The Safekeep(28)

“Lucky,” he said, the English word.

It made her blush. She didn’t know why. Sebastian turned to her and asked, “What was your dog’s name?” in reply to which she stood from her seat and wiped her hands on her skirt and said, “I’ll go get Hendrik. You two should get going before it’s fully dark.”

It was getting dark. And they did leave soon. Isabel watched the car drive away with a leaden weight in her chest. She had never shown the house to new eyes: she hadn’t made new friends, or invited anyone over. The only strangers who had come over were the maids, who would always settle in like an unease—a grain of sand under the eyelid. It had been Hendrik’s pleasure now—to get to show the house to someone beloved. To have a newfound person see him through the spaces where he’d once lived, slept. The walls he’d touched, the house whose shape lived within him, even though he’d left long ago. Even though he didn’t even live there at all.





7


ISABEL WASN’T FULLY AWAKE WHEN the happy honk of Hendrik’s car sounded from outside. She was dressed, she was downstairs, but she was not awake—stood at the table, hand over her belly, staring. She had been listening for sounds from upstairs, the creak of a floorboard, the rush of the shower. Nothing yet. Eva was still asleep.

It was a bright day, a birdsong day. Insects hissed at the doorway. Isabel put a netted cover over the bowl of fruit. Hendrik and Sebastian came up to the house with a bustle, bags in hand, sunglasses on. They were coming to visit for the weekend. Hendrik had told her they would, and she had forgot. Isabel never forgot anything. Hendrik was before her and Sebastian close behind him and somewhere upstairs, Eva.

Hendrik said immediately, “Oh, did you forget we were coming?” kissing her cheeks, laughing about this. She said, “No, I—” and her voice came out rough, scratchy.

“God, it’s a gorgeous day!” Hendrik exclaimed, looking out the window. He took up space quickly, cheerfully. Sebastian arranged their luggage out of the way and greeted Isabel with a more gentle hand, that look of his: like he had opinions about her, indecipherable. Everything was happening too fast, everyone was moving too fast: Hendrik called for coffee, and so coffee must be made, and what was it they wanted to do this weekend? A plan, he wanted a plan, a drive to the city, a big dinner, a swim out by the lakes, and—

“Oh, where’s our special guest? Isn’t she here somewhere?” Hendrik pretended to look for her in a cabinet, behind a curtain.

Isabel was light-headed. She had a sudden strong urge to keep Eva away from the two men, not out of embarrassment this time. Out of something else. Out of something dark, and coiling, and—

“She’s…” Isabel started, “asleep, I think.”

“What, still?”

Isabel didn’t answer. A weekend, they had come to stay. A full weekend. She itched at the thought, confused, wanted to bundle them out the door again, wanted the moment back—the stillness of the morning.

Eva entered the room. Barefoot, trousers, shirt tucked in. She’d combed her hair back into a puffy ponytail. Red around the eyes. She had a dent to her bottom lip, Isabel noticed—hadn’t noticed before. A dent like someone had pressed a thumb to her there when she was still taking shape, and the lip forever kept the pressure of that touch. Isabel wondered, briefly and horribly, what Louis had done to earn his first kiss from Eva. How he had touched her, and whether she’d let him, as she’d let Isabel. Whether she’d touched him in return, whether she’d taken him to her room, whether they’d not waited at all before they—

Eva looked at Isabel. There was the length of the room between them. The space felt obvious, so very obvious, but then Hendrik danced back in from the kitchen, coffee in hand, midway into a conversation that sounded like “—too far, maybe we can try Agnieten, it’s a lovely—Oh, hello! Eva, hello!”

He went to her, kissed her cheeks. She allowed this, dazed. Said, “Hello?” And then, weakly: “This is a surprise.”

“Is it? Isabel didn’t tell you we were coming?”

“No,” Eva said. Then, “We?” and Hendrik called for Sebastian, who came in and was introduced by Hendrik with a “This is Sebastian, my good friend. Bas, this is Eva, Louis’s…” He trailed off.

A beat of silence that hung too long.

“Girlfriend,” Eva finished then. A glance, quick as anything. Isabel looked away from it. She felt sick. Shame rose up like tar—slow, thick. Louis’s girlfriend.

“Lovely,” said Sebastian. “Is Louis here, too?”

“Louis is away for work. A conference,” Eva said. She passed a hand over her hair, to smooth it. No use: the frizz escaped, stood out in a halo. Her surety of the last weeks was gone, leeched—she stood there, not knowing what to do with her arms.

“How nice you’re staying here, then.” Sebastian nodded at her. “You and Isabel must be great friends.”

Hendrik hid amusement behind pulled-in lips. He acted as if he was inspecting something out the window. He must have told Sebastian about Eva, the same as he must have told him about Isabel. Eva blushed, gave a shaky smile that shrunk quickly. “Yes,” she said.

Isabel excused herself to the bathroom. She sat there, in the dark, digging into her arm. The light came in from under the door, a sliver of a line. When she exited she almost stumbled into Eva, who did not expect to see her—who stepped back wildly, who held her breath. The hallway was narrow. She held herself as if she was frightened: of Isabel, of what Isabel might do. As if it had been Isabel who had preyed on her, who had stolen a kiss, who had taken her in her arms.