A Smile as Sweet as Poison

by Helena Maeve

  Chapter Fifteen

  “They do know we’re coming, right?” Dylan asked, for the fifth time.

  Hazel sucked her cheeks in. “You nervous?”

  “Oh, don’t mind him,” Ward scoffed from the backseat. “It’s just lack of practice. Last time someone took him home to meet their folks, he was—what, twenty?”

  Dylan reached behind him and smacked Ward’s calf. “Look who’s talking like an expert.”

  “I’ll be the first to admit that this is new territory,” Ward announced cheerily as Hazel eased them to a stop, “but what’s the worst that can happen? I drop the baby on its head? Big deal, their skulls are still soft and squishy—”

  “We’ll keep you away from the crib just in case,” Hazel promised. She patted Dylan’s thigh. “Relax. I know they’ll like you fine.”

  He nodded. “It’s Ward you’re worried about, isn’t it?”

  “You’re both crazy,” Ward swung open the backseat door and hopped onto the sidewalk. He’d been like a wound-up dynamo since Hazel had gotten the okay from Rhonda. His eagerness was as difficult to puzzle out at Dylan’s atypical dithering.

  Maybe they shouldn’t. Maybe this was too much, too soon. Maybe Hazel felt pressured.

  To that last hypothesis, she had offered a blunt certain no. Standing outside her brother’s front door now, Hazel wondered if she hadn’t been too hasty to dismiss the rest.

  Dylan slid his hand into hers. “Ready?”

  Before Hazel could reply, a shadow moved behind the tinted sidelight windows on either side of the door. The handle turned. Rhonda appeared, silhouetted in the yellow glow of the foyer light. “I thought I heard a car!”

  Hazel took a breath. Time to face the music. She squeezed Dylan’s fingers as they trailed up the flagstone path with Ward in tow.

  “Rhonda, this is—”

  “Dylan, right?” Rhonda took his hand in both of hers. “Hazel wasn’t exaggerating when she said you were handsome.”

  “Oh, then you definitely have us confused,” Ward scoffed and used the wine bottle he’d brought to carve a gap between Hazel and Dylan. “Ward.”

  “Rhonda,” she replied, smiling wide.

  Hazel wondered if it was a trick of the light or if her sister-in-law was honestly blushing.

  “And you brought wine! Oh, you shouldn’t have…”

  “Don’t get your hopes up too high. It’s only what we could find in Portageville…” Ward flashed her one of his cocksure smiles. “Besides, we wouldn’t be very good guests if we came empty-handed. Especially with your cooking. Something smells good.”

  Rhonda snapped out of the giggly trance and ushered them inside, still clutching the wine bottle to her chest as if it was another baby. She caught Hazel’s sleeve as she was locking up behind her. “Your mother’s here.”

  “What?”

  “She insisted,” Rhonda hissed back, apologetic. “Buddy must’ve said something. I tried to downplay it, but she said it’s a family thing, so.”

  Hazel’s stomach plummeted. “Dad’s here, too?”

  To her dismay, Rhonda nodded.

  “Rule number one of entering a firstborn household, boys,” she declared with brisk enthusiasm, “is washing your hands. I know it’s weird. Chalk it up to the pregnancy hormones. Hazel, that means you, too.”

  She mustered a smile, partly welcoming the chance to get her legs under her before she had to face her folks. Then she pushed past the kitchen door.

  Mrs. Whitley looked up from the salad she was meticulously tossing with two wooden spoons. Her gaze found Hazel’s, first, then swung over her shoulder to Dylan and Ward. Her expression betrayed no trace of surprise.

  “Hello. You must be my daughter’s suitors.” Unhurried, she wiped her hands on a dish rag and extended the right to Dylan. “How do you do?”

  “Mrs. Whitley,” Dylan’s voice didn’t shake.

  Hazel knew him too well to believe that meant he wasn’t freaked out. Her mother’s eyes narrowed as she scrutinized his response. A split second was enough for her to make a judgment, tack on a label and stick with it for years to come.

  “Ward Parrish, ma’am,” Ward cut in, sliding gracefully around Rhonda to plant himself under the laser-hot spotlight of Mrs. Whitley’s keen stare. “It’s a pleasure.”

  “I’m sure,” she replied, smile icy. “So nice of you to come all the way to Dunby for dinner.”

  “We’ve heard a lot about your Midwestern cooking,” Ward replied. He didn’t miss a beat. “Anything we can help with?”

  “Hand washing first!” Rhonda chirped.

  Hazel mouthed, thank you. It was merely a reprieve, but as long as they were busy crowding around the sink or joining in the effort to set the table, Hazel could almost believe they weren’t being observed. She did her best to avoid eye-contact with her mother for as long as she could.

  “They’re hot,” Rhonda murmured on kitchen threshold.

  “You sound surprised.”

  “I was thinking surfer dudes,” she confessed. “But they’re not.”

  Hazel forced her lips into a tepid smile. “Doesn’t mean they won’t get chewed up and spat out. Remind me again why I thought this was a good idea?”

  “Eternal optimism,” Rhonda suggested and patted her lightly on the shoulder.

  In the dining room, the table was already laid out when Hazel stepped through the door. Rhonda had eschewed a tablecloth and gone for embroidered place mats instead. The white of the plates and bowls stacked before each seat marked a pretty contrast with the cherry wood table. Instead of flower arrangements, she had lighted floating candles in mason jars filled with water.

  The ultimate effect was a comforting blend of old and new, tradition and personal touches. Even Mrs. Whitley would be hard-pressed to find something wrong with the arrangements.

  Not that she has the time.

  Hazel ventured into the adjacent living room with heart in her throat.

  “So, Ledwich,” her father mused. “I hear that’s hard to get into.”

  “They have very few places available,” Dylan confirmed. He had taken a seat on the couch, where he was neither lounging nor stooping, his posture as perfect as the neat lines of his suit. Like Ward, they’d dressed down for dinner by exchanging shirt and tie for shirt, no tie, and loafers instead of lace-ups.

  For once her parents’ brand of sartorial discrimination wasn’t so easy to deploy.

  “It’s not Ivy League, though, is it?” Buddy asked, balancing a whiskey-filled tumbler on a denim-clad knee.

  “Not that any of us would know the difference,” Hazel put in. She folded her arms over her chest and leaned against the wooden doorframe. “Y’all look cozy over there, but dinner’s ready.”

  “And they’re doin’ the dishes,” Rhonda called out. She had to rise up on tiptoes to kiss her husband’s lips. “I’m gonna check on the baby. Hazel, you wanna come with?”

  “I’m good here—”

  “C’mon,” Rhonda insisted, holding out a hand. “Bea ain’t gonna see much of you after you head back to LA, right?”

  Hazel dithered until she’d caught Ward’s eye. He nodded, a silent reassurance that nothing would happen while she was gone. He seemed to think that was up to him.

  Her fingers laced through Rhonda’s, Hazel trudged up the creaking stairs.

  Before Buddy had bought this house, it had belonged to one of their neighbors. Hazel had vague memories of running up and down these steps as a child. They may have been an invention. Most of the houses in Dunby had been built around the same time. The only dissimilarities were in the finishings and the skeletons buried in the foundations.

  As soon as they were in the nursery, Rhonda shut the door behind them. “I heard Malcolm came by the house last night.”

  “Where did you hear…? My mom?” The memory of Mrs. Whitley’s insistence on opening her door to Mal after Hazel said she didn’t want to see him churned in Hazel’s gut like raw onion.

  “She
was asking me all kinds of things about you two.”

  Hazel flicked up her hands. Like what?

  “If I’d seen you together at Mizzou, if I knew why you broke up… What did you say to her?”

  You don’t know. Hazel winced. “Nothing. She just can’t leave well enough alone.” A thought lanced through her, slackening the muscles in her face. “She didn’t invite him to dinner, too, did she?”

  “No, no.” Rhonda smiled with half a mouth, her features half lost to the shadows of the nursery. “She’d think it was rude. This is still my house.”

  You sure about that? After all, Mrs. Whitley had invited herself.

  Hazel peered down at the crib. “Bea might just be the quietest baby I’ve ever seen.”

  “Yeah, I knew she’d be asleep.” Rhonda shrugged. “Figured you needed a second to regroup… Ready to jump back into the frying pan?”

  What other choice did Hazel have?

  * * * *

  Dinner was a slow-paced, counter-clockwise cycling of platters and bowls, bottles traded from hand to hand and cutlery clicking softly against porcelain. Hazel spent it with a knot in her throat, waiting for the veil to be pulled off her parents’ faces and the razor-sharp fangs in their mouths exposed.

  As the meal wound down without any bloodshed over Rhonda’s spotless hardwood boards, she began to hope that might not happen at all. They made it to dessert—baked Alaska with chocolate syrup drizzled on top—before the other penny dropped.

  “That accent,” her father started with a sharp glance at Ward, “doesn’t strike me as very west coast.”

  “West coast of South Africa.”

  Tone down the sass, Hazel wanted to beg. Instead, she kicked Ward’s ankle under the table. He had no trouble hiding it when he wanted to and Hazel didn’t buy that he’d let the Afrikaans slip through if he wasn’t looking to make a point.

  “You’re a long way from home,” Mr. Whitley observed.

  “Oh, this is home. Other than the accent, I’m thoroughly red, white and blue.”

  “And you, Dylan?” Mrs. Whitley joined in, a polite smile on her lips. “Where do you hail from?”

  It wasn’t his accent that prompted the question. Hazel felt her face heat and suddenly wished she could disappear under the table.

  This was the Midwest and racial mixing was still a big deal. Sadie sometimes joked about being the only Chinese girl in a hundred mile radius. It didn’t seem so funny now.

  “Oakland,” Dylan replied, returning the smile.

  “And your parents?”

  “Likewise.” Only the tension around his eyes belied a certain degree of annoyance.

  Hazel cleared her throat. “These peas are excellent, Rhonda. I don’t know what you put in them to—”

  “So what exactly are your intentions here, gentlemen?” Mrs. Whitley asked, sitting back in her high-backed chair. Her wrists were propped against the table, claws hovering an inch or two above the polished wood. Tension radiated from her posture.

  Hazel nearly choked on her wine. “Ma, come on!”

  The glare shot her way would’ve reduced her to tears only a few years back. “Please don’t interrupt, Hazel.”

  “You can’t just ask something like that and expect an answer—”

  “Well, we were hoping to fly Hazel to St. Louis for the reunion after this,” Ward replied lightly, “but if you have other ideas, we’re all ears.”

  Mrs. Whitley narrowed her slate gray eyes. “Did I hear you say you went to some prestigious university?”

  “You may have.”

  “Then don’t play the fool, Mr. Parrish. I’d like to know what you think you’re doing stringing my daughter along after everything she’s been through,” her voice shook, fists curled tight against the table’s edge. “Is that the reason you’re pursuing her?”

  “Mom!” Hazel gasped.

  “Is what the reason?” Dylan asked.

  Silence settled over the table, as fragile as the wine glasses Rhonda had trotted out so they could enjoy Ward’s gift.

  Then Mrs. Whitley spoke up, “You haven’t told them?” The question was meant for Hazel, but her gaze had strayed down to the table. Two spots of color bloomed high on her cheeks. “Is that fair, Hazel?”

  “Maybe I just assumed that not everyone would judge me for having sex.” It wasn’t what Hazel had meant to say, but once the words were out, she couldn’t force them back into her mouth. “Look at me. Ma, look at me.”

  “Hazel, that’s enough.” Her father rarely intervened between them. Hazel had no memory of being scolded by him—ignored, yes, treated as though she was invisible for being born a girl, often. But ever since she had left college, he’d barely looked her in the eye.

  She met his eyes. “Is it so embarrassing to you? I had a boyfriend. We had sex… Rhonda and Buddy had a baby, for Christ’s sake. Do you think that was divine conception?”

  “Your brother is married,” Mr. Whitley snapped.

  “And before that, they were little angels, were they?” Hazel ran a hand over her mouth, surprised to find that she was laughing. Her fraying nerves threatened to snap. She felt as though she was walking a fine line between hysteria and clarity. She couldn’t back down. “How many times did you walk in on them, Ma? I know how many I—”

  “Damn it, Hazel.” Her father struck the table with his open palm, plates and cutlery rattling in echo. “Buddy and Rhonda didn’t flaunt what they did in everyone’s faces!”

  “And you think I did?”

  Mrs. Whitley looked up from the table at last. “What else do you call that…that pornographic filth?”

  A mistake. Hazel’s dinner rose up in her gut. She blocked out the memory of the silky-smooth twist of the cuffs around her wrists as best she could, but there were other details she couldn’t force out of her thoughts—his voice, for instance, or the tender scrape of his thumb on her cheek as he brushed away the tears.

  “Why don’t you ask Malcolm?” Hazel rasped and slid back her chair. She didn’t ask to be excused. Her eyes stung with unshed tears, but she wouldn’t give her mother the satisfaction of seeing her cry. “He knows. He was right there.”

  She made it to the porch before she doubled over against the rail, gulping down air in hopes of easing the tightness in her chest. Yet every breath made the ache worse and soon her hands and feet were numbing, too, blood rushing to her face as she struggled to remain upright.

  In vain, Hazel anchored her arm around the trellis that separated the porch from the front yard.

  “Hazel!” Dylan’s voice echoed behind her.

  She made a valiant attempt to turn. Bad idea. Her vision blurred at once, breaths coming in sharp, dizzying inhales. She thought she saw Ward rush forward to catch her as she went down, but she struck the ground all the same.

  “Out of the way,” someone said.

  “Is it asthma?” Dylan asked, increasingly frantic.

  “I didn’t know she had asthma!” Ward shouted back.

  “For God’s sake, both of you, move!”

  Through the blue-black fog steadily creeping across her vision, Hazel recognized her mother’s stern features. The light from the foyer fixture limned her blond hair in gold. “On your side,” she told Hazel briskly. “Keep it together.”

  “Should we call an ambulance?” Dylan.

  “Fuck, where’s my phone…?” Ward.

  Mrs. Whitley ignored them, taking Hazel’s hands in both of hers and helping her onto her front. “Keep it together. You’re a Whitley, Hazel. It takes more than a panic attack to put us on our backs. Are you listening to me?”

  Her whole face numb and loose blonde curls drooping into her eyes, Hazel found herself nodding.

  “Rhonda, do you have Xanax in the house?” she heard her mother ask.

  “Yeah, in the bathroom—”

  “Half a tablet. And a glass of water… You never could swallow medicine dry.”

  I remember. Hazel swallowed back a sob. If only she didn’t re
member the shouting and the stabbing in the back, if only what came after was just a bad dream.

  * * * *

  The bed Hazel woke in was not her own.

  She knew it by the smell of the pillows and the shadows on the wall. The patterned bed sheets were final tip off. This wasn’t her bedroom back in LA, or the one she’d slept in at her mother’s house. It certainly wasn’t Dylan’s. Pushing herself upright took some effort and caused far too much noise. By the time she had swung her legs over the edge of the mattress, a figure was standing in the doorway, grasping the frame with both hands.

  “You’re up.” Ward sighed, clearly relieved.

  “What time is it?”

  “Four or five.” He shrugged, releasing the wall and venturing into the room as if to help her stand.

  Hazel brushed him off. Her head was killing her. “We’re still at Rhonda’s.”

  “Your mom said it was probably wiser to let you rest here. Rhonda agreed.”

  “And you didn’t want to argue with two women?”

  Despite his smile, Ward’s gaze remained hooded with worry. “You know how spineless I can be… How’re you feeling?”

  Like I made a fool of myself in front of my extended family. Hazel rolled her shoulders as she stood from the bed, joints creaking. “We should go.”

  “In the middle of the night?”

  “We can have an awkward breakfast somewhere else.” Rhonda endured enough drama for one night. She and Buddy had their own family to think of. “Is Dylan—?”

  “Outside,” Ward said. “Said he needed a smoke.”

  Their eyes met and Hazel suddenly wished she’d stayed seated a moment longer. She couldn’t hide from the things she’d said over dinner. Smashed plates and ugly insults would’ve made less of an impact.

  In trying to hurt her parents, she had exposed the rotten, messy parts of herself to Dylan—the one thing she’d worked so hard to avoid.

  Her rubbery knees threatened to give way. “You told him?”

  Ward shook his head. “He asked me if I knew what you meant. I couldn’t lie. But I said nothing else, no details—”