Feather Bound

by Sarah Raughley

  “Hyde… are you really OK with this?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said and gripped me by the wrist – almost violently. “I’m really sorry, but you have to go. You shouldn’t have even come here. No, I shouldn’t have let you in.” He pulled me to the door.

  “Wait! Hyde, wait a second.” I grabbed the doorframe before he could push me out. “Look, I’m sorry, but can’t we just talk about this? Please?”

  Hyde gazed up at the sky. “I can’t. It’s getting late.”

  “What? Late? You suddenly have a curfew now?”

  His face paled several shades. “I’m sorry.”

  He didn’t look at me when he shut the door in my face. Maybe he couldn’t.

  “He dumped you?” Ade gave me an incredulous look as she spread butter over her toast. It was 2 o’clock in the morning when I finally told her. Ericka, Dad and François were asleep. I suppose Ade assumed something was wrong once she spotted me on the couch stuffing my face with ice cream sandwiches while watching The Sound of Music – or possibly when I teared up during “Do-Re-Mi.”

  “I suppose.”

  “You suppose?”

  “I don’t know.” I pushed the chocolate stained wrappers off the couch and twisted around to face her. “It was just… it was so sudden. How do you go from lighting candles for a girl to literally throwing her out the door? He just seemed so… gone. And he’d been drinking.”

  For one second, I thought I smelled it again: the stale scent of alcohol curling off him.

  Ade leaned against the back of the couch, her arm balanced over the ledge, sneaking in one last side glance before, turning her gaze to the stairs. “Wow. And here I thought you two were totes ‘true loves forever’,” she said dryly, though she just as easily could have been telling the truth. That would explain the wisp of relief carrying her words. Relief. A part of me wondered if the sight of me stress eating on the couch gave her a slight tingle of satisfaction.

  “I never gave that impression, Ade,” I said. “You chose to interpret it that way. And I have a few guesses why.”

  Ade shifted uncomfortably. “I didn’t mean–”

  “It’s not like I chased after Hyde, you know.” I wiped the chocolate off the side of my mouth and glared at her. “It’s not like I went rich husband-shopping in Manhattan just to one-up you.”

  “I know.” Ade shoved her hands into her sweatshirt pocket. “I know.”

  Seconds passed. Neither of us said anything. Shaking my head, I leaned over and grabbed the half-empty can of soda off the table to wash the chocolate down.

  Ade cleared her throat. “If Hyde seemed pretty messed up,” she said, the tension unravelling in her voice, “it was probably because he just lost the company.”

  I squeezed the soda can in my hand. “Yeah. But he said he gave it away willingly.”

  “And you believe him?”

  For a moment, I stared back at the fixed smiling faces of the Von Trapp family waiting for me to press play. “No. Something obviously happened. Something’s seriously wrong. He just won’t tell me about it. Why won’t he tell me about it? Why won’t he tell me anything?”

  I dropped my head into my hands, my exasperated groan nearly drowning out the buzz of my phone vibrating on the table. Ade picked it up before I could.

  “Why is Anton sending you a text?”

  My blood froze in my veins. “Give me that!” Even she was shocked by how violently I snatched the phone from her hands – and how violently my hands were shaking. Anton. He’d finally contacted me. But why? He had everything he wanted. What else could he possibly want from me?

  “Deanna?” Ade grabbed my shoulder and turned me to her. “What’s wrong? Hey! He’s not trying to hook up with you now is he? What’s going on?”

  I shook my head and, keeping my head lowered and hiding the screen from Ade’s view, clicked the message: My loft. Sundown tomorrow.

  His loft? I shivered, turning the phone over on my lap so that the screen remained hidden.

  “Deanna, is he bothering you?” Ade shook me. “God, I can’t believe I ever wasted my sexy flirting with that skeez. If he is bothering you, you gotta tell me.”

  But if I told her and Anton found out… “No, it’s OK. I’ll handle it.”

  “Stop being so stupid, Deanna, God!” Ade slapped me upside the head, nostrils flaring. “Why are you always like that? Just like when Mom died. You think you’re a goddamn hero by keeping this shit to yourself?”

  “I’m sorry,” I muttered brusquely, turning off the TV before standing. “It’s nothing, really. I texted Anton because I figured he might know what’s up with Hyde. I know what you’re thinking,” I added quickly, once her eyebrows knitted together in disbelief. “I know it’s desperate, but they’re still family so maybe he knows something. I have to try.” It astounded me, how quickly the lies came now.

  I went upstairs without looking back at Ade, because I didn’t want or need confirmation that she didn’t believe me. Since we shared a room now, I slipped into the bathroom and locked the door behind me. What is this about, I texted back. Hyde’s gone. Your stepmom has the company. You won. Why do you still need me?

  I dreaded the answer.

  To find out why your boyfriend met my stepmother at Pierre Hotel tonight.

  My fingers gripped the sink’s ledge.

  “Hyde!” I banged on his door. “Hyde, open up!” I figured if he wasn’t going to answer the thousands of my calls I barraged his phone with throughout the day, I might as well ambush him at his house. It was almost sundown. I still hadn’t decided whether I would go through with meeting Anton or not. I’d hoped I’d be able to hear it from Hyde instead.

  Finally the door creaked open. I pushed it in. Hyde nearly toppled over.

  “What’s your problem?” he yelled, recoiling at the sight of me furious at his doorstep.

  “What’s your problem? Why are you meeting Beatrice Hoffer-Rey at hotels late at night? Why are you meeting Beatrice at all?”

  I realized how embarrassing it was to act like the clingy jealous ex. And yet my fingers were clinging to the doorframe anyway.

  Hyde frowned, maybe wondering how I had found out, but he brushed me off with a shrug. “I gave Beatrice the company, remember? There are still business arrangements I have to take care of. More importantly, this isn’t your problem anymore.” At least twice during his diatribe, he checked the sky.

  “Oh? It’s as simple as that, right? Randomly handing someone you loathe your father’s company and meeting her at hotels in the dead of night is no big deal?”

  His eyes were glued to the sun, half-submersed below the horizon. “Leave, Deanna.”

  “But–”

  He pried my fingers off the doorframe and with a rough jerk, flicked my hand aside. A throbbing pain seized my chest and for a moment, I couldn’t breathe. “Please,” he whispered and shut the door.

  With my eyes to the ground, I slowly dragged myself away, my fingernails digging into my palms. Slogging down the sidewalk, I was about to hail a cab when I noticed the stretch limo parked on the other side of the street. A tinted window rolled down.

  Crap. Anton?

  Calmly, he waved me over. I briefly entertained the idea of running off in the other direction, but I knew that if I wanted information I’d have to cross the street and get it from him. So I did.

  “Get in,” he ordered.

  My mouth dropped. “Excuse me?”

  “Get in, or do you want to explain to Hyde why you’re still around and talking to me?”

  I was really tired of being given orders by douchebags. “Easily solvable.” With a defiant look, I simply walked around the other side of the limo.

  “Really?” said Anton, once he’d rolled down the other window.

  I folded my arms, grateful for the distance between us. “Sorry, I don’t make it a point to get into tight spaces with guys who threaten me with rape.” And after the bastard rolled his eyes, I added, shortly, “What do you wan
t?” Though I could guess.

  “I thought you’d be here,” he said with a lazy drawl, flipping a newspaper over his lap in his finely tailored suit like a little business twat in training. “Even though I told you to meet me at my place. Couldn’t resist getting the truth straight from the horse’s mouth, could you?”

  “Whatever. How did you find out about Hyde and Beatrice?”

  “Coincidence, really,” he said. “I was at the hotel myself, you see – a business meeting.” His slimy grin suggested otherwise. “I saw him in the lobby with Beatrice.”

  My stomach clenched and I felt about as ready to throw up as if I’d kissed Anton. I steadied my breath.

  “You talked to Hyde,” he went on. “What did he tell you?”

  The expectant look on his face, almost desperate, made me squirm. “He told me he was at the hotel for business.”

  Anton smirked, shaking his head as his arms crossed over his chest. “And just now, I told you I was at the hotel for business.”

  Pursing my lips, I stared at the tinted window. “Except, you’re disgusting.”

  “All men are a little disgusting, Deanna.” His lips spread even further, like a disease, across his face. “Don’t you want to find out how much?”

  I almost left right there, but Anton called me back with a laugh. “Get in. We’ll wait here,” he said. “Then, once he leaves his house, we’ll follow.”

  We? “Why?” I folded my arms over my chest as though it’d create an extra bit of distance between us. “Why do you care about what Hyde and Beatrice do together?”

  He stayed silent, throwing the newspaper onto the table next to his wineglass. The creases on his face deepened with his frown and while he crossed his legs his arms were stiff over his lap. “My father’s gone to jail,” he said, finally. “Though Beatrice has the company, she still won’t pay his bail. She won’t even help with his case. The bitch wants him to stay in prison. I want to know why. Did she strike some sort of deal with my bastard fake-cousin?”

  He grabbed the glass on the table and downed an angry gulp of the wine sloshing inside. But it was all wrong. That wasn’t the scowl of someone who was worried about his father, or indignant over how his faux-mom was treating him. It was something different entirely.

  “And you need to follow Hyde just to find that out?” Something wasn’t adding up. “Couldn’t you just confront her? Why would you need me to come with you? What–?”

  His glare charred the words before they could leap off my tongue. “You can leave if you want, Deanna. But are you telling me you don’t want to know what’s going on?”

  I couldn’t, because I did. And yet I blew him off anyway, beginning down the sidewalk with slow, careful steps. But then, when I’d gotten far enough away, I quickly snuck behind a parked mail truck. I wasn’t lying when I said I wanted to know.

  It was getting darker. Dad, Ade and Ericka were going to kill me when I got back, but this was more important than curfew. I hailed a cab and slipped inside. “Just hold on for a bit,” I told the driver. I’d put the extra minutes on Ericka’s tab. She was eating our food, after all.

  One minute, two, ten. The sun had finally checked out for the night. Soon, I saw Hyde walk out his front door. With heavy, plodding steps, he called a cab and took off.

  This wasn’t happening.

  With one smooth movement, the limo merged into the traffic. Anton was on the move.

  “Follow that limo,” I told the driver and though he gave me a “look”, he went along with it anyway. I was now officially a stalker.

  As I sat there, rigid, in the cab following Anton following Hyde, the spineless part of my brain prepared itself for denial, diligently gathering up every memory that could possibly disprove the conclusion the masochistic part had already jumped to. They weren’t – no. Beatrice may have been that kind of person, but Hyde wasn’t. Hyde could barely choke down his bile when Beatrice had tried to hit on him at the ball. It was business. Beatrice had something on him and he was negotiating. Trying to find a foothold back into the company. They did it on TV all the time. For Anton, the most disgusting assumption was always the right one, but regular people just didn’t function like that. Hyde didn’t.

  Hyde’s taxi dropped him off outside a townhouse on West 12th Street. Anton stopped a few yards away, far enough not to draw attention but still close enough to watch Hyde enter the complex. I paid the cabbie and ducked behind a tree, my breaths grating my throat.

  It’s business. Stop being stupid, Deanna.

  I clung to the image of Hyde pushing Beatrice’s hand away from him as the moonlight poured in from the arched windows, lighting the grimace on his face.

  We waited for a long time, Anton and I. More specifically, I waited because he was waiting, though I couldn’t tell what he was waiting for.

  And then I couldn’t take it anymore.

  I strode up to the limo and pounded on the window. It rolled down. “So? Where is this?” I demanded.

  A pompous mixture of amusement and satisfaction twisted Anton’s greasy face. “This, Deanna, is where my father lived before your boyfriend had him hauled off in cuffs.”

  “I’m assuming you have keys.”

  “You followed me all the way here, didn’t you?” He laughed, positively delighted. “Should have come with me, if for the alcohol at least.”

  Spit in his face, my instincts ordered without a beat missed. I would have. But Hyde had been in there for too long. “Look, if you’re going to just sit there and jack off or something, then fine, but at least give me the damn keys.”

  Anton smirked. “I might like you after all.”

  I crossed the street and climbed the steps to the front door, shuddering as I felt Anton slide next to me. Jangling a group of keys in my face, he pinched a slick bronze key – the smallest on the chain – and stuck it in the lock.

  This is insane. I shouldn’t be here. I could mess up Hyde’s plan.

  And yet I followed Anton inside. Bathed in the foyer’s blinding white, I stared past the piano and up the stairs. Beatrice was laughing. My legs seized.

  “She wouldn’t.” Anton quietly ascended the steps.

  I leaned against the railing. I have to go. This is stupid. I have to go. I’m going right now.

  “I knew it, you fucking whore!”

  Anton’s growl was a punch to the gut that left me winded and grasping the railing. I climbed the stairs, crumbling with each step because I couldn’t stop myself.

  Last step. I could see them around the railing. Beatrice in negligee, backing away as Anton rounded on her. And Hyde, off in the corner, watching lifelessly.

  He barely had his underwear on.

  The sound that broke off my lips couldn’t have belonged to me, but it must have, because suddenly Hyde was looking at me. In that moment, he evaporated. He was a ghost, his face pale as if all his blood had leaked out of him, pooling on the rug at his feet.

  I ran back down the stairs, out the door. I couldn’t remember how I got inside a taxi, but suddenly, somehow, I was there, crying in the backseat and wishing Hyde Hedley had stayed dead.

  A TALE: REPRISE

  Somewhere, just outside a tiny village, is a lake. Eight heavenly maidens bathe there. They sit by the shore, oblivious to the world…

  I woke up in a sweat and didn’t know why. I lay in bed in the dead of night, my eyes tracing a trail of broken plaster on the ceiling. I breathed, slowly, clutching the sheets to my body as the dream continued to wash over me.

  Water shimmers in their cupped hands, trickles through their fingers, runs down their legs.

  I knew the words. I’d known them since childhood. I rose out of bed, stepping on the floor with careful steps.

  Moonlight coats their white feathers.

  I could see the moonlight now, streaming into my sister’s bedroom. I sat at the table and looked at the moon, my elbows on the wood, my hands cupping my chin. I stared at the sky, just as Hyde had.

  Just as Hyde ha
d.

  He’d checked the sky. He’d checked it twice, maybe more. He’d begged me to leave when days ago he’d have done anything for me to stay.

  He’d held me by the candlelight in a room he’d booked just for us. He’d touched my cheek and heated my lips with kisses. And then he’d given his company away.

  The young man sees them from behind the trees. Their beauty enchants him.

  I thought of her – Beatrice. I thought of her anger as she was spurned by him – and then of her smug smile as she stood triumphant in the bathroom. Of Hyde’s anguish. The envelope she handed him.

  Blackmail.

  A feather was all it took for Anton to put me in chains. A secret. Just one cost me my freedom, cost me nearly everything.

  Quietly, he comes back and sends his dog to steal the feather robe of the youngest. The seven sisters cry out and fly off into the sky. But the youngest cannot.

  Now she is his.

  The last four words simmer and dissipate – and suddenly I remembered the way Hyde had looked up at the sky so desperately, and shuddered a gasp so violent I felt it throb against my chest.

  Once of the heavens, she is now bound to the earth. Bound to the young man.

  It couldn’t be.

  He builds a house and they marry. Their children sing every day.

  It couldn’t be.

  My mind was racing – the secret smiles, the seductive touches, the tender feelings. Memories of Hyde. I sifted through them until I was left with just one: the one of Hyde in Beatrice’s room. His hollow eyes.

  And then I knew.

  19

  CURSED

  “Hyde, pick up.” My back pressed against the lock on the bathroom door. My hands shook so badly my cell almost slipped through my grip.