Page 10 of A Heart of Bluestone

It’s not Amelia I avoid. Not even Harold Sinclair, her husband.

It’s Dray, it’s always Dray, and it will always be Dray.

I’ll avoid him and loathe him and weep because of him probably forever.

Amelia recedes her touch from my brittle hair, too dry, ill-nourished. Her passive judgment is found in the slight rub of her fingers, but when I cut a glance at her, she is still smiling as softly and sweetly as ever.

Dray runs me over with his stare. “Where have you been?”

I know he means over the break. He asks of my absences. Not why I am late today.

Still, I latch onto the least awkward conversation to fumble through. “I was just out getting the last of my school supplies,” I say with a throwaway gesture, a shrug of the shoulder that finally slips Father’s grip from my shoulder. “I apologise for keeping everyone waiting.”

The forced smile is slight on my face. I aim it at the Sinclairs. Then I cut a sharp, lingering gaze at my evil twin brother.

“I had my times mixed up,” I add.

His smile is small, fleeting and wicked; the dazzle of his emerald eyes glint that bit sharper.

Mother runs me over with her beady eyes, ink pots the same striking black as her hair, all twisted and glossed at the back of her head. Her pinning gaze washes over the uneven crimps of my hair before landing on the damp stains of my boots.

“Are you well, dear?” she asks.

She means to be snide—but I see it as an opportunity.

I tap my temple. “Headache. The day’s sun, the traffic. It took its toll.”

“You have headaches so often, I wonder you don’t see a specialist,” Dray says, and he picks at speck of not-at-all-there lint on his shirt, as though he’s entirely disinterested in me, in this business, and more interested in the perfectly dry-cleaned and steam-ironed black shirt.

I snub his implications and turn to Father.

I don’t get the chance to ask.

I don’t spare another moment on a faux headache.

The look he swerves down on me is unkind.

And it silences me instantly.

Gone are the complaints of a slight, dull ache in my head, and I have no snappy words to spare on my brother.

I become a statue under my father’s glare. Stiff, and with absolutely nothing to say.

Mr Younge appears at the doors. Hands behind his back, he has no need to announce the cars prepared and fuelled in the driveway—my father notices him before he can even part his lips to announce anything at all.

“Shall we,” Father says, and it is no request.

Dray moves for me.

The instinct of it all is monotonous, and I don’t think he truly considers these steps towards me, I don’t think he puts his mind into it as he places his hand on the small of my back—and I doubt entirely that he feels my muscles jumping beneath his touch or hears the sharp interruption of my breath.

He doesn’t pay attention to any of those smaller details. He acts in monotony.

It means nothing, it’s merely the order of things.

He is to be my escort—it’s just the way things are.

But we don’t move into step yet. We wait, side by side, his hand searing a fucking hole into my flesh, for the others to go ahead. Mother and Father, Amelia and Harold Sinclair.

---