Page 33 of Tourist Season
“I’m sure you must want that bag for an important reason. But why don’t you sit down and I’ll make you a tea. We can talk about it.” I pull a patio chair back from the table for him, gesturing to the padded seat. “Please?”
There’s a pause, and I think for a moment he might argue, but instead he nods and I let a breath pass through my pursed lips. I help lower him onto the chair and then leave him with the raven while I head inside to make tea and another pot of coffee, slapping a large gauze pad over the back of my blistered hand with a wince as I wait for the water to boil. When I take the drinks out on a tray with a couple of pastries and a treat for Morpheus, Arthur isstaring at his folded hands, fidgeting with the tension in his fingers. In one way, I’m relieved he’s still sitting there. In another, I wish he’d taken off, because then at least I’d know he’s still determined to do what he wants.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” I ask as I set the tea in front of him before delivering a piece of fish to the bird feeder for Morpheus. When I take the seat next to Arthur, he’s still looking at his hands. “Did you hurt yourself?”
“No,” he says, unlacing his fingers just long enough to wave me off.
“What do you want that bag for, Arthur?”
I expect he’ll tell me he wants to kill that man who’s staying in Maria Flores’s Airbnb, the one with the ugly dog who shit in the rose garden. Or maybe he’s found another candidate, someone who’s actually worthy of being murdered by a prolific elderly serial killer who has deemed himself protector of Cape Carnage for the last sixty years, long before he lost the daughter who died in the cottage standing before us. It’s the kind of place that’s always needed protection in one way or another, and who better to offer it than a brilliant and principled man with deep roots in the community who just so happens to also enjoy a bit of calculated killing when the need arises? So I’m sure he’ll tell me about someone’s misdeeds. Maybe a more egregious sin than shit in the garden or tire marks on the grass.
Arthur doesn’t meet my eyes when he finally says, “So that I remember who I am.”
I feel as though I’ve been punched in the chest. The wind is sucked clean from my lungs, leaving my lips in a whoosh. A sudden sting climbs up my throat and pricks at my eyes. “You’re Arthur Lancaster,” I whisper.
“I know my name,” he replies with a frown. The creases in his brow soften far too quickly, their sharp lines dulled by distress. “But I feel like I am disappearing. I am losing who I truly am.”
My hand covers Arthur’s as I swallow a ball of blades. “You don’t need that bag to remind you. I can do that.” Arthur meets my eyes, a glassy sheen coating their cloudy surface. “You like Hitchcock movies. You love classical music. You have great taste in shoes. The Christina Riccis are truly impeccable.”
He gives me a lethal scowl. “Stefano Riccis, you obdurate philistine.”
“Of course.Stefano. My bad,” I say through a grin that feels too fragile beneath the weight of these heavier emotions. It fades as I squeeze his hand, and he grips my fingers in reply. His eyes search my face, and I level him with a serious stare as though I might be able to imprint his identity back onto him. “You’re the most formidable man I know. You’re sharp, but you’re caring. You’re tough, but you’re kind. You’re my best friend.”
An ember of surprise ignites in Arthur’s eyes. He swallows. His lips press closed in a tight line. He gives me a single nod before he squeezes my fingers a final time and then slides his hand free to grip his teacup. “Well. You’re …” He clears his throat and nods again, taking a sip of his tea. “You’re …”
“An obdurate philistine?”
“Yes.” He chuckles, a rare and precious sound. “But you’re a good girl when you’re not being purposefully obdurate. And I am … I am grateful that you’re here.”
I can’t help the smile I beam at him, even if he’s unwilling to keep his eyes on me for longer than a moment. Morpheus caws from the bird feeder—three sharp, loud squawks.
“I still think you should give me my bag back, however. And you should get rid of that vermin.”
Morpheus barks three more caws. The smile that was just on my face disappears. “I don’t think so,” I say as a hum buzzes from the direction of the road on the other side of my house.
“He’s irritating.”
“He’s also warning us.”
A chill races down my spine as I stand and look toward the cottage. It’s the same sound I heard the other day, when I was going to the gym and stopped to talk to Jake Hornell.
Nolan’s words come back to me from the morning he stood in my garden as I gripped his bloody gift in my hands. They slid into my brain and branded themselves in my memory, but in the turmoil of the moment, they didn’t make sense to me. They just lodged there, a thorn beneath my skin.
Perhaps because I just killed Jake, the man you have a crush on …
“Warning us?” Arthur says, his voice dampened beneath the veil of furious heartbeats that roar in my ears. “Why …?”
A drone rises above the roof to hover over us. The same one I saw at the gym the other day and didn’t think much of at the time. The one that must have been piloted by a certain enemy who stood in my garden with Jake’s severed hands just a few days ago. The one who’s clearly back to spy on me again. “Because someone has come to spy on Lancaster Manor.”
The want I’ve been feeling for Nolan? That inexplicable desire? It seems to shred apart in the spinning white blades of the device that hovers above my home. It’s a venomous sting that hurts more than it should. But pain can be a cleansing fire. One that leaves only one truth behind.
Nolan Rhodes needs to die.
DEVIATIONNolan
I’M IN THE GENERAL STOREon Davis Avenue, putting things into my shopping cart that Ishould notbe buying for my mortal enemy.
Just like I’ve done for the last three days in a row.
