Averil Dean - The Undoing

Really, thinking about it, she was perfect for Julian Moss. Why, then, did she get the feeling he was slipping away?

As she got to the back of the drawer and the last handful of clothing, she stopped, staring at what she’d found.

She stood that way for several seconds, her pulse pounding in her throat. Then stiffly, methodically, she began to put his clothes back into the drawer, exactly as she’d found them. She let herself out of the room and closed the door behind her.

* * *

The lights kept flickering on and off.

Celia lifted her face and let the hot water stream down her neck, rinsing away the soap and shampoo. She screwed her eyes tight shut. She didn’t want to think about what new problem might have arisen with the wiring in the past thirty minutes, what new task she’d have to lay on Rory and Eric. She laid her hands against the walls as if the Blackbird might be soothed and stop its twitching.

The lights flickered again, and the room fell into darkness.

“Really?” she said.

She’d been looking forward to a few extra minutes to work out the strain in her shoulders and legs, the knotted bruise-like ache in her thumb that flared at the end of any long day spent with a paintbrush in her hand. But the old claw-foot tub was oddly shaped, treacherous even with the lights on, and the steam felt dense and pressurized in a darkness as complete as this.

She turned the faucets and pushed back the shower curtain. Water streamed with a metallic patter around her feet as she reached blindly for a towel.

The lights came back. Celia flinched in surprise and nearly fell, grabbing at the towel rack to steady herself.

Eric had come into the bathroom. He was leaning against the chipped tile counter, one hand in his pocket and the other on the light switch.

“Jesus,” she said. “You scared me.”

“Sorry.”

She stepped over the edge of the tub, wrapped the towel around her body and tucked it under her arm. Eric took a second towel from the rack and started to dry her hair, gathering it in one hand to squeeze the water to the tip. His face in the mirror was thin and haggard, a specter moving through patches of fog. Over his fingers, the four tattooed letters he’d gotten years before: , now sideways and reversed by the mirror. .

A moment later his reflection was swallowed completely by the steam.

She turned to face him.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” she said.

His eyes shifted to meet hers—wide, beautiful black eyes, the whites as pure and smooth as milk. He opened his mouth and closed it again, deciding what to say. There were harsh lines like cuts running down between his eyebrows.

“Eric—”

“Tell me something. I want you to tell me something and be honest.”

She nodded. The steam burned at the back of her throat.

“I want to know if you’re happy here,” he said. “With...with all of this.”

“Of course I am. This is what I always wanted.”

“What you always wanted. I thought you promised me an honest answer.”

“Maybe it’s a little more—”

“A lot more. What I’m asking is whether you’re happy.”

“I am.”

The steam had gathered along his eyebrows and beaded at the tips of his lashes. He tilted his head.

“I can’t tell,” he said. “I just never can tell whether you’re telling me the truth.”

“Do you want that to be a lie?”

“Maybe.”

“It isn’t.”

“Whatever you say.” He plucked a strand of wet hair from her face. “I notice you don’t wonder why I’m asking. Don’t you want to know whether I’m happy?”

A suffocating weight pushed at her chest. She wished they could go outside, where the air was thin and light.

“I...I thought...”

Eric ducked his head to get closer to hers.

“You thought what? That if you’re happy, everyone else is, too?”

“No, no—”

“Yes, yes. I think it hurts your tender little heart to imagine anything else. Easier not to look too close. That’s what I think.”

“That’s not fair.”

“No. Maybe not.” He laid the towel aside and reached for her hand. His thumb traced a small nervous pattern on the inside of her wrist. “But you have to see that this place is no good for us. I think we should leave. Just leave, right now. Tonight.”

A lump of panic rose in her chest.

“What are you talking about?”

“I just think, all of this, it’s too much.”

“You’re tired,” she said. “We’re all tired. We knew it would be this way at first. Probably jet-lagged, too...”

She drew her hand away, fussed over an open drawer and found a bottle of sleeping pills. She shook out two tablets. But Eric curled her fingers with his palm and held them closed.

“I don’t need another pill,” he said. His words, which had started uncertainly, tumbled out. “I need you. I need it to be just you and me. We can go someplace warm, someplace with palm trees and sand, where we can listen to the ocean every day, lay under the stars every night. We can get one of those big hammocks, baby, we can live someplace new, and you wouldn’t have to work so hard, and there wouldn’t be so much goddamn snow...”

His voice raced on, a current of words sweeping him far away from her. She looked at him, light-headed, as if some crucial underpinning had come loose; they could be sliding right now, down the Ridge as so many others had done before. She gripped the edge of the sink.

“I like the snow,” she said.

He drew back as if she’d struck him.

A slow anger bloomed in her chest. How like Eric to throw down something this impulsive and expect everyone else to follow.

“You want us to leave here after all this work?” she said. “Leave the hotel half-finished. Just walk away, with no reason and no explanation—”

“Oh, I’ve got my reasons.”

“No,” she said.

He dropped her hand. The sleeping pills clattered to the floor. He backed away a step.

“You won’t come,” he said.

“How can you even ask? This is our home. This is what we’ve always talked about. You and me and Rory. How can you think of leaving him behind?”

“Easily.”

“Look, I don’t know what’s going on between you two—”

“Because you don’t want to know.”

“Because I don’t need to know. It’s not my business. If you and Rory had a fight, go to him and work it out, because I sure as hell am not going to leave in the middle of the night and go off to sip mai tais on the beach with you.”

“I see,” he said. “You choose him over me.”

Celia sighed. She reached up to stroke the hard line of his jaw, as though it might soften if she were patient enough to smooth it away.

“I choose us,” she said. “The Blackbird. Like it always has been.”

He shook her off, his mouth set in an unhappy line. His gaze traveled down her body, and he reached for the towel she had tucked closed against her chest.

She caught it first. Her fist curled across the knot of terrycloth.

“Let’s rest tonight,” she said.

He laughed bitterly, peeling off his shirt as he turned to start the shower.

“And so it begins,” he said.

* * *

Celia changed her clothes, pulled her damp hair over her shoulder and opened the door. Julian was standing just outside the bedroom door, in the dim hallway. His shoulders blocked the light from the staircase and cast his face in shadow, but even so she could see the smile creep across his lips as he bent toward her.