by Hart, Callie
I lean my arm on the door, grinning at him. “Hey, Cal. What’s up?”
I’ve known Calvin since I was five years old. He was there when my grandparents died. My mother’s parents. He was the one who consoled me when I skinned my knees. He was the one who used to sneak me cookies after dinner when I was sent to bed without dessert for not finishing my meals.
A light goes on in his eyes when he notices Elodie sitting next to me in the passenger seat. “Ah! A guest? Do my eyes deceive me?”
“All right, all right. No need to lay it on so thick. I’ve brought a guest home with me. Calvin, this is Elodie. Elodie, this is Calvin. Don’t make a fuss. Where are they?”
“Your father hasn’t arrived yet. Mrs. Jacobi’s with her book club in the library.”
I cringe, reeling away from that title. Calvin’s been an integral part of this family for a very long time, but at the end of the day he’s still the hired help. He can’t call my father’s bitch of a wife Patricia so he uses the title that used to belong to my mother. And I fucking hate it. “Don’t tell her I’m home, okay?”
He nods. “I’ll put the car in the garage for you.”
“Thanks, man.” I turn to Elodie, about to ask her if she’s got her bag, but the stunned look on her face stops me in my tracks.
“Home?” she hisses. “You brought me home?”
Oh god. She looks like she’s about to have a heart attack. “It’s not a big deal. It’s just a building. With a lot of fancy rooms inside.”
Her face blanches of all color. “Wren. You told me to bring a bikini and some fucking lingerie. You didn’t tell me to bring nice, respectable clothes that would be suitable for your parents.”
Calvin gives me a look that says it all: you’re in for it now. “Leave the keys. I’ll give you guys some time to gather your stuff and head inside,” he says, his smile stretching from ear to ear. “It’s very nice to meet you, Miss Elodie.”
“Likewise, Calvin,” she replies in a very high-pitched voice.
I get out of the Mustang and walk around the other side, opening her door for her. “Get out of the car, Elodie.”
She glares at me balefully, crossing her arms over her chest. “Are you insane? Have you lost your fucking mind?”
“Better not curse so much in front of my father. He’s a republican. And a Christian.”
She throws her head back, closing her eyes and pulling a face that looks worse than pained. “Wren! This is not—this isn’t—”
“Romantic? It really isn’t. But there are things here I wanted to show you,” I tell her.
“I thought you always told the truth,” she says accusingly.
I lift both eyebrows, shrugging. “When did I lie?”
“When you didn’t tell me we’d be coming here!”
I laugh, even though I know it’s going to annoy the shit out of her. “Come on, Little E. That wasn’t a lie. That was an omission of the facts. Now please get out of the car before I have to come in there and get you.”
She knows I’ll do it. I put her in there, for crying out loud. I’ll just as easily carry her out again, kicking and screaming if I have to. Sulking rather dramatically, she gets out of the car, shooting a look my way that would flay any other mere mortal alive. I’m used to her emotional squalls, though. They last all of five minutes and then they’re over again. “This is really unfair,” she groans. “You’re supposed to give people warning, so they can mentally prepare for this kind of stuff. And I really didn’t bring anything to wear.”
“Nothing?”
“Not unless you think a couple of lace thongs and some high heels would be appropriate dinner attire?”
“You won’t find me complaining.” Jesus, my dick’s getting hard just fucking thinking about it.
“Asshole!” she wails. “Help me! This is going to be a disaster!”
I can only keep the joking around for so long. Seeing her this worked up has something inside me pulling taut like a bowstring until I feel like I can’t breathe around the wretchedness of it. I’m such a fucking joke. Once upon a time, I thought I wanted to hurt this girl. It’s karma that it hurts me more than I can bear to see her in distress. I pin her against the side of the car, cupping her face in my hands, brushing her hair back behind her ears. “Calm, E. It’s okay. I wouldn’t throw you under the bus. I ordered a few items online for you and had them sent ahead. Everything you could need is already inside, waiting for you.”
Her panic fades, turning rapidly into annoyance. She slaps my arm. “Cruel, Wren Jacobi! You should have led with that!”
“I’m sorry! I’m—Jesus, stop hitting me, I’m sorry!”
She eventually does stop hitting me, long enough for me to kiss her. She’s so fucking small in my arms. She melts into me, grumbling half-heartedly as she kisses me back.
“Come on. Seriously. We need to get inside before my step-mother sees us. I’m really not kidding.”
Elodie reads the genuine warning in my eyes and relents. “All right, then. Fine. Lead the way. I suppose other people have visited here and made it out alive, right?”
All I can do is laugh. She has no idea what she’s in for.
* * *
Monmouth House was built in 1878 by a wealthy oil tycoon by the name of Adar Jacobi. He was the first and only Jewish man (as far as the State records of Texas will attest) to ever strike a significant reservoir and make his fortune. He married an English woman by the name of Eleanor Fairfax Monmouth and built the house in her honor, giving it her family name. When Elodie steps into the sprawling foyer for the first time, I see the place through her eyes and the entire thing feels far too pretentious for words.
The white marble with grey and gold veins snaking through it underfoot speaks of just how much money went into building this place. The high ceilings, dotted with elaborate, glimmering chandeliers that refract the sunshine pouring in through the arched fifteen-foot high windows at the top of the staircase, scattering rainbows all over the walls. Everywhere you look, there are austere, foreboding oils of my dark-haired ancestors scowling disapprovingly down at us with judgment in their eyes. Elodie takes in the lavish decor, the opulent rugs, and the sumptuous furnishings with a level of horrified awe that makes me wonder if this wasn’t a huge mistake after all.
I am not this. I’ve been very careful to be something entirely removed from this disgusting show of wealth. I wear my clothes until they literally fall apart, and then I wear them some more just to be fucking difficult. I reject any and all suggestion of a haircut until I’m forced to take matters (and a pair of scissors) into my own hands, hacking at my hair with a practiced level of disorder that drives my father to drink.
Mercy, with her outrageously expensive clothes and her perfectly manicured everything, fits in here. Even those equipped with a feeble imagination can see that I really fucking don’t. I feel so far removed from this place that entering through the door is like cracking open the pages of a book you read a long time ago. Everything's familiar, and it feels like the story scribbled out on the pages feel like they happened to you, but it's so distant, so remote that you know it isn't really your story.
I didn't really fall down the steps there and almost bite clean through my lip when I was nine. That was some other kid. And there? I didn't stand over there, with my ear pressed to the heavy walnut door to the formal dining room, listening to my father fucking some young girl who just appeared out of the blue and stayed at the house for three weeks when I was twelve. It doesn't matter that I can't remember what her name was. Or that Patricia was three rooms over when my father was eating some girl's pussy on the grand twenty-person antique banquet table. Nope. None of it matters because that wasn't my life. That happened in another plane of existence, to another Wren, before Riot House, and Wolf Hall. Before Elodie.
I refrain from kicking my shoes off. Patricia will have a conniption when she sees me tramping through the house with outside footwear on my feet, which is the sole reason why I leave
them on. Elodie isn't a shit like me. She slides out of her Doc Martens, and Mariposa appears, as if the very existence of a pair of unattended shoes in the entryway created a portal through time and space, dragging her here to attend to the matter before polite society should notice such vulgarity. I have total faith that long after she dies, my old nursemaid will spontaneously return from the afterlife to make sure that correct etiquette is observed at all times within the walls of Monmouth House.
“Master Wren,” she says pointedly, eyeing my feet. Unlike Calvin, Mariposa's less happy to see me. She holds a grudge like no one else. She's still pissed about the slugs I put in her underwear drawer when I was seven. By the time she's gotten over that and worked her way through all the other shitty things I've done to her, she and I will have been dead three lifetimes over. “They just had the carpets steamed,” she fumes. In her late seventies, she's so stooped and hunched over now that her line of sight is always locked onto people's feet; no wonder she's so good at keeping track of their footwear.
“And I'm sure they'll have them cleaned again next month, too. Even though it's completely unnecessary. Where's Pickaxe?”
Her mouth scrunches into a sour grimace. Her eyes are sharp as flint. “Dead.”
“What do you mean, dead?”
“I mean dead. Found him bringin' up blood in the stables. Ate the poison set out for the rats back in January. Your father shot him. Put him out of his misery.”
I look away, staring up at the sky out of the windows at the top of the stairs, trying to work my way around the tempest of emotion that's spinning around the inside of my head. Everything's moving so fast. My thoughts are so blurred; I can't make sense of what I've just learned.
A warm hand takes mine. “Pickaxe?” Elodie whispers in question.
“Doesn't matter,” I say, swallowing down the hard knot in my throat. “Let's go.”
“Master Wren, your shoes!”
“Get fucked, Mariposa.”
“Dios Mio.” She crosses herself when I walk past like I'm the very devil himself. My movements are wooden and mechanical as I climb the stairs. Elodie follows after me silently, still holding onto my hand, refusing to let go. I walk down the hall, past Mercy's wing of the house, past the left-hand turn that leads to the library, my father's office, and the separate rooms where he and Patricia sleep. At the very end of the hall, I open the door, recessed out of sight in its own little alcove that leads up to what used to be the servants' quarters. This stairway is nothing like the one we just came up; it's narrow and tight, barely wide enough to fit a man's shoulders. It's also so dark that anyone who isn't as familiar with the uneven steps as I am must place their hand against the rough stucco to brace themselves to avoid tripping on the wobbly boards.
“Jesus, where are you taking me?” Elodie mutters. Her voice is soft, but it sounds harsh and loud, bouncing around the narrow space.
“Not much further,” I tell her. “You'll see soon enough.”
I turn the handle on the door at the top of the stairs. And it doesn't fucking open. “What the fuck?”
“What’s wrong?”
I squeeze Elodie's hand, then let go of her. With both hands, I feel the weighty, cold metal of a padlock above the doorknob—a padlock that wasn't there before. “That motherfucker,” I snarl.
“Wren, seriously. What's going on. I may not have mentioned this before, but I'm kinda claustrophobic.”
Ahh, fuck. How have I been this stupid? I know this about her. She might not have shared the information with me, but it makes complete sense, given what I’ve read about her. This isn't the kind of place to be hanging around if you're afraid of tight spaces. Grimly, I tug on the lock to see how solid it is. And it's really fucking solid. “My old man,” I say, sighing. “He's had Calvin put a lock on the door. And I don't have enough room to put my shoulder into it. We'll have to go back down so I can find a fucking screwdriver.”
“Or...” Elodie trails off. Her breath sounds a little labored like it's hitching in her chest. “Or I could just pick the lock,” she finishes.
Surprise creeps in, over the top of my anger. “You can do that? In the dark?”
“In the dark. Underwater. With my hands tied behind my back. How do you think I found my way into your bedroom when you took my phone?”
“I assumed you'd just come in through the back. We always leave the kitchen door unlocked.”
“Shit.” She laughs nervously. “That would have been nice to know back then, I guess. Here, can you...let me by?” She slides up the steps next to me, her tits brushing up against my chest, and my cock immediately stiffens. She smells like spring and sunshine and floral like the tiny little white flowers that grow all over the ancient, crumbling walls of my father’s chateaux in France.
I want to kiss her so fucking badly. My body wants far more than that but now is not the time. I press my back against the wall behind me, managing to give her just enough room to sidle by so that she's in front of me. I hear her fiddling with the lock—a light rattling, and then silence as she stoops over, her breath no longer labored; it evens out, into long, steady and even pulls at the air, as she focuses on her work. She's only been working over the thing for a couple of seconds when I hear the metallic snap and a loud clang as the padlock drops to the top step.
She opens the door and walks through it, into the light corridor ahead. Her cheeks flame when she turns and sees the expression on my face. “What? What's that look for?”
I'm reeling from the fact that she managed to get that lock to open. Fucking reeling. I know precisely why she learned that skill, and I know precisely why she would carry the tools required to pick a lock with her at all times. It’s just still pretty fucking amazing. “You’re just full of surprises, Little E,” I tell her, winking playfully. She still hasn’t told me anything about her past in Tel Aviv. I’ve been waiting patiently for her to open up about it, but I’m not gonna fucking push her.
“You can learn all kinds of things on YouTube,” she says. “I watched a thousand videos, learning how to do that in as many situations as possible.”
A cold, sickly feeling creeps up my back. I quickly brush it off, forcing a smile onto my face.
“Why would your father lock that door? Seems like a weird thing to do,” she says, smoothly changing the subject. Scanning the hallway with the little porthole windows along its north-facing side, and the four doors leading off from it on the other side, she frowns deeply.
“This was my mother's place,” I say. “She would come up here to paint and read. She used to sleep up here sometimes. I've claimed it as my space now, but my father doesn't like it. He says it upsets his new wife. It has nothing to do with Patty, though. He just hates that I'd rather spend my time up here with the ghosts of my dead mother instead of suffering downstairs with the rest of them in the land of the living. He threatens to clear everything out of here and brick up the door sometimes.”
“Why hasn't he?”
“Because he knows I'd burn the entire fucking house down if he did.”
She just nods, accepting this as something I would do. A truth about me that makes sense. “Are we gonna get in trouble for coming up here, then? Is he gonna be angry?”
“He's always angry. Don't worry, though. He won't be angry with you. You're a guest. When you meet him, he'll be sweet and interested, and charming, and you'll wonder how I could possibly hate him so much. You'll take his side and think I'm completely unreasonable when I don't fall down and worship at the fucker's feet.”
She blinks at me owlishly. She's so fucking beautiful that the sight of her feels like a punch to the gut. Again, she shakes her head. “No, I won't. I know all about sociopathic fathers, Wren. I've been dealing with one my entire life. I know the front they put on for the rest of the world. I’ll always see through that charade, no matter how many other people it might fool. Come on.” She smiles gently. “Why don't you show me around? Tell me about your mom. I want to know all about her.”
The paintings are calmer than mine. The blues, blacks, greys, and whites are softer, so much subtler and more intentional than mine, too. Elodie paces the floorboards of my mother's studio, studying each canvas in turn, pulling back the dust cloths and letting the heavy sheets sigh to the floor. Her inquisitive eyes pick over the brushstrokes, her fingertips poised just above the surface of the oil paint, as if she's reaching inside the painting in her mind, stroking them over the subject matter with a reverence that makes my chest pull tight.
I'm far more comfortable painting my stormy landscapes. My mother painted people. She loved capturing the emotion and the intelligence in someone's eyes, and she was damn good at it, too. “She was so talented,” Elodie breathes. “Who's this?” She gestures to the painting in front of her, of the man with the staunch expression and the curious light in his eyes. My jaw's so clenched that it takes real effort to work my teeth apart.
“My father. A couple of years before she found out she was pregnant. Amazing how twenty years can change someone.”
She steps closer, investigating the lines of the man my mother captured with her art. She was generous with him. Made him look less stern than he was, even then. I've never seen the softness she depicted in his face. There's a glimmer of love in the bastard’s eyes that's been missing my entire life.
“She was far better than I'll ever be,” I say.
Elodie shakes her head. “That's not true. You're just as good, Wren. Just different. You use the same colors that she used. The tone isn't the same, though.”
I grunt at that. “Yeah. She was optimistic. I've never had that in me.”
Elodie's eyes convey many things as she looks back at me over her shoulder. Sadness. Regret. Kindness. The smallest ounce of pity that makes me want to claw my way out of my skin. I suddenly don't want to be in here anymore. As if she can feel me withdrawing, Elodie steps away from the paintings, coming to me, taking my hands in hers.
