Page 62 of Beau and the Beast

Beau was the rare type of person who touched others often and easily, whether laying his fingers on her forearm when she told a joke or placing his hand on the small of James's back to caution him as Beau walked behind him with a hot dish in one hand. Beau was affectionate with them and the casual contact felt good after so many years of being with people who were formal in the way they interacted.

But she was shocked—and pleased, really—to see that Beau's easy touches extended to Wolfram as well. As she watched them interact over the course of several nights, she noticed more than once the gentle hand Beau placed on Wolfram's shoulder as he leaned over him to pour wine, and cautioning touch to his wrist as Wolfram reached for something on the stove.

More shocking, though, was the way that Wolfram returned the touches.

Wolfram had never been an affectionate man—not as a human and even less so after the curse. She couldn't blame him, of course. So many times he'd reached for them or gestured to one of his staff members only to see them recoil in fear. Those first few years had been rocky for all of them.

But perhaps because Beau had never shown the same fear, Wolfram didn't hesitate to touch him, placing a hand on Beau's hip as he squeezed behind him and out of the kitchen, touching his hand as Beau passed over a plate.

It was remarkable, she thought.

They were eating better. They were talking more.

That morning, Violet had even caught herselfsingingas she went about her chores filling out order forms for the week's groceries.

Was this what a good mood felt like? Why had they waited so long to allow themselves to feel happy? Why had they let the funeral for their old lives extend on for almost a decade?

Although Beau had his most direct impact on their leisure time together, his presence seemed to extend to their working hours with the Mueller Global Endowment Fund, as well. Each of the staff members had always had their own pet projects that they managed for Wolfram's company. James was passionate about justice for people who had been wrongfully accused of crimes, for example, and Violet spent much of her time during the week advocating for no-kill animal shelters and wildlife refuges.

Their causes had become such a normal part of their days, though, that the staff had stopped feeling impassioned. The shelters were just business, the exonerated prisoners just another statistic.

But in the second week of Beau’s stay, Violet began to hear the other staff members talking excitedly sometimes about the things that had captivated them so long ago. Even Wolfram was impacted. He'd pulled her aside after dinner a few nights ago, saying that he wanted them to start directing some of their work and resources to child advocacy in the U.S.

"Just help me find a place to start," he said. "If you can find some organizations that work to keep siblings together in the foster system, that's what I want us to put our effort into."

"And if I can't?"

"If there's not someone already doing it, I want us to start."

He'd never taken an interest in one particular area of charity, and she was glad to see him with a cause, finally. Whatever it was that had pushed him in that direction was a mystery, but if he was engaged, smiling more, out in the penthouse, it didn't matter.

She was happy.

* * *

That first weekwith Wolfram had been rocky.

Beau should have known not to expect Wolfram to go from being almost completely alone, year after year, to working with someone every day without a few hiccups.

The opposite could be said for Beau. He'd gone from spending his years surrounded by other people—people at work, his brother at home, and boyfriends like Lincoln—to being almost completely alone for much of his day.

Yes, he had his interviews with Wolfram and his dinners with the staff. But he was used to a noisy newsroom, with reporters who interrupted him every few minutes and bosses demanding meetings and interview subjects who were rushed and varied. He was used to sharing 500 square feet with a brother who insisted on listening to Cambodian funk music or whatever other weird tunes he’d found online that day while he worked, and weekends with Lincoln at block parties and kickball games and outdoor concerts.

He'd gone from having a whole array of people in his life each day to spending his days mostly alone, mostly with Wolfram.

They came from two opposite ends of the spectrum and met somewhere in the middle, he realized.

It was a good meeting, too—a decent compromise. Beau missed his brother and the constant companionship, certainly, but he'd never met anyone before Wolfram who he could share such easy conversation with.

Beau's hours of interviewing meandered into many areas of life in a way that he had only dreamed of when he was a reporter, forced to live by word count limits and layout restrictions.

His favorite assignment when he still worked for The New Whitby Ledger had been a little column called "One of Us." It was just one page with a few hundred words, a Q&A in the most basic sense of the concept, that highlighted someone living in New Whitby. The only limitation on the subjects of the column were that they must currently reside inside the city limits—everything else was up for grabs.

Being responsible for the column meant that Beau got to meet five brand new strangers every week. It took him to neighborhoods he'd never seen before, businesses he never dreamed existed. He loved it, but lamented the fact that he had limited time to interview them and a tiny amount of space to run his writing.

Sometimes people would touch upon the most tantalizing details of their lives—the lawyer would reveal that she had once dreamed of falconry, the cobbler mentioning that he had a perfect poundcake recipe that had won several national awards, or the veteran casually saying that he'd left the love of his life in Lugano.

The details would surface and then be gone just as quickly, leaving Beau wanting more—dreaming of gaining intimacy with their stories, the twists and turns of these lives that would only be allowed to intersect with his for ten or fifteen minutes.

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