Book of Shadows: First Chapter

ONE

She heard the car pull up behind her, and knew she should’ve been frightened, but she didn’t care.  About this new intruder or about anything.  Let whoever it was rob her, and then preferably shoot her so she wouldn’t have to feel this pain.  Rob her of, she thought, the five dollars in ones and the hair tie shoved into her wallet.  Which also contained a license that she couldn’t use, because she didn’t have a car.  She didn’t have anything.  A particularly fat raindrop hit the back of her neck and slid down, underneath her collar.  It felt like a slug.  She shivered.

Well, what did slugs feel like?  Did slugs, for that matter, feel anything themselves?  She bet they liked this rain.

Another great, hiccoughing sob racked her body.

A door slammed.

She stared at the tank in front of her.  An M-4 Sherman.  She thought.  But she wasn’t sure.  The parks of New England were full of such things, tanks and cannons and who knew what else.  She’d read a story awhile before about a cannon that had been sitting in one park since the Civil War, all that time loaded with a live round.  City workers had dutifully filled the muzzle with concrete, not bothering to check the breech.  Thus creating, she supposed, the potential for some terrifying shrapnel.  Another way to die, that she was missing out on.

Patton Park, which she could scarcely believe was a real place despite sitting in it, had been hailed by town worthies and local newspapers alike as the ideal green space.  There were multiple athletic facilities, including a skating pond—or, rather, a duck pond that sometimes froze—and, of course, there was this playground.  Which included, for extra age appropriate fun, this tank.

There was a crunch in the peastone.  Loud, even in this rain.  She tensed.

Someone sat down next to her.  On the park bench, thousands of which could be found just like it all over America.  She snuck a quick look, not wanting to be seen doing so, and her heart sank.

She hadn’t realized, until that moment, how much she’d hoped that the person would be Tom.

Not until she saw that it wasn’t.

The door hadn’t sounded like Tom’s stupid Jetta.  Tom, who’d claimed all this time that he was about to trade it in for a Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat.  And oh, why did it matter what Tom drove?

She was, quite possibly, about to be more than robbed by a complete stranger and all she could think about was someone else’s car choices.  She hated herself.  She should have left when she’d had the chance.  But of course she hadn’t, because she’d thought it was Tom.  Maybe if she stared fixedly ahead and didn’t move, this new person who wasn’t Tom would go away.

Without raping her, or dismembering her.

Because, really, who pulled over, in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, in rain like this, to pickpocket?

The rain stopped.  She looked up to see the faintest outlines of an expensive plaid, lit by the ambient glow from the nearest streetlight.  An umbrella.

She turned, facing her companion.

Her breath caught.  She swallowed.  It was her neighbor.

At least, she thought it was.  She hadn’t seen much of him before.  He was older than she, and moved in different circles.  The circles of adults, not students at Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School.  He wasn’t old old, wasn’t really…now that she looked at him, old at all.  She blinked the rain out of her lashes.  She hated to think how she looked right now.  He, on the other hand, looked like he’d just climbed out of a hatbox.  Her grandmother’s phrase.  Clean and fresh and pressed.

The hand holding the umbrella was strong and square and gloved in black.  It extended from the sleeve of an expensive trench.  More of the same plaid at the upturned collar.  Not flashy, just a lining.  He was buttoned up against the rain, the belt tied in a casual yet somehow glamorous knot at his waist, but she could see the lapels of a suit.  Gray.  A blue tie with white polka dots.  Small and understated.  The sort of thing a librarian might wear.  And a white shirt, as crisp as the rest of him.

He was pale, with dark hair cut into a sophisticated but somehow old fashioned style.  One that reminded her, this time not so much of librarians but British schoolboys who were up to no good.  Dark, almost black.  But maybe that was just the light—or lack thereof.  He had a strong jaw and a long, patrician nose.  And he was clean shaven.  His eyebrows were nicely shaped, but naturally.  Not like those of some of the boys at school, who’d taken to plucking them.

His lips, which were full and with a bit of a cupid’s bow, neither smiled nor frowned.  But it was his eyes that arrested her.  There was something wrong with his eyes.  They were so pale and so…intent.  Expressionless, just like his lips, but they bored into her.

Flustered, she looked away.  She hadn’t meant to stare.  She swallowed again.  What must he think of her?  And why, again, was he here?

He’d done nothing wrong.  So far.  She had no reason to be afraid.  And yet some low, animal part of her told her to run.  To run, and to keep running.  The part of her that remembered crouching in the shadows, heart hammering out of her chest, as she prayed for the greater predators to pass her by.  The part of her that understood why squirrels froze in headlights.

But the part of her that had been raised in Larkspur and, until the year previous, attended Redwood High School had better manners.  Girls from Marin County didn’t run screaming from chivalrous neighbors.  Or any neighbors.  They thanked them politely as the rules of society dictated.

Even girls from horrible Hamilton, Massachusetts didn’t act on the knowledge that men were fat, or short.  Or creepy.  At least, not girls older than five.

So instead she stared even more fixedly at the tank.

“You’re unwell.”  His voice had the slightest trace of an accent.  She realized that she’d never heard it before.

She shook her head.  But she was crying again.  And God, she wished she were alone.  If Tom wasn’t coming back, that was.  Which he very clearly wasn’t.  Was probably warm and dry, at this exact moment, at the house of some other girl.

A flash of white in the corner of her eye and she turned, startled.  To see that her neighbor was offering her a handkerchief.  Not a pull from one of those little tissue packs but a real live handkerchief.  She took it, and blew her nose.  Sounding like a dying rhinoceros.

This was so embarrassing.  But the harder she tried not to cry, the harder she cried.  That she had an audience, and this audience, made things exponentially worse.  She’d wanted to contemplate the end of life as she knew it alone.  But this…this was like being caught making out with your Edward pillow by your dad.  If your dad were a crazy serial killer.

“I…thought you were Tom,” she said lamely.  And wondered in the next minute why she’d told him.  And wondered, especially later on, why she’d talked to him at all.  He who’d set off every alarm bell that could be set off.  Who was much scarier, that same small part of her claimed, than the events which had led to her being on this bench in the first place.  Events that even now she could scarcely credit but for which, nonetheless, she was certain that she was to blame.

“And Tom is…?”

“My boyfriend.”  She shook her head.  “My ex-boyfriend.”

“And you thought I might be he.”

“No.  Yes.”  She blew her nose again.  “I don’t know.”  Her laugh was a sharp, mirthless sound, a bitter tonic taken entirely at her own expense.  “I was preparing myself,” she said, “to accept an apology.”  Except she hadn’t realized that until after he’d sat down.  “Because maybe he had a good explanation and maybe….”  Her composure, as brittle as it was, cracked.  “And because I had so much invested in this relationship.  I…I loved him.”

He waited, in silence, as her tears took their course.

Tears and rain, both seemed never ending.

And then he spoke.

“I apologize,” he said quite formally, “that I am not Tom.  And that he is not here, indeed, to do as he should.”

The handkerchief was now thoroughly used.  She could never possibly give it back to him, that would be too disgusting.  She wondered if he had another one.  “That’s okay,” she said.  And this time she managed a smaller laugh but one that didn’t feel quite so much like a knife to the gut.  “He’s…not who I thought I was, I guess.  Not who I wanted him to be.”

“Clearly.  As here you sit.  No gentleman should ever abandon a lady to the rain.”

And to other hazards, came the unspoken words implied by his tone.  She turned again, her eyes meeting his for the second time.  Her eyes puffed up when she’d been crying and she was certain that she had mascara halfway down her face.  “That one’s not his fault,” she said.  “I jumped out of the car.”

A pause.  “Then you must have had good reason for doing so.”

She twisted the handkerchief in her hands.  “He wanted…we were further down the road.  He wanted to go park at Appleton Farms, where no one ever is this time of night, and….  But I wasn’t ready.  I told him I wasn’t ready.”  She thought she might rip the handkerchief apart.  For some reason, Tom thought being from California had made her into a sexual wonder woman and he hadn’t believed her.  Had, in fact, become quite certain during that brief interchange that she’d put out for the entire football team.  Because nothing said slut like not wanting to venture much beyond second base.  And certainly not score her first home run in the backseat of a Jetta.

Like, oh, let’s go out for ice cream.  And then we can stop for a quick sex.  “He tried to make me, so I jumped out of the car.”  She could still feel his hands on her wrists, still smell the stomach turning mixture of Fierce and rank sweat.  He’d always smelled so good to her but in that moment he’d suddenly become repellent.  So she’d wrenched her right hand away, fumbling for the door handle as she fought him off, and in one swift motion opened the door and pitched herself out backwards.

Landing on her butt on the asphalt, her legs sticking straight up in the air.

She’d recovered herself quickly, preparing to turn and run as he’d gunned the motor and sped off.  Leaving her shocked and trembling, as uncertain of herself as she was of whether she was in danger or not.  Thankful that she was in flats, she’d turned and started to walk home.

And gotten as far as this bench.

The sense of unreality that had entered her in the car had, it seemed, stayed with her through the present moment.  Which explained why, instead of running from him as she should have and Emily Post be damned, she was revealing her most intimate thoughts to a perfect stranger.  And one whose own perfect manners made him all the more terrifying.

“It’s not because I’m religious,” she said.  In truth she probably considered herself an atheist.  She blew her nose again, but this time only to clear out old garbage.  She was beginning to feel a little more like herself.  Something about repeating the story helped to clarify it, in her mind.  “It’s that…I mean, I’m seventeen.”  Almost eighteen, truthfully.  Just a few more months.

“He told me that if I loved him, I’d do it.”

She returned her gaze to the rain.  And the tank.  And the gazebo, on the other side of the duck pond, that she hadn’t even tried walking to.  Because she hadn’t, quite frankly, had the strength.

Which was how, ten minutes later or an hour, she wasn’t sure, her neighbor had found her here.  Hair plastered to her scalp and looking like a drowned rat.  And shivering, because even though it was only September it was cold.  And windy, each gust heavy with the promise of the sea change that would soon strike the New England coast.  If it wasn’t at this moment.  From summer’s balmy trade winds to the arctic blasts driven down through Canada, bringing vibrant fall leaves and then snow.  And what seemed like perpetual dark.  She wrapped her arms around herself and wished that she were elsewhere.  Like back in California, where nothing this humiliating had ever happened.

“You did the right thing,” he said.

If he turned out to be one of those religious nuts, she’d scream.

“True love waits.”  He paused.  That gaze, so intent, was still fixed on her.  But then, what he said next surprised her.  “A man who tries to trick a woman into acting against her better judgment doesn’t truly love her.  But is, rather, attempting only to ensorcel her with promises of love.”  He paused.  “Love is about accepting one’s partner for who she, or she, truly is.”

“Oh.”

“All of us deserve that love.  True love.  But, sadly, not all of us are capable of giving it in return.  As grieving as this experience might have been,” he continued, in that same calm, measured tone, “you also have cause to feel fortunate.”

Her brow furrowed.

“That your Tom has outed himself, now, as a cad.”

She was struck both by his insight and by his peculiarly old fashioned turn of phrase.  She half expected him to accuse Tom of base calumny, or start marveling over iron horses and kinetoscopes.  But he was right, of course.  People who loved each other didn’t pressure each other into doing things they didn’t want.  And they didn’t leave each other stranded in the middle of a downpour.

It felt strange, hearing herself referred to as a woman, rather than a girl.  As an adult.  She found herself wondering how old he was.  Maybe late twenties?  If he was in his thirties, it early thirties.  She wouldn’t have said thirties at all, even as a possibility, except…there was something around his eyes.  His strange, piercing eyes.  A tightness there.  He wasn’t, like, wrinkly.  In fact, his skin was quite smooth.  Flawless, even.  He just didn’t look young.

“Is there someone who can come and fetch you?”

She shook her head.  “My mom is out on a date.”

“Surely she’d be grateful for the interruption.”

She shook her head again.  “You don’t know my mom.”

Lorelai did not want to be interrupted.  Ever.  Especially not during promising first dates with fair-haired dermatologists.  She was a woman who, more and more since the divorce, saw her only child as little more than an annoyance.  She wasn’t cruel, precisely, but nor was she…interested.

“Allow me to escort you home, then.”

“I’m fine.”

He arched a single eyebrow, the barest movement, but said nothing.

“Really.”  She dropped her gaze to the handkerchief.  “I…I’m sure Tom will come back.”  Although he wouldn’t, of course.

“I don’t think that getting into a car with him would be a terribly good idea.”

“Well….”

“You’re upset.  You shouldn’t be alone and shouldn’t, either, be left to the dubious mercies of ungallant men.”

“I shouldn’t….”  She trailed off.  God, she felt so stupid.  And rude.  Even though she was only being normal.  “I shouldn’t get into cars with strange men.”

Especially not strange adult men who had reputations around town.  They might not have spoken before this night, but she knew generally who he was.  And knew too that some of his, ah, habits had drawn attention.  She’d heard her own mother talking about him.  She knew, now, because she recognized the description.  Lorelai had told her friend, on the phone, that he looked like some British actor.  British or Irish or something.  He’d played some king with personal problems in some dreadful soap but who cared about history.  That was Lorelai.

She’d gleaned, though, from this conversation that her companion didn’t get out much.  At least during the day.  No one knew precisely what he did for a living, either, to afford his nice house.  But he gave generously to local causes and so most residents overlooked his possible ties to organized crime.  Or organ trafficking.  Or Hollywood.  Or something.  And his lawn was always nicely manicured.

“I agree,” he said.  “You shouldn’t.”

“I don’t have my key.”  The realization that she’d forgotten it on the hall table was, among others, what had led to her giving up.  And while she might feel a little better than she had before, she still felt extremely sorry for herself.  And frightened.

“You can wait at my house, until your mother is done with her date.”

“You’re very strange.”

“I promise not to hurt you this night.”

Maybe it was how he’d said it, but she believed him.

She’d only really consider later that he’d said this night.

He hadn’t promised not to hurt her forever.