Page 32 of Damaged

“The food, Silver,” Dalton said. I watched his hand with the fork in it move downward. It wasn’t until he tapped on the edge of the plate that had somehow appeared in front of me that realization dawned. I didn’t have just a plate; I had a whole place setting that mirrored Dalton’s, right down to the same amount of scrambled eggs and crispy bacon.

He was sharing his food with me.

My brain warred with itself as I tried to make sense of what was happening. Why would he share his food with me? Ivan never did that. I ate when Ivan told me I could, and that was usually just the cold leftovers that his chef would have thrown away because Ivan only liked freshly made food.

Maybe all this was some kind of test or something.

“I… I don’t need so much to test it for you,” I explained. “I tasted the eggs to make sure I got them right while I was cooking them but if you didn’t see that, I can take a quick bite of them again and cut off a small piece of the bacon. I didn’t try the juice, but I can.”

The man looked like I’d grown two heads. I quickly reached for the glass of juice in front of me, but Dalton’s hand shot out just as fast and gently grabbed my wrist.

“I want you to eat the food if you’re hungry. If you already ate enough or aren’t hungry, then you don’t have to eat. It’s completely up to you,” Dalton said, his voice once again unreadable. He moved back to his side of the table.

Dalton speared his fork into the eggs and put them in his mouth. I held my breath until he closed his eyes and said something I couldn’t understand. He quickly took another bite of the eggs and then grabbed a piece of bacon with his free hand and took a bite.

“Delicious,” he said between mouthfuls.

The breath I’d been holding came rushing out and the cramping in my stomach eased. I looked down at the pile of food in front of me. There was no way I’d be able to eat it all, but a low growl in my belly reminded me that there was definitely enough room for some of it. I’d only eaten a few slices of bread and an apple since we’d arrived at Dalton’s house, and that had been an experience in itself. The apple had tasted wonderfully sweet and though I hadn’t remembered ever having one at Ivan’s before, I’d not only known what the fruit had been called, but I’d had enough sense not to eat the middle of the apple where the seeds were. How was that even possible? Surely someone who’d never eaten an apple would take at least one bite of the middle before spitting out the dark seeds?

Now, I ate slowly because I couldn’t stop looking up at Dalton every few seconds to see if he was still eating. His plate was empty before I’d eaten even five bites of the eggs, which I had to admit did taste really good.

“Did you want some more?” I asked quickly. I lifted up my plate to hand to him so he could take as much food as he wanted. “I could also make some fresh?—”

Dalton gently pushed my plate back toward me. “If I eat another bite, I won’t fit through any of the doors in this house.”

I didn’t realize he was joking with me until he got up from the table and took his plate to the sink. I heard the water running and realized he was washing his plate and silverware.

The food in front of me beckoned, so I began eating again. I couldn’t tell if my stomach was welcoming the food or protesting it. I felt sick to my stomach, but I also had the urge to keep eating.

I actually forgot Dalton’s presence until he sat back down in his chair, a cup of coffee in his hand. “Did you want a cup?” he asked. It all felt so… domestic.

It wasn’t until the smell from Dalton’s cup of coffee hit me that I felt a sharp stab of pain in my brain right before seeing a flash of several kids sitting around a table along with a few adults who were passing a coffee pot around. The pain and image were gone as quickly as they’d come. I tried to bring it back so I could see if I remembered any faces or whether the people had been sad or happy or angry?—

“Silver?”

“No,” I said with a shake of my head. “I like water,” I managed to tell him.

“Where did you go just now?” Dalton asked.

“What?” I responded in surprise.

“After I asked you if you wanted a cup of coffee, you went somewhere. Up here,” he said as he tapped his fingers against his temple.

I shook my head again. “Nowhere. It was nothing.” I knew I was contradicting myself, so I did what I did best and kept my eyes down and dealt with the task in front of me. All my hunger had fled, so the little bit of food I managed to get on my fork now tasted like sawdust.

I jumped when Dalton leaned across the table, but all he did was push the glass of orange juice closer to me. Next to it was a full glass of water. How had that gotten there?

I knew I should just tell him I wasn’t thirsty and not take a drink from either glass, but I couldn’t find the courage to say a thing. I automatically reached for the glass of juice because that was what the man had indicated I should do. The drink was too sweet for me, so I only took a few sips. I wanted to grab the water to wash away the sweetness, but I wanted to escape Dalton’s presence even more, so I climbed to my feet.

“Silver—”

His voice had me flinching again, but I managed to cover it by grabbing my dishes and taking them to the sink. I carefully put the remaining eggs and bacon on a small plate and placed a paper towel over it before putting it in the fridge. It wasn’t until I reached the sink that I ran into my next problem.

Since he had no dishwasher, I needed to clean the dishes by hand, but there were two different kinds of soap and no sponge. The mounting humiliation made my hands shake. I piled the pans I’d used for cooking and put them in the sink. A quick glance over my shoulder showed that Dalton’s dishes were gone, so I could only assume he’d dried and put them away while I’d been sorting through the fog that had taken over my mind from the moment the man and his bare feet had stepped into the room.

I started running the water, then took a chance and filled my hands with one of the soaps and began using it to wash the dishes. I pretended to be hard at work even though I’d done nothing more than cover all the dishes in what I now suspected was the liquid meant to wash hands. My salvation came when I heard Dalton’s chair slide back. I let out a huge breath, then another. The knowledge that he was leaving the room had relief sweeping through my body until my limbs felt like noodles.

It only lasted until I heard the floor directly behind me creak and felt a presence at my back.

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