Page 52 of The Dearly Departed

“Yeah, I do now,” she countered. “But for a long time, I didn’t. I had to, like, get used to it.”

I felt I understood. Not in the same way, I was sure, but fresh fruits and vegetables, or good food of any kind, had become an acquired taste after I survived on the little bit I was allowed—or stole. It wasn’t until Leonard introduced us to produce, roasted meats, and anything that wasn’t packaged in a bag or can that my brothers and I began to appreciate the finer things in life. And I had been well into my teens then.

Leonard had done a lot of things for us, but never once had I considered betrayal to be one of them.

“No man is above sin,” I remembered him telling me once, but I hadn’t thought he could be speaking about himself.

To me, Leonard was the closest thing I’d ever met to a saint.

A sorrowful ache grew in the pit of my stomach as the waiters encircled the table, removing our salad plates and replacing them with a bowl of some kind of brown soup.

Looks like that time I had food poisoning, I thought, and before I could stop myself, I chuckled out loud.

The woman beside me leaned into my arm, the soft, rounded curve of her breast pressed against me, and every bone in my body froze at the same time as every ounce of blood dropped south. The innocent touch of a woman’s body against mine was foreign to me. Everything before had been deliberate and devious, and ever since, I’d kept myself locked away with the purpose of avoiding people and the things they might want from me. But now, with her against me, I started to consider that maybe I could find it in me to reassess, if an unintended touch could arouse me as much as if she’d grabbed me by the dick beneath this table.

“Something funny there, Jekyll?” she whispered.

Again with the nicknames, and it made me smile.

I cleared my throat, and in that fake, put-on voice, I replied, “This soup looks like shit.”

She stifled a giggle. “Oh God, it really does.”

I glanced over to watch her push a spoon through the mixture of liquid and lumpiness.

“Was it necessary to add corn?” I muttered, leaning closer to her, and I swore I thought I could smell something sweet, something undeniably feminine, through the mask.

She really did giggle then, and not only did she catch the attention of Dracula beside her, but of Gerald and his wife, Virginia.

“What are you laughing about?” Dracula asked.

“Nothing,” the woman beside me said, clearing her throat and schooling her emotions, but as she poked at the bits of corn floating to the surface of the lumpy brown liquid, her lips fought against another smile.

“Analise,” Virginia said, pulling my attention across the table, where I found Gerald’s wife’s eyes pointed directly at the woman beside me.

Analise.

The name rang out like church bells, as if it suddenly all made sense for that name to be hers. As if my soul had known all along and it just needed to hear it spoken to be reminded. And, oh, it was a lovely name. A fancy name. Like this food, like this house. And I realized she belonged here, in this place that radiated wealth and beauty.

Very much unlike me.

Analise shoved a spoonful of soup into her mouth and murmured a, “Hmm?” in response.

An awfully unladylike move, I thought with a smirk, concealed beneath the mask.

“Benjamin mentioned earlier that he was looking for apartments,” Virginia answered, keeping her eyes on Analise as she very carefully lifted her spoon to her lips.

Benjamin. I furrowed my brow as I grabbed my own spoon to blend in. Who’s Benjamin?

“I heard,” Analise replied with a nod, turning slightly toward Dracula beside her.

Ah. I stored the name away as I drew circles along the soup’s surface with the tip of the spoon.

“Somewhere in the Boston area, right?” she added.

“Yeah,” Benjamin replied. “Maybe a little outside of the city, but somewhere around there. Depends on what I can find.”

I leaned forward enough to glance over in Benjamin’s direction, just in time to watch him shrug. He feigned a look of nonchalance, but couldn’t hide the mischief in his eyes. I knew that look. I’d seen it many times. It was mean. Evil. Not the look of a boy up to no good, but a man who had every intention of doing something bad.