Page 42 of The Forest of Lost Souls

“Because you have no shame.”

“There you go. Plus I believe in payback. You stick it to me, later I’ll enjoy dealin’ out the payback.”

She resorts to her wine and then says, “If I’d called Sheriff Montrose, I’d be rotting with Bead in his car, under the meadow. He’d have put me under.”

“That’s probably true. But then what you did brought you to me. Like destiny.”

“Destiny is a clean thing. This is dirtier. This would be fate if it was anything. How hard was it to drive all the honest cops out of the department?”

“It’s taken a determined effort.”

He finally sips more wine.

She says, “What kind of man has no shame?”

“The kind who knows what he wants and always gets it. You’ll come to appreciate that, darlin’. When you admit you belong to me, you’ll feel safe, because no one dares damage what’s mine.”

“You can’t own a person.”

“Well now, I already own you, girl. You just don’t want to know it yet.”

As if the intensity of his stare disturbs her, she looks away and then quickly meets his eyes again to assert that she doesn’t fear him, but looks away once more.

“Got to finish the soup.” She knocks against the table as she gets up from her chair. She carries the nearly empty wineglass to the cooktop, rattles it against the counter as she puts it down.

“The bread is good,” Deacon says. “You made it yourself?”

At the stove, taking the lid off the pot, she says, “I don’t like store-bought bread.”

“It’s got a nice crust. The egg-custard pie you had in the fridge on Wednesday—that was homemade, too.”

“Yeah.” She picks up a bowl of egg whites prepared earlier and drops the contents into the pot.

“What soup are you makin’?”

“Lentil with bacon and chopped hard-boiled-egg whites.”

“I like the smell. The soup’s and yours both.”

Picking up a half-empty wine bottle from the counter and pouring, she says, “Finished with a few ounces of Napa’s finest.”

“Main course in the oven smells grand.”

“Pork tenderloin with roasted potatoes.”

“You’re a twofer, darlin’. Kitchen to bedroom, you got what it takes to fill me and drain me.”

He’s pushing her to gauge whether her resentment and bitterness are to any extent giving way to resignation or perhaps even to the spiritless apathy that a victim can retreat into when there is no hope of escaping some horror. There is risk in being either too obstinate or too compliant. She must seem to be in retreat from hope but not yet on the brink of imminent surrender—indignant enough to want to insult him, but fearful enough to be concerned that she might goad him into assaulting her.

Emptying the bottle brings the wine in her glass nearly to the brim. “Well, Sheriff, filling you might take an hour, but I suspect draining you won’t take a minute.”

This time, Deacon doesn’t say whether he finds her response amusing, offensive, or both. “You just gave yourself two glasses of wine in one. You chug that, you’ll have had four. Don’t get sloppy.”

The cabernet she poured from the now empty wine bottle beside the cooktop is actually grape juice. Rather than risk affecting a slur that might be unconvincing, she adopts a sullen impudence, which is likely to seem childish to him and to comport with his belief that women are lesser creatures in thrall to their emotions. “Maybe the best way I get through this is unconscious.”

“It’s how I like it now and then,” he says. “Especially makes sense the first time. No need to hear what silly shit you might say, won’t have to keep tellin’ you to shut up. I can concentrate better on the basic merchandise, all its qualities. Plus when you wake up, it’ll be different enough to seem like we had our first time twice in one night. Just don’t get sloppy. You puke before you pass out, I’ll make you eat it when you wake up.”

He’s an abomination. Hatred isn’t a strong-enough word for the feeling he evokes. She represses any evidence of her abhorrence in favor of appearing weakened by fear and grieving for the loss of freedom that is inevitable if he moves in with her. She holds her wineglass in both hands to bring it shakily to her mouth, and she lets it chatter against her teeth before drinking. She won’t go so far as to pretend dread by letting a trickle spill down her chin; she’s certain she’ll need a white dress for one future occasion or another, and she doesn’t want to have to buy a new one.

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