Page 66 of Holly & Hemlock
The candlesticks run the length of the table, too many for comfort, their flames reflected and refracted in every mirrored surface, until the room seems ablaze with the threat of revelation.
At the center of it all is the arrangement: holly, dense andred-berried, laced so artfully with stalks of white-flowered hemlock that the warning is clear even to those ignorant of botany. The two plants writhe together, a lock of arms, a duel, a promise. There is nothing accidental about it.
Whitby has never arranged a single thing in her life without a purpose.
I hover at the threshold, observing the tradition that Whitby loves so much.
My dress is blue—my mother’s, cut down and altered by Whitby’s own skill, the fabric heavy and saturated, the color so rich it drains the blood from my face. My fingers flutter at the neckline, touching and retouching the seam. I can’t decide if I’m overdressed or underprepared, if I look like a sacrificial offering or an unwitting wedding guest.
Lane has disappeared, to find his suit jacket, according to his grumbling after being scolded by Mrs. Whitby.
The woman herself floats past with a tray of amuse-bouches, her lips compressed to a hyphen. She pauses just inside my peripheral vision, her eyes on the table, her voice pitched low enough to be mistaken for static. “It is time, Miss Vale.”
I enter. The shoes bite, but I manage a clean line to the table’s head, where I am apparently expected to preside. My place card is embossed in a hand I do not recognize—my own name looking foreign, even accusatory.
I lower myself into the chair, which is hard and too tall for me, and place my hands in my lap so no one will see how they shake.
Larkin arrives next, hair slicked back but not severe, his usual air of derision replaced by a kind of raw, post-confessional humility.
His suit is dark, the fabric almost absorbing the light, but the shirt is open at the throat, no tie, a look that is purely him.
His eyes find mine across the table—green and cutting, but no longer the green of snake or emerald, more the sad, mottled moss that clings to the north side of a headstone. He seats himself two chairs down, his profile now sharp against the lattice of candlelight. His hands are folded, knuckles white, as if he is preparing to testify.
Lane returns. He stands at the entrance for a moment, the doorway framing him like a threat or a benediction. He wears the suit to please Whitby, but it’s clear that he’s been forced into it. The shoulders strain against the line of his frame, the sleeves a quarter inch too short, the top button giving up the fight.
His hair is combed, or at least tamed, but the beard is as wild as ever. His eyes are the only thing not subdued—they are storm-gray, clear and direct, no longer trying to hide in the squall of themselves.
He doesn’t wait for Whitby’s invitation; he just strides to his place, pulls out the chair, and sits. The table creaks in protest. Lane glances once at me, then at Larkin, then lets his gaze settle on the centerpiece, where the holly and hemlock tangle in their eternal wrestling.
Whitby makes a circuit of the table, pouring wine into each glass with an efficiency that is both contemptuous and reverent. She lingers at my side just a fraction longer, as if waiting for some last-minute reprieve or defiance. When I give her neither, she proceeds to the next guest, her apron so freshly pressed it glows white against the gloom.
The silence is a living thing. It crawls along the runner, slips into the space behind the candles, gathers in the wells of the spoons. Larkin is the first to break it, his voice careful, sanded down to politeness. “It’s beautiful, Whitby. Almost too beautiful.”
Whitby bows her head, the gesture so brief it might be aninvoluntary spasm. “I do what I can, Mr. Hughes. For the occasion.”
Lane grunts, which in the taxonomy of Lane-responses counts as gratitude. He tears a piece of bread from the basket, chews it down in two bites, and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand before remembering the occasion and using the napkin.
I watch the two of them, waiting for the line of division to assert itself, but something in the air tonight is different. There is a truce, or at least a mutual exhaustion, that keeps either man from his usual jabs and feints.
Whitby delivers the first course—a soup, pale and viscous, its surface stippled with drops of crimson oil. “Parsnip,” she says, and the word is both explanation and challenge. She sets the bowl before me, then stands behind my chair, hands laced at her waist.
I lift the spoon, my wrist trembling. The soup is hot, sweet, with a mineral undertone that lingers at the back of the throat. Larkin tastes his, then sets the spoon down, staring into the bowl as if trying to divine something from the dregs.
Lane finishes his in three mouthfuls, then pushes the bowl aside. “How long we supposed to pretend?” he says, addressing no one and everyone. Pretend this is normal. Pretend we’re not cursed. Pretend the entire house and everyone in it’s fate isn’t in my own small hands.
Whitby smiles, the expression so brief and cold it might have been a nervous tic. “As long as it takes,” she says, and retreats to the kitchen.
Larkin leans forward, his hands pressed flat on the tablecloth. “You look nervous,” he says to me, but the tone is not unkind.
I wonder if he is nervous too. “I am,” I admit.
“Why?” Lane asks, voice softer than I expect.
I look from one to the other, the two sides of the equation I am meant to balance. “Because tonight is the last night,” I say. “And because I have to decide what happens tomorrow.”
They take this in, neither man so much as blinking.
Larkin says, “There’s not really a choice, is there?”
