Page 14 of King Among the Dead

“Yes?” Beck called.

“Kay sent me to dust.”

“Oh, right. Come in.”

He didn’t sound annoyed, but she still eased the door open and tiptoed her way in. No one had told her not to go into this room, but it had felt like a sacred thing.Off to my study. He’s in his study. Rose had imagined it: conjured images of book cases, and heavy tomes, and a massive desk with green glass lamps and orderly files in the drawers.

She hadn’t expected the massive flat-screen computer monitor hung up on the far wall, nor the haphazard array of modern desks set out in front of it, laid out with other, smaller monitors, several keyboards, a mouse or two, a half-dozen empty tea mugs. And, his back to her, Beck, in a faded pinstriped shirt with the sleeves folded back, broad shoulders pressed back into the chair as he stroked his chin and studied the screen: it was a map of some sort, various points picked out with red dots.

He half-turned toward her at the sound of the door, offering a fleeting, distracted scrap of a smile before turning back. “Hello. You won’t be a bother, don’t worry. Just thinking.”

She didn’t know where to begin. There were shelves, but low ones, against the front wall of the room, and over beneath the one window to the side, but they were loaded not with books, but three-ring binders and file folders, crammed in haphazardly. There was a low leather couch, too, a blanket sliding off one arm, and she wondered if Beck ever slept in here – she still hadn’t seen his bedroom, either.

She dusted the shelves, as quickly as she could, not wanting to linger in his private space: just the tops and the edges of the shelves. She didn’t dare move any of the folders in case he had some sort of wild organization system in place.

She moved to the desks, next. Gathered the empty tea mugs to take back to the kitchen; lifted books, papers, and keyboards to dust under them with the utmost care.

She lifted a folder and found a knife beneath; a wicked hunting thing with one serrated edge.

She glanced over her shoulder toward him, wondering if he’d seen her spot it, but he was staring at the map, hair gathered in one fist at the nape of his neck, chewing at his lower lip. Lost in thought.

She stuck the dusting wand in her back pocket, gathered the mugs, and left him alone.

That evening, when they stood chopping green beans together, when Kay was over setting the table, he said, softly, “I’m sorry my study is such a mess. I get distracted with work and fail to pick up after myself.” He sounded contrite; perhaps embarrassed, even.

“It’s definitely not the worst mess I’ve ever seen.” A glance proved his mouth had plucked upward in the corner in a faint wry smirk. She knew he immediately thought of Tabitha, just as she had. “What are you working on? It looked like a map.”

“It is.” He sliced a zucchini into perfect rounds and used the flat of the knife to scrape them off into a bowl. “Just a bit of a pet project.”

When he didn’t offer anything else, she didn’t press for more.

~*~

Beck left the house frequently in the evenings. Well after dinner, and after dark, in those sleepy hours before bed when Rose usually read and Kay usually shouted at a game show on TV. His footfalls would sound on the stairs, heavier than normal, and he would appear in the door of the comfy parlor or the library in his flared leather coat, and his chunky-soled lace-up boots. The outfit he’d worn the night Rose met him.

The sight of him like that always sent a frisson through her. Hot and cold chills, a quickening of her pulse that wasn’t fear.

“I’ll be back late,” he would say, and his expression fell short of even his smallest smiles – though his eyes sparked with an intensity that Rose half-expected to set the drapes alight.

“See ya,” Kay would call, flapping a hand his direction without tearing her eyes from the screen.

But Rose would say, “Be safe,” and he would give her a fast glimpse of teeth that still didn’t manage to be a smile. She never heard him get home, but he was always in the kitchen the next morning, dressed and hair shining clean, making magic with a pan and asking her to fetch the butter or milk or the sugar cannister.

One night, Rose was still up when he returned.

A bitter, driving rain pounded the windows, loud enough to make her feel restless and too awake. Kay went to bed, but Rose built up a fire in the library hearth and settled into what she’d come to think of as her chair with a fresh book. This was one from Beck’s suggestion list:Jane Eyre.

She’d looked it up on her phone, and found a dizzying array of opinion-sharing, critiquing, and downright demonizing of the novel. It was an old book, written in a far different time, but from the first page, she loved Jane. ShewasJane; right there in her shoes with her horrible family, and at the horrible boarding school.

And then came Rochester.

Rochester was rude, and cutting, a terrible conversationalist – but he didn’t frighten her. No, far from it.

So entranced in the story, she didn’t realize that hours had passed. Didn’t realize that she was up far later than normal until she heard footsteps in the hall.

She lifted her head, nearly startled to find that she was still in her chair, the fire all but died down, rain still beating the window, and not out on the heath with a fleeing, heartbroken Jane. She held her breath, listening as the steps came closer.

She knew the sound of Kay’s gait by now, and this was definitely not hers.

---