Years ago, Forest had found a snail among the rocks and had given him to Iris. Morgie, she had called him, proudly taking him home as a pet.
She smiled, but the memory was sharp, cutting her lungs like glass.
If you see me too much, you’re bound to tire of my sad snail stories, she had once typed to Roman.
Impossible, he had replied.
Iris let the stones fall from her hands, watching them splash into the water. Thunder grumbled overhead as wind rustled the tree boughs. The first raindrops plopped onto Iris’s shoulders, rolling down her trench coat like tears.
She began the brisk walk home, the rain falling in earnest. Her hair was drenched by the time she made it to her apartment building, but her typewriter case was thankfully waterproof. She didn’t normally tote the instrument home in the evening after work, but she had discovered that she didn’t like to be without it. Just in case inspiration stuck at midnight.
Iris hurried up the outer stairwell to the second floor, boots clanging on the steel steps, but she came to an abrupt halt when she saw her flat door was ajar. When she had left that morning, Forest had still been home, sitting on the couch and polishing his old pair of shoes. He had seemed reluctant to leave their apartment, and Iris could only wonder if he was worried someone might recognize him, believing he had deserted his post. It was far more complicated than that, but most people in Oath didn’t truly understand what was happening at the war front.
“Forest?” Iris called, stepping closer to the door. She nudged it open farther, listening to it creak on its hinges. “Forest, is that you?”
There was no reply, but Iris could see the lamplight, warm and hazy, within. Someone was inside her home, and a chill traced her spine.
“Forest?” she called again, but there was no reply. Only a curl of spicy smoke, and the sound of someone moving.
Iris passed over the threshold.
A tall, older man dressed in a calfskin jacket and dark suit stood in the living room, a few paces away. It was a man she had never seen before, but she knew who he was the moment their gazes crossed, and that chill spread further, making her blood feel like ice.
He took one last draw from his cigar as if he was preparing for a fight, the rolled tobacco smoldering as he lowered it from his mouth.
“Hello, Miss Winnow,” the man said in a deep voice. “Where is my son?”
{2}
Words Bewitched
This was not the way Iris had envisioned meeting Roman’s father for the first time.
In fact, this was the last thing she had expected. It wasn’t supposed to happen in her sad little flat, with the stained wallpaper and tattered furniture and scuffed floors. A stark reminder that Iris was of the working class, while the Kitts were not. It wasn’t supposed to happen with her disheveled and drenched from the rain, heartsick and alone.
No, in her mind, she would be wearing her finest clothes, with her hair curled and pinned with pearl barrettes, and her fingers woven with Roman’s. It would take place at the Kitts’ sprawling estate on the northern end of town, perhaps outside in the sunny gardens, and Roman’s shrewd nan and gentlehearted mother would be serving tea and sandwiches cut into triangles.
How utterly sobering it was, then, to realize how seldom daydreams like that aligned with reality. How impossible the scene Iris had painted in her mind was. But she set her posture like iron, refusing to let her gaze break first.
“Hello, Mr. Kitt,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Forgive me for dropping in unannounced,” he replied, although Iris could tell he was not at all remorseful. “As you must know by now … my son isn’t the best at keeping me informed of his whereabouts, and I need him to come home.”
Home.
The word landed like a dart, and Iris took a moment to breathe, to set down her typewriter case and to remove her trench coat, draping it over the back of the nearest chair. Thank gods she had the electricity back on, and that Forest had busied himself with cleaning the flat since their return. It wasn’t littered with wine bottles anymore. The cobwebs had been knocked down and the floors swept. There was food in the kitchen, and running water in the lavatory, though the place still felt strange without her mother.
Iris shook those thoughts away. She had a dilemma on her hands, one that she wasn’t prepared for. She didn’t know what to tell Mr. Kitt about Roman, or how much the man already knew. She didn’t know what was safe to say, and what she should withhold.
She tried to think of what Roman would prefer but was met by a spasm of pain in her chest.