“Of course. If you wish.” As I dolloped a modest scoop onto another plate, she waited, smiling beneath that bowed head. I’d hardly eaten in weeks, and my belt now gathered my pants like a skirt. But I could imagine the girl’s discomfort in eating alone and ravenous in a stranger’s home. I sat and out of courtesy took a bite. To my surprise, the greasy pasta with its rich, dense flavor woke my appetite as if from hibernation. After finishing the small portion, I served myself more.
The girl smiled, directly at me then. “So, it is good? It isn’t just me, because I was so hungry?”
I agreed it was good. And it was. This food, the small lightening I felt in my chest.
11
Daniel’s father led Evangeline down a hall lined with four ornately carved doors. He passed one with a chair jammed under its handle and opened the next. The door moaned loudly as it swung, a gilded chandelier blazing with the flip of a switch. The room was freezing, no warmer than under the tree.
Isaac—he’d said she could call him that—carried towels that he set on the bed, a double with a worn blue quilt and a headboard carved fancy like the door. He went to a corner vent, lowered one knee and then the other. Using both hands, he strained against the lever until it gave way abruptly, clunking over with a dull metallic thump. Within seconds, a warm, musty smell rose, and she imagined the months—or had it been years?—of dust and mold, desiccated remains of insects, and flakes of dead skin the vent had been storing, remnants of past lives released once more into the room.
The man wrangled himself upright, awkwardly, as if not only his knees but all his joints had turned on him. He removed a wool blanket from the closet and set it on the bed. “I don’t generally heat in here,” he said.
Evangeline stood, clutching her backpack to her chest. This hadn’t been Daniel’s room. She was glad about that. But she hadn’t expected such spareness behind that fancy door. The walls were empty, just a floral pattern ghosting through dingy white paint. Other than the bed, there was only a nightstand, a lamp, and a ladder-back chair—not even a small rug on the battered wooden floor. She was afraid to move, not wanting to touch anything for fear of leaving a stain.
“You can set your bag on the chair,” he said. “There are some drawers in the closet if you want.” He paused, looked around, said he’d be right back.
After he entered the hall, a door opened—not the one with the chair—and she heard the weight of him going down a set of stairs. There must be a basement, and she knew without seeing that it was a cavern of dirt and stone and raw-cut old timbers. He returned a minute later carrying a large cardboard box, the letter K marked on its side. “Clothes,” he said. “They’re old but clean. I meant to take them to Goodwill.”
He set the box on the bed, left again, and returned with a new toothbrush. “You saw the guest bath in the hall. Should be some shampoo in there. Takes a while for the hot water to arrive.”
She thanked him and asked, “Do you mind if I shower now? I won’t wake anyone?”
His lips fell open, and then he said, “No. You won’t wake anyone.”
He started to leave, hesitating at the hall. “I’m going to close your door now, and you should too, after you shower. If you hear something scratching, it’s just Rufus. Might do a little whining. Don’t let him in, though. I’m trying to train him . . . After my boy . . .” He trailed off and straightened.
“Well. That’s fine, then,” he said, as if all had been explained.
* * *
—
EVANGELINE HAD BEEN SURPRISED when she’d seen Isaac’s picture in the paper. She’d expected Daniel’s father to be muscular and firm jawed, handsome in a middle-aged sort of way. But the man in the paper looked older than she would have guessed, tall and thin with an angular face, his pale eyes nearly vanishing on the page. His hair, which she’d imagined as dark and neat, was a decidedly untidy gray.
She’d been drawn to that photo. Something complicated and odd about the man, the way he appeared broken beyond all hope yet indestructible at the same time. The word “stoic” rose in her mind, a word she couldn’t quite define but felt as a hard emptiness in her gut.
In person, these effects were magnified. With legs too long for his body, Isaac seemed off-kilter, almost wobbly, as if a gust might topple him. He carried a certain softness that she’d initially mistaken for weakness. But already she could feel that his core was fixed, like a steel stake driven through him, a rigidity that both anchored and pained him. She couldn’t have expressed these things—she often bore her most valuable knowledge wordlessly—but she sensed it, the pitiless, bitter sweetness of him. She liked Isaac. She liked his bitterness most of all.
She heard his steps tracing back toward the kitchen and guessed he’d be up awhile. She desperately needed a shower but didn’t have a robe. In the box, she found faded tees, pilled sweaters, a pair of khakis torn at the knee, a light cotton nightgown. It was all a little big, but close enough, and she might be able to roll up sleeves or tie the tops, tear the pants a bit more, make them work somehow. She grabbed the nightgown and held it to the light. Thin but not see-through. Good. If she ran into Isaac in the hall, no one could say she’d been indecent.
The shower ran a good half hour as she shampooed her hair over and over until the water ran clear. She used a rusty razor to shave her legs and armpits, peeling back to the girl before she turned feral, then dried herself with the towel that, though scratchy, seemed the epitome of luxury. Afterward she stood before the mirror untangling her hair with a wide-toothed comb and saw in the reflection a prettier girl than she’d remembered. Leaning in, she touched her cheek, freckled skin as flawless as satin. She had that at least, a certain beauty.
She’d thought she’d be able to use that here, her beauty. Not in direct seduction, God no, but in the mild flirtation she’d found made men more generous. But Isaac was an odd one. On first entering the kitchen, she’d tested him with a sly loitering glance. He’d looked away firmly, not in embarrassment or judgment but with a clear message: he would not be seduced, not in the slightest, and he was allowing her that moment to reset. She dropped all pretense of attraction then, and things had gone better after that. But what else did she have to offer him? What would keep him from reporting her to the state?
There was the baby, yes. That’s why she’d come. But he couldn’t know that. Not now. Not when the wounds were so fresh, not with two dead boys and the town looking for a girl to blame. She would have to make do with the truth of her situation, that she was alone and in need.
By the time she headed to bed, the musty smell had settled, and the miraculous combination of clean skin and clean sheets made her momentarily forget all that had happened. It seemed possible she was in the midst of another life, one in which this house was her own, and when she woke in the morning, she’d find her mother making breakfast in the kitchen, a life where there were no dead boys, where she wasn’t pregnant and alone and guilty of countless small crimes, one in which bad luck and bad choices had passed her by.
There was no point in such thinking. It only made one sick with wanting. As she sank into the downy pillow, Evangeline realized she hadn’t puked once since she’d arrived, though she’d eaten a large meal of ground meat and cheese and thick sauce. It had to mean something. Some kind of approval of the decision she’d made. Whoever decided who got what was finally giving her a break.