Feather Bound

by Sarah Raughley

  Ade shrugged. “You can totally come too, if you want.”

  Rolling my eyes, I twisted around. Anton walked by a giant ice sculpture in front of which Beatrice Hoffer-Rey chatted with a few men in suits, wineglass in hand. As he passed, she touched his arm lightly with her free hand, flashing him a demure grin. He stared at her for about a second before jerking his arm away and stomping off. Huh. Stepmother and stepson were certainly “close”.

  Ade saw me staring and pointed out the man next to Beatrice: a tall guy just teetering on the edge of overweight even though he filled out his pinstripe suit well. His slicked back dirty blonde hair matched Anton’s perfectly.

  “Anton’s father,” Ade explained. “Edmund Rey.”

  An executive at Hedley Publications. With Ralph Hedley gone, Anton’s dad was poised to control the majority share of the company, as I’d learned from eavesdropping on drunken conversations.

  The majority share. That was probably why Edmund and Beatrice looked so jovial, chatting and laughing during what was supposed to be a day of sorrow and mourning. Ralph Hedley clearly had made the best of friends.

  “Oh hey, look,” Ade flicked her head towards the door, “it’s Beanpole.”

  Ericka’s scrawny lawyer husband came in through the door with two of what I was assuming were his colleagues. With pale and panicked faces, they approached Edmund and Beatrice, who excused themselves from the crowd. The more they all whispered conspiratorially, the deeper Edmund scowled. He scoped the reception hall and then hissed at the lawyers. Just like that the four started to leave.

  The door flew open before they could reach it.

  “Hyde,” I whispered.

  Ade blinked. “Um, qué?”

  I could only point as the guy who’d poured cheap booze on Hedley’s fresh grave breezed into the hall with a brigade of suits. He passed by Beatrice, Edmund, and the three lawyers with little more than a wink and a wave.

  “Hyde!” I pointed again before I lost him in the crowd.

  Ade let out an impatient sigh. “Again with the Hyde nonsense.” She flicked my ear with her finger, but I was far too focused on scanning the crowd to notice.

  He reappeared at the foot of the stage and, with a swish of his hand, plucked a wineglass out of a woman’s hands, tipping it to show his thanks. People were starting to notice – eyes looking up, conversations stalling. Not that any of them suspected that the young man climbing the stage at the front of Ralph Hedley’s funeral reception was his dead son.

  No way. I shook my head. It’s not him.

  Grabbing a pen out of his jeans he tapped the glass. “Hello? Can I get everyone’s attention please? Hello!” Whether annoyed, confused, or intrigued, the gathering finally quietened down.

  He waited. I could feel every jagged beat thudding against my ribcage. The silence only made the pounding seem louder.

  God, this was absurd. It wasn’t him. It wasn’t Hyde Hedley. It wasn’t Ralph Hedley’s son.

  “Hey, everyone,” he said. “I’m Hyde Hedley, Ralph Hedley’s son.”

  Confused whispers. Ade simply narrowed her eyes, suspicious.

  “Hyde.” Someone had hissed his name from below the stage. A man. I couldn’t see him, but he sounded exactly like I did whenever Dad was embarrassing himself in public. Didn’t seem to do any good, though.

  “Yes, yes, I know,” the young man went on. “None of you believe me. And how can you? I’ve been dead for nine years.” He shrugged. “I wouldn’t believe me either.”

  He looked as if he were fighting back a giggle. Was he drunk? He was obviously drunk. A drunk, confused boy who’d tragically stumbled into the wrong social gathering.

  One of the suits who’d flanked him as he entered the hall finally stepped onto the stage. He was a much older man with a full head of gray hair and a beer belly that made his suit stick out at an odd angle. He leaned over and whispered something to “Hyde”, who laughed in response before pulling the man firmly to his side.

  “Everyone, my father’s former legal counsel, John Roan – well, I’m sure you’re well aware already. He was quite active in the company, as I remember, before Edmund Rey fired him. He thinks I should take things slow and I agree. I just figured that since it is my father’s funeral and all, I should pay my respects. I also thought it might be a good time to let you all know that I’ll be taking over his company from this day forward.”

  Pandemonium. Shock. Whispers. I saw a few people pulling out cell phones – to do what? Take YouTube footage? Ade looked from me to Hyde and then back again, her lips parted. I gripped my chair so tightly the metal was pinching off my veins.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” yelled Edmund, his face blood-red and bloated. “Who is this kid? Someone get him out of here.”

  If I weren’t so dumbfounded, I might have wondered why Hyde was staring at Edmund – and only at Edmund – with a glint in his eye and a knife in his grin.

  “And John! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Anton’s dad raged on.

  The man Hyde had called John Roan spared Edmund a quick, particularly contemptuous glance, but didn’t answer. Instead, he whispered something else to Hyde, his face far more stern this time around.

  “All right, all right, he’s right, I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to make a scene.” His smile was devilish – too devilish for that to be true, and far too devilish for it not to be Hyde Hedley’s. “I’ll leave. Oh, but one last thing, to those of you who work for Hedley Publications: don’t worry about anything. I promise I’ll treat my workers right.”

  And with a wink he swooped back out of the hall. Edmund, Beatrice and even Anton stared wide-eyed as he passed, each of them stunned dumb. I clutched the tablecloth with a trembling hand.

  “My God, was that really Hyde?” Ade tucked her hair behind her ear, shaking her head in awe. “He got hot.”

  4

  CONFIRMED

  Nine years ago was a different time. Mom was alive, for one. And with Mom alive, Dad had tried that much harder to stay on the wagon, which meant our family had stayed together. Different times.

  Every once in a while, Mom would take me, Ade and Hyde out to Prospect Park (not Ericka – by the time she hit puberty, she couldn’t stand to be around us half the time). Hyde, the poor kid, was almost embarrassingly eager – with his medically prescribed orthopaedic footwear – to join our outings. He’d have his driver drop him off at our place and then he’d spend the whole day with us. Sometimes I’d catch him staring at us. Just staring. With that gaze of his – a warm acrylic brown – and that broad brush of a smile, he’d paint us stroke by stroke onto a big white canvas and call his art, “The Davises”.

  I wouldn’t have thought our lives were so idyllic, but then maybe they were. Neither Mom nor Dad needed the presence of cameras to spare a smile for their children.

  I remember once, while she was hanging upside down from the monkey bars at a neighbourhood park, Ade asked Hyde if he had any friends besides us – and when he went deathly quiet, she did too. She hadn’t meant for it to be a rhetorical question.

  “Ugh.”

  One in the afternoon. Monday. I dragged myself into the house and practically collapsed against the wall, feebly sweeping the front door shut with my foot. An hour of sleep last night, and then work in the morning. As far as summer jobs went, being a grocery store clerk wasn’t so bad, except today I was sleep-deprived, my back was sore and, oh yeah, I’d spent a good five minutes trying not to cry when an incredibly large man in a sweaty purple tank top yelled at me for crushing his loaves of bread underneath a case of canned tomatoes.

  Ade was sprawled on the couch, her bed’s comforter twisted around her. With her mouth half-open, she watched infomercials in a half-glazed stupor, the remote control dangling weakly in her grip. An open bag of potato chips rested on her stomach.

  “Glad to see you’ve been keeping yourself busy.” I walked past the filthy kitchen to the stairs.

  “Hey, I work on weekends.
”

  Telemarketing. Six months after dropping out of college after her first semester, Ade had been flitting between that and watching TV while on her self-proclaimed search for her “true calling”. I honestly wouldn’t have minded; if she would just stop leaving her dirty underwear in the bathroom and eating half of everything in the house, considering she never helped pay for any of the stuff she shovelled into her stomach.

  The muscles behind my shoulder twitched while I took off my awful red and acid-yellow uniform and changed into sweatpants and a tank. A sore back usually meant it was that time of the month. “Ugh.”

  “Has Casper called you yet?” Ade asked once I’d come back down, a bottle of acetaminophen in my hands.

  “If you’re referring to Hyde, then no,” I answered coolly and popped three in my mouth. “And stop it. You know it’s not him. The guy at the reception was probably just some drunk asshole playing a prank.”

  “He had Hedley’s old lawyer with him.”

  “OK, so they’re both sober assholes trying to get their hands on Hedley’s assets or something. Use your imagination.”

  “Right. Then again, you did say he knew your name.”

  True. I frowned. “So?” Folding my arms, I shifted uncomfortably on my feet. “Whose side are you on anyway?”

  “Logic.” Ade whipped off the comforter and it was infinitely annoying to find her still in her pyjamas. “Let’s be completely real here. Why would he waltz into a funeral reception and demand Dead Guy’s cash knowing that he’d have to take a DNA test to prove he is who he says he is, if he isn’t who he says he is?”

  Also true. Crap. I sat down and pulled my legs up on the couch, staring at my knees.

  “Honestly, I don’t know why this is bothering you, Dee. If my dead childhood boyfriend randomly showed up one day and he looked like that, I’d put that in the win column.” Ade shook her head. “And he could possibly end up being a millionaire? Or billionaire? Damn. Only you could turn that into a reason for angst.”

  I snatched Ade’s bag of chips and started clogging my throat in the hope that it would make all the confusing things in my head go away. Ade flipped through channels with one hand and sporadically dipped her hand into the bag with the other until–

  “Ooh! It’s your zombie boyfriend!” Ade clapped excitedly.

  I sat up straight and, without thinking, snatched back the remote and turned up the volume. It really was him. Hyde; his dark hair perfectly trimmed and his jeans and beanie traded in for an impeccably tailored suit. He had his lawyer, John Roan, next to him with a flock of other suits trailing behind. Reporters swarmed him with microphones and cameras.

  One reporter, during the one second I could concentrate on her babble, told me that they were outside the Hedley Publications building. But I couldn’t focus on anything other than the caption at the bottom of the screen.

  Breaking: Funeral Crasher Confirmed to be Ralph Hedley’s Adopted Son.

  “Wow. So I was right and you were wrong. Or, I guess you were right and I was wrong first?” Ade stuffed her face with chips.

  Both. My fingers loosened around the plastic. Ade grabbed the bag before it could topple onto the already dirty rug.

  “Up until now, Ralph Hedley’s son was believed to have died nine years ago, drowned off the coast of Brazil while on vacation,” the reporter said. My head thickened, squeezing everything inside until all I could hear was myself, crying at his funeral. It was another closed-casket like his dad’s – a tragically tiny box, ironwood, with square-cornered edges and golden rims. Except this time, the casket had been closed because they didn’t have a body to show. Ralph Hedley’s son was believed to have died. Everyone had believed it. I’d believed it. I’d cried about it. I’d had nightmares about it.

  “Dee, you all right?” I looked up to find Ade with her lips slick with grease, studying me, watching for any sign that the thin shoestrings usually keeping me together day by day were starting to unravel.

  I couldn’t pretend I didn’t feel them tugging by the knots, so I focused on Hyde instead. He looked content enough. He couldn’t even hide it – the little devil grin turning his face wicked even as he dutifully waved off the reporters with an annoyed flick of his hand. His lawyers stashed him in a long black limousine and moments later they were off.

  “Funeral Crasher.” Ade repeated that part of the caption with a snort. “Poor Swangirl. Resurrected billionaire babies take precedence over feathers and boobs, I guess.”

  “Shut up,” I whispered in a tone so silently spiteful it shocked even me. Without another word, Ade curled up in her corner of the couch and changed the channel.

  I spent the whole afternoon in my room flipping through old pictures of me and Hyde. In the one I held between my fingers, Hyde gripped me in a bear hug. It was my eighth birthday, the last we’d shared together.

  But why? All these years he wasn’t dead. So where was he? Living it up somewhere while the rest of us – me – cried ourselves to sleep for months? Why would his dad lie about something like that? What could any of them have possibly gotten out of it? None of it made any sense. It was senseless.

  “Whatever.” I suddenly felt incredibly annoyed. I shoved the picture back into my drawer.

  Ten o’clock. Dad called and said he’d be out late. Poker, probably. My cell phone rang just as the smell of Ade’s burnt rice started seeping into my room. Lying down on my bed, I picked it up. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Deanna.”

  My fingers twitched. I sat up, my throat tight. “Is… Is this…?”

  “Oh, yeah. Yeah. It’s… me. You know. Hyde.” He sounded almost awkwardly boyish. Or maybe boyishly awkward. I could practically hear the nervous energy in his voice. It was a far cry from the Hyde who’d smarmed his way through an army of the press.

  “Hyde,” I whispered, the word heavy with dread, because it really was him after all.

  He’d obviously picked up on my tone because his changed as well. “Should I not have called?”

  “How did you even get my number?”

  “Your sister,” he chuckled.

  “What? Ericka?”

  “Yeah. I called her and asked.”

  That was the thing with Hyde. There was no way of telling whether or not he was shitting me, and if so, how thoroughly.

  “After the shock wore off,” he continued, “she figured it’d be a good idea for us to…” He paused. “You know. Talk.”

  “Talk? Talk?” I shook my head. “What are you…? Why did you...?” I had to force myself to breathe. “What the hell is going on?”

  There was a slight hesitation in his voice. “Is that any way to treat a friend you haven’t seen in years?” Maybe it was my imagination, but he sounded almost hurt. Maybe. He covered it up well. “Aren’t you just a little bit excited? Happy? Relieved? Intrigued?”

  For some reason the more I heard him talk, the more I wanted to smash something. “You’re just having a shitload of fun with this, aren’t you? You know, I’m starting to think you faked your own death for the drama of it.”

  “Well, I admit, the drama is part of the fun.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “Wait!” he cried, just as I lowered the phone from my face. Hesitantly, I raised it back up to my ear. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m just nervous. I haven’t… I mean, it’s been years. Trust me; this is incredibly awkward for me too.” His laugh this time was barely a breath. “I feel like I’ve been asleep, you know? For years. And I–” He stopped.

  Shifting onto my knees, I tugged on a loose thread on my comforter, waiting for him to say something else, anything else. He didn’t.

  I made sure my sigh was loud enough for him to hear. “So where have you been, Hyde?”

  “You looked so beautiful at Dad’s funeral, you know.”

  I dropped the thread. “What?”

  “Thanks for going, by the way. My father was an asshole, but he was still my father. I suppose. And I’m sorry for scaring you that day. I ju
st… I couldn’t believe it was you.”

  My grip tightened around the phone. “Hyde, where have you been?”

  “Come see me tonight.”

  “What?”

  “How about we meet by that ice cream shop at the corner of Sterling and Underhill? Nine o’clock?”

  “I’m hanging up.”

  “I’ll tell you everything.” He rushed the words out as if he were running out of time. “Just… meet me. OK? Let’s do something together.” He sounded half-desperate. It was almost painful to hear. Embarrassing.

  I mulled it over, chewing the insides of my cheek, curling and uncurling my toes on the bed sheets. Finally, squeezing my free hand into a fist, I gritted my teeth and nodded. “Fine. But I can’t stay out too late. I have a curfew.” Of course, Dad being out this late meant he’d stumble back home sometime around midnight too drunk and tired to care where his daughters had been all day. But Hyde didn’t know that.

  “Good, that’s fine. I won’t keep you too long, promise.”

  “And just to let you know, it’s not an ice cream shop anymore.”

  “What?”

  “The place on the corner of Sterling and Underhill. It’s a thrift store now.”

  “Oh.” Hyde’s weak chuckles limped out of the receiver. “OK. I didn’t know.”

  “Things change.” I let a bit of my frustration slip into every syllable. I wanted him to feel it. “Guess you slept too long.”

  I hung up.

  5

  REMINISCENCE

  I’d planned to get to the thrift store at least fifteen minutes late, but who was I kidding? I checked my watch. Nine o’clock on the dot.

  The night’s chill sent a violent shiver down my back, still sore despite all the aloe I’d been rubbing on it. I bet it was my damn mattress’ fault.

  I glanced up and down the modestly busy streets, absently tugging on my sweatshirt. No Hyde. Not yet. There was a guy scratching his privates at the hotdog stand, though. Very classy. The vendor grimaced too.

  Even after wrapping my arms around my chest, which usually gave me a false but comforting sense of security, I felt oddly exposed. I still wasn’t entirely sure that this was a good idea, so I decided to stay out of the thrift store’s light, which beamed out of overlarge display windows. Instead, I kept to the shadow of the alley next to it. At least that way I’d be able to see Hyde coming before he saw me. If I got cold feet I could sneak off without him noticing me. And of course, if he didn’t show up, at least I wouldn’t look like a jackass standing around in the cold.