Slapping Her Out of Her Delusion novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Ice for the Hand

In the boathouse Kendrick brings ice and blankets, Lydia hands back her engagement ring, and from the window she sees Gwen cry toward the house and check who is watching.

The boathouse smelled of varnish and cold river.

Three old rowing shells hung from the rafters, and a cot stood against the wall under a pile of wool blankets.

Kendrick lit the stove while I stood in the middle of the floor with my coat still on.

I didn't notice my right hand until he turned around and looked at it.

It was red from the palm to the fingertips, and it throbbed in time with my pulse.

"Sit," he said.

"I'm fine."

"You slapped a woman hard enough to rattle a staircase. Sit down, Miss Aldercott."

"You called me Lydia an hour ago."

"I was outside, and I was upset." He took a clean napkin from his pocket. "I'm inside now."

I sat on the cot.

He filled the napkin with ice from a thermos he had somehow brought with him, and he took off his white gloves and tucked them in his belt.

Then he took my wrist and pressed the ice into my palm.

His fingers were warm and dry, and they didn't shake.

I looked at the back of his hand instead of his face.

There was a thin white burn on his knuckle from some old kitchen mishap.

I had never noticed it before, and I had been noticing the rest of him for years.

"Does the staff handbook have a rule about this?" I said. "A guest gets slapped, the butler brings ice?"

"Miss Cuyler isn't a guest. She lives in the gatehouse. She's a resident."

"You opened the front door for her."

"Yes."

"You walked her into my father's foyer and you didn't say one word to me."

His eyes came up.

"Your mother gave the order. I carry the door, Lydia. That is all I am allowed to do in that house."

"That's a coward's answer."

"It's the answer I have."

He held the ice there a moment longer, and neither of us looked away.

Then he stood and put the gloves back on, finger by finger.

"There's soup on the shelf and bread in the tin," he said. "I'll be in the house. Ring the kitchen line if you need anything."

"Does the kitchen line still work down here?"

"It does now."

He left.

I sat there with my hand going numb and my heart going the other way.

I had been home for nine days.

In those nine days I hadn't cried once, and I wasn't going to start now.

I ate the soup standing up.

The boathouse door opened at nine without a knock.

Preston came in with his collar undone and my ring in his fist.

He looked around the room.

"You're sleeping here? This is a shed."

"It has a stove."

"Lyd." He sat on the edge of my cot without being asked. "Your mother is trying to help you. Gwen's agreed not to take it further. All you have to do is apologize at Sunday lunch."

"Take what further? It was a slap."

"Her cheek is bruised."

"It was a slap, Preston. Not a car."

He rubbed his face.

"Thirty guests are coming Sunday. You say sorry, you hug her, we all go back to normal."

"What was normal?"

"Us."

I looked at the man I had agreed to marry.

He was good-looking in a pressed way, and he smelled like the cologne I had bought him, and he believed whoever cried in front of him last.

"Did Gwen tell you why I hit her?" I asked.

He hesitated.

"She said you were jealous. She said the whole town knew your father loved her like a daughter and you couldn't stand it."

That sat in the room between us for a second.

"She said that," I said.

"She said it kindly."

"I'm sure she did."

I took his hand, turned it palm up, and closed his fingers around the ring.

"Keep it," I said. "Give it to someone who cries."

He stood up too fast.

"You're making a mistake."

"Then it'll be mine."

He left, and the door banged in the wind behind him.

I stood at the window to cool my face against the glass.

The lawn ran uphill from the river to the house, which was lit in every window like a ship.

A figure stood alone on the end of the dock below me.

It was Gwen, in a white nightgown and a grey shawl, her curls blowing across her face.

She was crying with her whole body, her head tipped back toward the big house.

I thought, for one soft second, that she might be hurting in the real way.

Then she stopped and looked over her shoulder at the lit windows.

She waited until a curtain moved on the second floor.

And once it moved, she began to sob again, louder.

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