Chapter 6: Table for Five

All afternoon I saw that red mark spreading across Alaric's thumb.

Darian had watched the video of it twice and said only, "Sunlight does not leave marks on his kind unless something has been taken from him."

I did not ask what.

I went to my parents' house that evening for one reason, which was to pack my things.

Darian offered to send a car and men.

I told him I would do it myself.

My mother's rose bed was a field of broken stems, and nobody had cleaned it up.

My family was already at the dinner table when I let myself in.

Five places were laid, and one of them was mine.

"Sit," my father said, without looking up. "We need to talk."

"I'm packing."

"Sit down, Rosalind."

I stayed standing in the dining room doorway with my arms crossed.

Perry sat at one end with his hands folded on the cloth.

Hugh sat at the other, picking the label off a beer bottle.

My mother set a dish of potatoes on the table and said, in a voice thin with strain, "Alaric's father called us at six this morning."

"Did he."

"He said you humiliated their name in front of both Houses. Rosalind, do you know what that does to us?"

"To us?"

"The Crowhurst family has been very good to this family."

I looked at her face.

She hadn't asked if I was hurt, or if I had eaten, or where I had slept.

"Mom, he left me in the driveway on my birthday for a woman who isn't even his fiancée."

"She's a widow with a child," my father said. "He was being decent."

"He was being decent to her."

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