With calculated deliberateness, she unzipped the portfolio, watching me the whole time. “Wonder what our island boy has in here,” she said. “Finger paintings? Stick figure cartoons? Perhaps we’ll get a glimpse into how the other side lives.”
Nicholas joined her. Suzette looked up at me, brow furrowed.
Mallory stared at the painting on top and her jaw went slack. Nicholas raised his eyebrows and stared from the painting to me, then back again.
“Wow,” Mallory said. “Not quite what I expected.”
Nicholas lifted the landscape painting of the harbor and flipped through several subsequent canvases underneath.
Stop, I willed him in my head. Please stop. It felt as though my insides were dissolving. Then it happened.
“Hey, that’s Anna,” Mallory said. “So’s the next one . . . and the next.”
Suzette ran up the steps to look as I felt myself shrinking into the ground beneath my feet. Soundlessly, they ravaged my privacy, scrutinized my very soul as they flipped through drawing after drawing after painting. I slumped to the ground, covering my face with my fadth="1emhand to mask my outrage and pain.
“What is going on? Why’s Liam in the yard?” Anna sounded angry. “What are . . . oh, my God . . .” Her voice trailed off into a whisper.
I kept my head down, containing my anguish.
“He didn’t want to show us, but we fixed that. They’re all of you, Annie,” Nicholas said. “Somebody’s crushing bad. Nothing wrong with dreaming big, I suppose.”
“Screw off,” Anna said. The sound of the zipper on the portfolio was followed by gravel crunching underfoot. I stared at my trembling fist and held my breath.
“Hey,” Anna whispered. “Are you okay?”
The smell of lilies filled my nose and her fingers raked through my hair, rendering me whole again. I nodded, my anger dispersing like sea foam on the shore.
She placed the portfolio in my lap. “I’m sorry they did that. I’m glad you brought your art. Will you show me some of it later?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” She brushed her lips across mine. “Look at me, Liam.” I did. Free of makeup and hair still wet from a shower, she was too beautiful to be real—like a dream. “Remember what I said on the jetty?” she whispered. “Hold that in your heart and not what they just did. Keep that demon down, okay?”
I nodded and stared into her crystal blue eyes and something in me stirred. Not the demon. It was a flutter in my chest as beautiful and bright as the sun breaking through storm clouds.
Fists balled at her sides, she mounted the steps to the porch. She must have worn a fierce expression because Nicholas appeared genuinely unnerved.
They were too far away for me to hear her with her back to me, but I could hear Nicholas. “Look, I didn’t take it, Annie.”
Unintelligible angry words from Anna cut him off.
“We were only having fun. Come on. It’s no big deal.”
Anna’s shoulders rose and fell as she took deep breaths but didn’t respond.
“You can’t really be mad. He’s just a guy from the village. He’s nothing. A nobody.”
Anna’s voice was raised enough for me to hear. “He’s not a nobody to me.”
Nicholas stood. “Look. I can totally understand the appeal of going slumming. We all need to walk on the other side sometimes, but you are taking this way too far. Nobody got hurt.”
“Liam got hurt,” Anna growled.
“So what?” Nicholas said, throwing his arms up. “It’s not like it matters. What’s gotten into you? It’s like I don’t even know you anymore.”
“You don’t,” Anna said between gritted teeth. “You never have and you never will, Nicholas. You are too selfish to see me or anyone else. The helicopter is waiting. Go home.”
Mallory grabbed the suitcase at her feet and descended the stairs without saying good-bye to Anna. Wordlessly, she passed by me through the gate. Nicholas was right behind her. I stood as he neared. He extended his hand and gave me a brilliant, straight-toothed smile. “No hard feelings there, Liam, right?” I shook his hand, looking over his shoulder to the porch, where Anna was hugging Suzette. He leaned closer. “You may have her right now, but she’ll get bored with you soon. She always gets bored. And ws besslyhen she comes home, you’ll be nothing but a failed experiment.” He gave my hand a painful squeeze. “Enjoy it while it lasts.”
My demon roused and I squeezed his hand back, causing him to flinch. “I will. I plan to enjoy every second of it. And trust me, Nicky; she won’t get bored.”
Practiced ease gone, he jerked his hand away and stormed out of the gate. My demon delighted in his anger and discomfort.
“Sorry about that nasty bit of business,” Suzette said, slinging her tote bag over her shoulder. “Nicholas and Mallory can be thoughtless, but they aren’t really that bad.” She stopped near me and smiled. “I’m sorry they stole your portfolio, but I’m glad in a way because I got to see it. You’re an amazing artist. Your work has sort of an Andrew Wyeth feel. Keep at it. You’re really good.” Then she hugged me. “Take care of Anna, okay?”
I nodded.
“Happy birthday,” Suzette said as Anna reached us. “Thanks for having us to your island.”
Anna gave a wistful smile. “Sorry I bailed on you guys last night.”
“That’s perfectly understandable. In your shoes, I’d have done the same.” Suzette winked and headed out the gate.
Anna took a deep breath. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
She made the snort-through-her-nose sound. “I’m not. Let’s go wish them good riddance—I mean see them off.”
By the time we reached the helipad, the doors to the vehicle were closed and the rotors were starting up. We shielded our eyes and closed our lids partially to keep out the whirling debris stirred by the enormous blades. With a deafening roar, the machine lifted off, removing Anna’s friends from my life.
She waved until there was no possibility they could see us any longer and we were again alone. She wrapped her arms around my waist and I held her against me, willing the world to stop so that I could simply revel in the joy of her nearness.
“You smell so good,” she said, nuzzling against my chest.
I conjured my best Francine accent. “Irish Spring soap, lassie.”
She laughed and my heart leapt.
“Can you hang out with me awhile?”
“I can think of nothing I would rather do.”
I followed her through the gate and stooped to pick up the portfolio.
“Are you hungry?” she asked.
I nodded and followed her up onto the porch, wondering if I would ever grow accustomed to the peculiar sensation that I was being swallowed whole by the house every time I entered. Probably not, I conceded with a shudder as we stepped into the entry hall. From the archway under the gaping mandibles of the double stairway, Deirdre Byrne appeared. I hadn’t seen her in a long time. She shot us a frightened look, then scurried away.
“That’s the new maid,” Anna said. “She’s a little freaked out, I guess. Understandable if you have to deal with Miss Ronan on a regular basis.”
Instead of going left into the dining room, where we had been last night, Anna led me to a passage on the right. Wall sconces that looked like inverted raptor claws lined the narrow space, giving the impression they would grab a passersby if he got within reach.
Before my mo">Be inverbid imagination could get the best of me, we entered an enormous kitchen. The floor was the same black marble as the entry hall, and the cabinets that stretched all the way to the ceiling appeared to be made of mahogany. The stainless-steel-clad countertops matched the enormous double oven with eight burners on top. There was a sink big enough to bathe in and on the far wall, a rack held utensils and knives in a terrifying, deadly display. All those knives, I marveled, one of every shape and size. I had only one. I only needed one, but with this kind of wealth, it wasn’t about need.
> “I’m starving,” Anna said, pulling a pot down from a rack above a gigantic chopping block table in the center of the room. “Miss Ronan has the day off, thank God, so we’re on our own.”
I wondered where Miss Ronan would go or what she would do on a day off.
Anna pulled a pitcher and a white paper package from the refrigerator and placed them next to the pot. She poured cream from the pitcher into a cup on the counter near the stove. “I’ve been dying to get in here and make something, but she’s always lurking. She’s like a disease or something.”
Too bad there was not a cure to make her go away, I thought as I watched Anna return the cream pitcher to the refrigerator and remove a jar of amber liquid and some leeks.
Again, I marveled at the sheer size and extravagance of the room. The entire village could outfit their kitchens with what I could see on display alone. I could only wonder what was inside the numerous cabinets and drawers.
Anna walked to the utensil rack and selected a knife with a large triangular blade. After washing the leeks in the sink, she returned to the chopping block and removed and discarded the dark green ends. She just threw them away. On Dòchas, very little was thrown away. The tops were perfectly edible, and it seemed a waste. With incredible speed and accuracy, she diced the leeks into tiny pieces and scooped them into the pot, adding a chunk of butter from the white paper.
“So, you can set that down if you want,” she said, nodding to the portfolio I still clutched.
I laid it on a table near a door that opened to the outside of the house.
Anna placed the pot on the stove and turned a knob. The burner under her pot lit as if by magic without a match.
“Any more fallout from the Johnny thing?” she asked, opening the lid to a bin in the corner.
“No.”
She pulled several potatoes out and selected a funny-looking knife from the rack. “Good.” She paused, a potato in hand, and simply stared into my eyes. “That was scary. I thought I was going to lose you.”
“I thought you were going to lose me too.”
She smiled and ran the funny knife over the potato, leaving a curled strand of peel in its wake.
“Can I do something to help?” I asked.
“Nope. This is my thing. I love to cook. Just have a seat and be amazed.” She winked.
I sat at the table where I’d placed my portfolio and watched as she deftly removed the peel from the remaining potatoes. The sunlight slanted through the transom at the top of the room, illuminating her striking face from an angle, and I longed to pull out my sketch pad.
She paused in the middle of chopping the potatoes into cubes. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re staring.”
“I’m admiring.”
She blushed and turned her attention back to her task, chopping with incredible dexterity and speed. She hummed lightly under her breath as she stirred the leeks around in the pot. “If I could, I’d spend all day doing this.”
“I would assume you have staff to cook for you.”
She smiled and slid the potato cubes into a bowl she held under the counter edge. “Yep. That’s who got me interested at first. Our cook, Beth, used to let me help her when I was a little girl.”
She poured the golden liquid into the pot. “Vegetable stock Miss Ronan saved from yesterday’s meal.” She stirred the contents with a big spoon.
My hackles stood on end at the mere thought of Miss Ronan. I remembered Anna’s plan to pump her for information. “Did you speak with her about me yet?”
She put the lid on the pot and turned the dial on a timer. “A little. She wasn’t very forthcoming. She just said to avoid you.”
“Please don’t.”
She met my eyes directly. “I can’t.”
The metallic ticking of the timer matched the tempo of my aching heart. No matter how much I wished to halt time or pretend the Cailleach was but a bad dream, my moments with Anna were running down, just like the minutes on that timer. In order to save her, I would have to turn my back on the first happiness I’d ever known and persuade her to leave.
17
I have no time to dote or dream:
You call it hope—that fire of fire!
It is but agony of desire.
—Edgar Allan Poe,
from “Tamerlane,” 1827
The soup has a bit to go,” Anna said, pulling out a chair at the small table by the door. “Do you want something to drink?”
“No. Thanks.” I sat across from her.
She rubbed her hands over the leather portfolio. “This was a surprise. It’s hard for you to share your art, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
She ran her fingertips along the zipper present on three sides. “I noticed how uncomfortable you were when Francine showed me your paintings at the store. What are you afraid of?”
What I always feared: rejection—the one constant in my life. I didn’t answer but watched as her fingertips skimmed their way along the zipper to the end.
“Did you bring them to show me?”
I held my breath as she grasped the pull on the zipper. She met my eyes, asking permission without words.
“Yes,” I whispered.
My heart raced as she traced the pull around the portfolio, laying it open.
She met my eyes again before turning her attention to the contents. She stared a long time at the landscape on top, tipping her head slightly as she studied it.
“You have a great sense of motion and colontthdth=or,” she said. “Who taught you?”
“No one.”
She flipped the page to the next landscape. “My parents sent me to art school every summer for three years.”
“So you paint?”
She flipped to the next canvas. “Nope. I suck at it.” She slid that one aside, revealing a portrait of her I had done last month based on a tabloid picture. “But you don’t.” Her crystalline blue eyes met mine and I held my breath, waiting for her reaction. I had taken some poetic license in this painting and had given it an impressionistic flair, using broad strokes and intensifying the colors.
She turned to the next, then the next and shook her head. “You are so wasted here, Liam.”
As she flipped through the remainder of the paintings and sketches, I noticed her fingers trembling. I caught her hand in mine. “What?” I asked.
She didn’t pull her eyes away from the watercolor of her in a party dress I’d painted years ago based on a photo found in a New York newspaper. “How long?” she whispered.
“I beg your pardon?”
“How long have you been in love with me, Liam?”
“Forever.”
In silence, she examined the rest of my work. As she reached the last one, a practice sketch for the painting of us as children that hung in Francine’s kitchen, tears filled her eyes. She gently closed and zipped the portfolio, not looking at me, and set it on the floor, leaning it against the wall.
I had no idea what was running through her mind that would cause such a reaction.
The timer gave a shrill series of dings and she moved to the stove to tend her creation. She added some cream from the cup she had poured earlier and continued stirring, keeping her back to me.
“Anna,” I said, standing behind her. “I’m sorry if I upset you somehow.”
She reduced the fire under the pot to a flickering blue ring, then turned to face me. “Sorry. You’re sorry?”
I nodded.
“You’ve been stuck here in this godforsaken place suffering all kinds of abuse and neglect while I’ve been off running around not even aware you existed, and you’re sorry?”
Stunned, I took a step back.
“I’m the one who’s sorry, Liam. I’m going to make it right, too.”
She had it all wrong. There was nothing to rectify. “I don’t want your pity or charity.”
“What do you want?”
I wanted her—body, mind, and spirit—all
of her, and I wanted her now, but that was impossible. “I want you safe.”
“Oh, brother.” She pulled two bowls from the cabinet to the right of the stove and ladled soup into them, then placed a spoon in each. From a basket at the end of the counter, she procured two crusty rolls and put them on a plate. She carried the plate and one of the bowls to the table. “Let’s eat.”
I grabbed the remaining bowl and followed her. I had no idea potatoes could taste so good. She had thrown spices in, but I hadn’t paid close attention. “This is amazing. Truly.”
She beamed. “Thanks. I’m going to open a vegetarian five-star restaurant someday. Dad says he’ll send me to culienddnnary school in Paris next year if I stay out of trouble.”
“S’cuse me, miss,” Deirdre said from the doorway. “Miss Ronan told me to attend to you. Do you need anything?” Her eyes flitted to the roll in my hand. I knew that look.
Evidently, Anna recognized it too. “Come on in and join us,” she said to the girl.
Deirdre shook her head so vigorously, a hairpin fell out. “Oh, no, miss. My mother and Miss Ronan told me to never fra—frat—um . . .”
“Fraternize,” Anna said.
“Yes, miss. That. I’m not supposed to be doin’ that with you.”
Anna stood and pulled a chair over. “You wouldn’t be. You’d just be following my orders.”
Wide-eyed, the girl watched as Anna ladled another bowl of soup and grabbed a roll from the basket. She set them on the table and gestured to the girl to sit.
“No, miss. I couldn’t.” Saying no to hot, fresh food was certainly painful for her. She clutched the apron at her waist and twisted it in her fingers, never taking her eyes off the table.
Anna sat. “It is not a request; it’s an order from your boss. Now sit.”
“And . . .” The girl twisted her apron even more violently.
Anna shifted in her chair to see her. “And what?”
“Him.” She gestured to me with her chin.
Just when I was feeling normal, reality crashed down upon my head. Who was I kidding? Myself, obviously. I put my spoon down, no longer hungry.