to see disgust or triumphant condescension. My family had always treated mistakes harshly, but Micah’s soft eyes showed only warmth as he pulled me closer. I stayed in the shelter of his arms, drawing strength so that I might reveal what would come next. His heart beat against my ear. The voices, colors, and music from the television swirled together creating a soothing hum and glow. Finally, when I felt able to handle whatever would come next, I pulled myself from the warm cocoon of the afghan to get my purse from the kitchen. I took out a small item and carried it back to the den. I held it up in trembling fingers. “Harry Spice had this on him.”

  Micah became stern. “You didn’t show me that before.”

  “We weren’t engaged before,” I said softly. Then I waited to see what would come next.

  Where my face was pale, now it became flushed. The light in the room seemed to dim. My hand took his. Without breaking eye contact, I transferred a little item, cold and carved, from my palm to his.

  “You’re going to have to learn to trust me.”

  “I know.”

  He gave me a scolding glance before turning his eyes to the item. “It’s a jade dragon,” he said softly, noting the intricate detail. “What else?”

  I handed over a piece of paper. “That little charm was wrapped inside this.”

  Micah unfolded the paper and read it. “It spells out Caleb in capital letters.”

  “Is that Caleb’s handwriting?”

  Micah shook his head. “No, the letters are way too boxy. And this dragon charm didn’t belong to him. He never wore jewelry because he had a sensitivity to metal and would get rashes. Where is the chain it was on?”

  “There wasn’t one. It was just the charm. I thought it could be something that Harry Spice took off one of his victims as a sort of trophy.” I had pondered what it meant. “He may have planned to plant it in your car to frame you.”

  Micah shook his head. “He’s too smart for that. There were too many witnesses who saw the car out of my control. This dragon could be a red herring, you know, something he wanted you to find.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe, though how could he be sure I’d pick his pocket? It’s more likely that there was something in your car that he wanted.”

  “If there was, he would have gotten it a long time ago. Cars aren’t secure in the least. They’re no better than pockets or email.”

  “Or cell phones.”

  Micah continued to look at the dragon charm, turning it over and around to examine the detail. Suddenly the implication of my words sank in. He stiffened and turned to me. “You have questions.”

  “Only one.”

  “You’ve been in my phone.”

  “Her name is Sylvie.”

  Micah jerked his head back as if he had been struck. “How did you get the passcode?”

  “Trial and error mixed with a little guess work.”

  Micah wasn’t mollified. “While you were at it, did you hack my email and social media sites too?”

  “No more than you did to mine.” I became curt. “Did Sludge help you?”

  “He didn’t need to. I worked your password out on my own. Once I got into your computer, all your sites opened up on their own. That was handy.”

  Never did I expect anyone to get past the password on the computer. I fought a grudging admiration. “How did you figure out my computer’s password? It was completely random.”

  “Not that random for someone you live with.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Your fingers are fast on a keyboard, but I counted the key strikes and managed to catch the numeral four and the capital letter I. For I. That narrowed it down to something personal, something close to your heart. You’re not the warm and fuzzy type, but you do have that little framed poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnet 43, on your dresser. On a hunch, I tried all the phrases in that sonnet that started with the word I. On my fourth try, 4Ilovetheefreely unlocked your computer.”

  I couldn’t unleash any outrage on him, because at this moment, neither of us had the high ground. “I’m impressed.”

  “Since we’re being so honest with each other, how did you figure out the passcode to my phone?” Micah asked.

  “I watched your finger and noticed the pattern. I saw that you had spelled your brother’s name backwards.”

  Micah cursed under his breath. “I didn’t give you enough credit.”

  “Well, I did hav
e to watch you a few times.”

  “And now you’ve gotten into my bank accounts.”

  I held his gaze and let him read my eyes. “Yup.”

  “And you’ve seen automatic payments to a property management company.”

  “Yup.” I wanted to lash out, but I held my temper because I had no standing in this man’s life to question how he spent his money. “Certain transactions drew my attention.”

  Micah’s lips thinned as he became grim. “And yet knowing about Sylvie, you’re still here.”

  I felt strangely like a shrewish wife. “Who is she?”

  Micah’s face flushed. “She was Caleb’s business, not mine.”

  And now she’s mine, I thought. “Not anymore.”

  Micah went to the wet bar, got out a glass, and poured himself a scotch. He threw it back before turning to me. “Caleb loved Sylvie dearly. She’s our half-sister.”

  I gaped in shock. Micah picked up his phone and scrolled through it before handing it to me. I had already seen this image of Sylvie, and it had me quivering with jealousy. She was slender, striking, her long hair flowing behind her like liquid copper. She wore a pink tee shirt screen printed with flowers. Her faded jeans sported many holes up her thighs. Long earrings tangled in her hair. She wore bright red sandals on her feet and crimson lipstick on her mouth. Even though I couldn’t see her eyes because of large, dark sunglasses, I could tell that she was lovely. A ridiculous jealousy gnawed at my heart as I handed Micah’s phone back to him.

  Micah poured himself another drink. “For a long time, I thought that Sylvie was just another of his smoking, burning hot women and he let me think that. And they were in love, just not in the way I had thought.” Micah looked at the picture in his phone. “Sylvie kept her true identity secret from me because Caleb had asked her to. He wasn’t willing to tell me the identity of our father yet.”

  I wallowed in my relief that the beautiful Sylvie wasn’t Micah’s lover. “All right. You have a half-sister. What does she do?”

  “She owns a bakery that makes specialty cakes, pastries, and artisanal breads. Her wedding cakes are works of art and her breads are sublime. She’s the real deal. And she’s the only close family I have left.”

  “And she told you the identity of your father?”

  “No, Caleb did. He left a letter for me with his will where he had literally used a stamp and sealing wax on the envelope, like from back in the days of Henry the Eighth. In his letter he explained who Sylvie was, not his lover as I had thought, but our half-sister. I found her a couple weeks after his death kneeling at his grave, her face all blotchy because she’d been crying for a long time.”

  “Ah,” I said and put my arms around Micah. “My darling, I understand now.”

  He gave me a small smile. “What was that I saw from you a few minutes ago? That wasn’t jealousy, was it? It was kind of attractive.”

  “Since we’re engaged, I didn’t want a bunch of your old conquests hanging around.”

  “Then you’re in luck, because my family is weird, but not that weird.”

  I put my hands on his face. “Good, since we’re legally bound now.”

  Micah took my hands. “Caleb and I were secret babies and you’ve got some mad skills that are best left secret. What kind of pair are we?”

  “Let’s work that out tomorrow.”

  “Do you have something on your mind?”

  “You are my fiancé. I think I legally can make demands.”

  “Then start making them,” Micah said, reading the invitation in my eyes.

  *

  As soon as I sat down at Gary’s desk on Monday, the Dean of English summoned me to his office. He couldn’t look me in the face as he told me that I was being assigned a new office, at Gary Kozlowski’s request, and he thought I knew why. I had already packed up what little I had brought with me. The dean led me to my new office, this one far away from the English Department office and down a narrow hallway into an area generally inhabited by temporary and new faculty. This office’s window offered a view of the other office windows across a flat roof. My new desk, with its chipped green paint, appeared to be a Cold War relic. The chair had plastic arms, a hard back, and a lumpy, mustard-colored seat cushion. A tall metal gray bookcase with adjustable shelves leaned against the wall next to a two-drawer file cabinet that showed rust in the places where the enamel had worn off. Except for the computer and phone, everything about this office was mid-century. The newly painted walls were a dirty white in an eggshell finish.

  “Here’s your computer and phone, both hooked to the network and ready to go.” The dean cleared his throat. “I’ve put the word out that you didn’t move in here right away because you were waiting for the painters to come in and the fumes to recede.”

  Clearly the dean was trying to be kind, but I’d been around faculty long enough to know that someone like Gary, who had deep and old roots in this department, would have lots of confidants. Within days all of them would know that Gary kicked me out for trying to steal his identity.

  I set the box down on the plastic desktop. “The new paint looks good.”

  The dean seemed relieved that I had brought up a safe topic. “Yes, yes, it does. A few pictures on the walls, and this will be nice. This color looks good with anything.”

  He seemed strangely interested in the paint. “There’s something else, isn’t there?” I asked.

  The dean shifted his weight awkwardly. “Just so you know, the advisor for the school newspaper called me last night. He wanted me to know that one of his students has written a rather unflattering account of you that will headline in the school paper when it comes out on Wednesday.”

  I allowed myself a small frown so he wouldn’t know that I already knew all about this. “That student reporter came to my office. Her name is Elina. She seemed quite determined to have her story.”

  “Nothing makes student journalists happier than exposing some perceived wrongdoing by faculty or administration. The students take their freedom of the press quite seriously.”

  “As they should.”

  The dean’s expression softened and he gave a long sigh. “Look, Gracie, I really don’t know what to say to you.”

  I grew prickly. “It would be disturbing if that article contains confidential information that shouldn’t have gone beyond your office.”

  He took the hint. “Yes, very disturbing.” The dean wiped his hand over his forehead. “For what it’s worth, I’ve never seen a career come apart on so many levels as yours has—I mean—I mean—with all the allegations. You’re taking steps to clear up the questions?”

  I heard the edge on his words. Since he was the one who made the final decision on hiring me, he was likely catching some flak. “Everything will be cleared up soon. Very soon.”

  The dean looked pained. “I have become aware of rumors about you and Micah Ekstrand.”

  “What sort of rumors?” I asked, pretending surprise.

  The dean lifted one shoulder in an offhand way. “That there’s something beyond a professional relationship between the two of you.”

  I held up my left hand, which now sported the large diamond in a white gold setting. “Micah is my fiancé.”

  Thunderstruck, the dean gaped. “But you weren’t wearing that ring before.”

  “This is a family heirloom that belonged to Micah’s great-grandmother. Micah and I found it among his late brother’s things just this weekend.”

  “I was on your hiring committee, and I don’t recall seeing anything about Micah on your paperwork,” he said sharply. “The application specifically asks whether you’re related to another employee.”

  “We weren’t engaged then.” Had I lied on the application, the college would have cause to fire me immediately, and both the dean and I knew that. “Ask Micah at the next deans’ meeting. That’s tomorrow afternoon, right? You can offer your congratulations.”

  “I will,” the dean said coolly. “And congratulations to
you.”

  “Thank you.”

  The dean left me to my new office, the indistinct, cheerless, little box. The chair squeaked terribly when I sat down, as if my weight were a torture. Across the roof I could see that the other faculty members had dressed their office windows with curtains, plants, and decals on the glass. Theirs seemed warm and cheery while mine seemed the most Spartan of cells. Sighing, I put my files in the cabinet and my textbooks on the shelves. I relaxed for a few minutes with my feet up on the desk before I pulled out my lecture notes and got ready for class.

  By lunchtime I had taught two classes, both of which had yielded excellent discussions from the students. Nearly all had actually done the reading, always a happy surprise for a professor. The best thing for me was that the students seemed unaware of the accusations that were being cast at me. The mood of the classroom was friendly and light, with some students surreptitiously sending text messages. I pretended not to notice. I thought that if they were willing to waste their time and tuition money in my class by texting, so be it. I went back to my new office to grade papers and get my lessons ready for the next day.

  My office door was open, an invitation to the other faculty. For the rest of the day, my new neighbors came to greet me. Most of them weren’t from English, so while they knew my SUV had been used to run over a student, they hadn’t heard all the rest of the gossip about me yet. All congratulated me on my engagement and the women asked for a closer look at my ring. Three of them offered their assistance for anything around campus that I might have questions about. One asked if I had a faculty mentor, another if I liked my dean. She went on to say that I was lucky the English dean had such a good reputation.

  Eventually even Tiffany came by, looking aggrieved and embarrassed for me. Clearly she’d heard all the gossip and spared asking me why I had moved. “You’ll want to get a refrigerator in here. You could set it on the file cabinet.”

  I thought wistfully of the one in Gary’s office. “Isn’t there a fridge in the staff room?”

  She nodded as she leaned in the doorway. “There is, but don’t use it if it will bother you to have your lunch pilfered. One clerk found the chicken eaten out of her Caesar salad and another had her spaghetti eaten and the meatballs left behind. And yogurt straight up vanishes.”