by Emma Accola
I exhaled loudly and swore.
Sylvie’s glance shifted between Micah and me when she sensed how charged this subject was. Quickly she made a comment about needing a hot coffee and a shower. Not speaking, Micah and I waited for her to fill up a mug and head back upstairs.
“Look, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” Micah began in conciliatory tones. “Your brother is the person he is, not the one you want him to be. Addiction took him years before Harry Spice did.”
“I know what Glen’s addiction and Harry Spice have cost me.”
“I’m not so sure you do.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I snapped.
Micah sighed. “They didn’t take everything from you. Some of it you gave away.”
The red fog of anger filled my mind. “What are you talking about?”
He came to me and laid his hands on my shoulders. “Nothing. Forget I said that. I take it back.”
I struck his hands off of me. “No, you don’t get to take it back. Tell me what you meant or I will make it one of my twenty questions.”
“You don’t want to go there.”
“I just said I did.”
Micah looked exasperated. “Let’s do this then.”
“Let’s,” I snapped back.
Micah’s eyes became stony. “What do you want from your life? It wasn’t your relationship with Leonardo or a career as an English professor, not really. You went that route because it was easy and you got sick of your family’s condescension at the winery. You like literature, so you became an English major to cover your pain. The truth is that you have wine in your blood and all you’ve ever wanted to be was a vintner. The money you inherited could have been used to buy your own winery, but no, you put your happiness aside for the sake of the family. You can’t even blame Harry Spice or Glen for that. The fact that your family is blind to your sacrifice is your cross to bear. Now I have a question for you. What’s left in your life that you care about?”
I rounded on him like a harpy. “You’re taking my inventory now?”
“You’ve been taking mine since I met you. It’s logical, right?”
His words stunned me. I stared at Micah, waiting for him to move forward now that he had the advantage, but he didn’t. He watched me carefully as his words sank in. I had been keeping score. My life was spinning out of control and it was a comfort to be able to count whatever was countable. Something inside my heart shifted, as if a door had been propped opened. I hugged myself.
“I’m sorry.” I took a deep breath that shuddered. “I think I’ve always done that. It’s a bad habit.”
Micah could have taken this time to rub it in, but he didn’t. “Now answer my question. What do you care about now that Harry Spice has stripped your life bare? What’s left worth fighting for?”
I began shaking so hard my knees quaked. Words that would convey my love stuck in my throat like burrs. They wouldn’t make it to my lips. My entire body tightened into a knot of pain, but whether it was from the effort of keeping the words in or out, I didn’t know. Right at that minute, my heart ached for love of Micah. Nothing else in my life mattered like my relationship with him. This moment felt like a tipping point.
Micah walked up to me and put his finger under my chin, lifting up my face. “Just say what you need to say. No English major self-censoring or editing. Say the words.”
My throat moved. I opened my mouth to speak, but the words stalled as if my lungs didn’t have enough air to push them out.
Micah’s voice became gruff. “Give me the truth. If you don’t want me in your life, say so. Lies won’t end this relationship here today, but the truth can.”
“Then you’ll have to settle for lies because I don’t want us to end,” I whispered this truth.
“Say it then. Say the words like you mean it.”
“No. I can’t. Not unless you say them first.” My voice became like gravel. “I know it’s not logical.”
“To hell with logic. For once in your life do something spontaneous.”
“Logic has never let me down.”
“Nor has it built you up.” Micah shook his head as he smiled. “All right. Have it your way. I’ll go first. I love you, sweet Gracie. I’ve loved you from the first moment we met. Having you here, in my home, wearing the ring I gave you, has only made me love you more.”
My voice was breathless, as if I’d been running. “Was that easy for you to say?”
“Yes.”
Suddenly I was in his arms. My tears wet the front of his shirt. I’d never felt anything for a man that wasn’t tainted with disillusionment—until now. If putting it into words made it real, then let it be real. “I love you. I love you.”
Micah held me for a long time before he spoke again. “Why were you scared to say it?”
The words, once started, poured. “Because for me love has been a criminal kind of disappointment. How was I supposed to know what was real and would last when everything I touched crumbled into ruin? Then you come into my life, all gorgeous and smart, and I had no basis to trust that I wouldn’t get a heaping dose of heartbreak and loss with you too.”
Micah picked up my palm and kissed it. “That’s why we’re engaged, so you would have something to trust.”
I studied him, looking for a lie. Then I let my mouth speak without its usual censor. “I want to marry you because in the morning, when you just get up, and you’re all handsome and amazing, I just want to stare at you and grin like an idiot. I love three things in this world, a good book, a good wine, and you.”
His eyes were as tender as a new rose. “For an English major, you’re not very erudite.”
“Stop talking,” I whispered into his open mouth.
That early Saturday morning, as I lay my head against Micah’s chest, I wondered what I had done. I’d said all those things that would make him comfortable and warm and fuzzy so he would trust me. But he hadn’t yet seen all my ruthless. Every bit of my being cried out that I loved Micah more than he loved me, and when he saw all of what I was, he would run and my heart would be crushed like a crystal snowflake. I didn’t want to unleash my ruthless, but I had to. I had no other way of defeating Harry Spice, and I had to end him before he could sabotage my relationship with Micah. And people called me the smart one.
CHAPTER TWELVE
At lunchtime Sylvie had gone. Micah and I sat on the couch wrapped up in each other. I knew that Micah had never felt so cozy, so right with the woman he thought I was. We’d eaten croissants from Sylvie’s bakery and drunk hot chocolate. I told him I wanted four sons who looked like him. Micah laughed and said that boys were trouble. Wasn’t he proof enough of that? Neither of us mentioned Harry Spice, but I could feel his presence, a charcoal gray storm cloud overhead dimming the sunlight. This quiet reminded me of that moment of peace just before the needle pierced my skin during a blood draw. Micah and I would both bleed before this was all over. My intuition began bleating a warning that grew louder and louder as the minutes ticked by. Then, as if on cue, my phone chimed a terrible, grating sound that startled Micah and me both. I didn’t need to look at the screen to see who the text was from because that particular tone could only be from one person. Micah scowled when he saw me flinch.
“You’d better see what Harry Spice wants,” he said coldly. When he saw me hesitate, he waved his hand. “No, no, by all means, see what the psychopath wants. That’s what this weekend is for, isn’t it?”
My fingers trembled as I unlocked my phone. I pushed away from Micah and sat up straight. The message was so long that I had to scroll down many times to get to the bottom. A nasty little shiver of fear walked up my spine when I handed my phone to Micah. The bell had rung. The endgame had started.
“What is this?” Micah asked after he read it. “Why is he sending you a story about a kid and a buzz saw?”
“It’s not a story,” I said in a voice hardly louder than a whisper. “It’s a poem by Robert Frost called ‘Out, Out—.�
�� It’s a clue.”
“A psychopath sending my fiancée poetry? If not for Harry Spice, that might seem strange to me.”
I hardly heard him. I had been preparing for this. My hand slowly rose up to cover my mouth. My eyes closed as my mind began spinning.
Micah reread the poem. “Okay, so this is about a kid who lost his hand to a buzz saw while cutting firewood. Was this poem in your dissertation?”
I took my hand away from my mouth so I could answer him. “No, but most English majors know it. This poem is seen as an indictment of child labor and a commentary about the indifference of the universe to human suffering.”
“That’s uplifting. What are we supposed to get out of it?”
“Like what?” I asked, completely distracted by a growing panic inside of me.
“I’m asking you. You’re the English major and Harry Spice sent it to you. There must be a reason why you look as if you’ve seen a ghost. Do you know anyone who’s lost a limb to an accident?”
I forced myself not to visibly shudder. “I planned to teach this poem in my American literature course later this semester.”
Micah stared into my phone. “Yeah, well, he sent this to an English major for a reason. The buzz saw is obviously symbolic. Does Harry Spice want us to see him as a buzz saw who will cut us up?”
My intuition said no. “He wouldn’t be that literal. He’s subtler than that.”
“All right. Let’s go at this a different way. What would an English major know about this poem?”
“An English major would know that the title is out of Macbeth.”
Micah’s eyes moved toward the ceiling as he thought. “If I remember my Shakespeare correctly, Macbeth was about how magic and witchcraft upset the order of the universe. Macbeth was overly ambitious and got punished in the end. He was beheaded, wasn’t he? That’s a pattern. Macbeth lost his head and the boy lost his hand.”
“That’s true,” I said, though I didn’t believe my own words. No, this was more than that.
Micah opened his laptop and searched for the passage in the play. He read it aloud: “And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
I closed my eyes. My heart hammered a beat to those words.
Micah nodded as he spoke. “Both this poem and the Shakespeare quote are about death. Harry Spice means to kill someone and soon.”
I could hardly breathe because Micah had that right. I had to put him off. “He wouldn’t be that obvious. The character Macbeth thought he was invincible because he believed the witches’ prophecy. He set out to make himself king. The boy in the poem was only cutting wood. The two activities are hardly comparable.”
“There’s an analogy in there someplace,” Micah said as he shook his head. “When Shakespeare wrote Macbeth, there were witch trials going on. Harry Spice made no secret of the fact that he believed his trial and conviction were a witch hunt. Many critics see Macbeth as a character who spirals down into greater and greater evil. Harry Spice is that way. He’s gotten worse and worse as the years have passed.”
“Yes, but he’d have to recognize his own moral corruption to send a poem like this.”
“Do you think he has that kind of insight?”
I shrugged, relieved Micah had chosen this line of inquiry. “Maybe. Maybe not. I’m an English major, not a psychologist.”
Micah went back to the poem. “The saw snarls and rattles and leaps. It’s personified as if it wants to cut off the boy’s hand. It seems to be listening when the sister tells the boy that supper is ready. Clearly the boy doesn’t seem to realize how dangerous the saw could be, probably because he’s too young to understand the danger of power tools. Then, because of his youth, he isn’t able to acknowledge that his hand is gone after he’s cut it off, even though he’s holding the severed hand in his remaining hand. He asks his sister not to let the doctor cut off the already severed hand. Then the doctor puts the boy under with ether and he dies without ever waking up again.”
I began trembling. I needed to put Micah off before he figured everything out. “We have a four-hundred-year-old play and a one-hundred-year-old poem. Harry Spice is probably trying to get us to chase a red herring.”
“Maybe it’s about the dangers of farm work.”
My knees turned to jelly. “Farm work?”
“Yeah, agricultural work. Most people don’t know this, but it’s much safer being a police officer than working on a farm. Has your family’s winery ever had a fatality?”
I pretended to be puzzled. “Not in my lifetime.”
The former criminal justice professor didn’t miss the precision of my answer. “And before?” he asked dryly.
I dissembled. “Well, there was a freak accident that occurred the year before I was born. Mom and Dad never liked to talk about it, so I never got any of the details.”
“What happened?”
“Apparently one of the men in the vineyard had an accident involving some equipment and a tractor.” My voice became weak. “I heard it was gruesome.”
“What else do you remember?” Micah asked.
Before I could answer, his phone chimed with a text message. I stared at the phone, praying for something that would distract Micah. He hesitated before glancing at the screen. To my relief, he picked up the phone and read the message.
“It’s Sylvie. She wants me to come to her bakery. Last night someone tried to force a window in the back room.”
“You’d better go,” I said, hiding my relief under pretend concern.
Micah’s brow lowered as if he thought there was something menacing wiggling away, hidden just under the surface. Clearly he was uneasy. His shoulders tightened under his shirt. Sometimes I wished his senses weren’t so finely attuned. “I don’t want to leave you alone. That text message from Harry Spice might be a threat.”
I shook my head and hoped my smile was not too hardy. “Or it might not be. It could be just another of his head games. Go ahead. I’ll be fine. Some burglar may have done that to Sylvie’s window so he could break in later. We can pick this up when you get back.”
My gaze locked with Micah’s for a long time. He frowned slightly and gave me a dark look before he spoke again. “You had better not be planning something crazy in that pretty little head of yours.”
I hugged him tightly. “I’m an English professor. I always have papers to grade. Go help Sylvie. I’ll be fine.”
Though he hesitated, Micah nodded. He gave me a quick kiss, slipped on his coat, and left.
My smile evaporated the second he was out the door. I stood in the kitchen staring out the sliding glass doors at Micah’s collection of potted plants. The jade dragon pendant I’d picked from Harry Spice’s pocket, all washed clean of blood, was what Harry Spice meant for me—not Micah—only me because I would figure out its significance.
I had Sylvie to thank for allowing me to make the final connection. The logo on the box from her Evermore Bakery had provided the final clue. It featured a large silvery letter E twisting around a jade green dragon that was accented with red. Blood on the dragon. Here was the final e. When combined with the letters in the Bailey College hoodie selfies, it spelled the name Caleb. But it wasn’t the only clue those selfies provided.
While Sylvie and Micah chatted over their croissants, I pretended to be reading emails on my phone, but I was really checking Mariah Park’s social media sites. As I had guessed, Sylvie’s bakery had made Mariah Park’s high school graduation cake. That was her connection to Micah and me. Rage and grief bubbled up inside of me at how the innocent act of buying Sylvie’s lovely cake had put Mariah on Harry Spice’s radar screen.
All of this would end today. Thankfully, Sylvie’s call for Micah’s help had saved me the trouble of having to come up with a ruse to ditch him for th
e day. What I had to do next I would do on my own.
My heart hammered as I sent a text to Harry Spice: I know everything. I know what you want. Be at the coffee shop in an hour.
Harry Spice texted back immediately: Why should I want to see you?
I texted: Why don’t you come and find out, Henry Luis Especia?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The white overcast sky let a gentle light through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the coffee shop. At this hour, nearly every table was occupied by people staring into their laptops or chatting over their steaming paper cups. I took a seat at a booth without stopping to order anything. The dark scent of mocha and sweet vanilla swirled through the low rumble of voices. A moment later Harry Spice came in. He ordered a hot chocolate for me and a coffee for himself. As he waited for the barista to fill the order, he stood quietly and idly thumbed his phone. Today he looked striking in a black leather jacket, a white shirt open at the neck, and black jeans. The group of teenage girls couldn’t keep their eyes off of him. Even while engrossed in his phone, he had the superior air of someone who was used to being obeyed and taken seriously. When the barista produced the order, he gave her a smile that was both flirty and irreverent. He crossed the room, eyes on me the whole time, and slid gracefully into the booth.
“Was the poem too obvious?” he asked as he set the cups down.
“For an English major, yes.” I took the jade dragon out of my pocket and placed it on the table between us. “I imagine you want this back.”
Harry Spice picked up the pendant and rolled it between his fingers. “Thank you.”
I used the words I had carefully rehearsed on the drive over. “Your father had that jade dragon on him when he passed away. Mom told how it was on his key ring.”
“How touching that she remembered,” Harry Spice said in a voice low with menace as he put it into his coat pocket. “It was supposed to give Dad wisdom and understanding, but it didn’t seem to do him any good.”
