REBORN: SHE RULES THE WORLD

CHAPTER 5: A PROPOSAL WAITING

Tyler walked her out through the school gates with his arm around her shoulders, slowly enough that every student on the front steps could watch. Heads turned. Girls from the A and B classes whispered behind their hands, and one of Tyler’s swimming friends called out from the wall, “Brooks! You’re picking up strays now?” Evelyn did not even look round. “Careful,” she said, in a voice just loud enough to carry. “Strays bite.” The boys on the wall burst into laughter, Tyler laughed along as though it were a private joke between lovers, and his arm tightened around her. She let it. Every witness was a line in a ledger, and every smile he wore in public was one more he would have to explain later.

The Honeycomb Café sat on the corner of River Street, all warm yellow light and the smell of caramel, and Tyler had chosen the corner table by the window because it was the one place in the room where people could see him being devoted. He ordered for both of them without asking, a vanilla latte for her, though she hated vanilla, and a slice of lemon cake she had once said was her favorite, a year ago, on a different life’s afternoon. Evelyn sat with her hands folded on the table and let him. In the life she remembered, she had been so grateful to be chosen that she would have eaten the napkin.

“I’ve been thinking about us a lot,” Tyler said, stirring his coffee with that slow, boyish frown he used when he wanted to look sincere. “About after graduation. My father says there’s a flat by the river that could be ours, and I could start at the docks, and you wouldn’t have to live in that house anymore. You deserve better than what they do to you, Ev.” He reached across the table and took her hand. “I want to take care of you. For good.” Evelyn looked at his thumb moving across her knuckles, and a dry, cold humor rose in her chest. She had heard every word of this speech before, in this café, at this table, with the same pause before for good. “That’s very sweet,” she said, and tilted her head so that her smile looked shy. “You say things so beautifully, Tyler. It must take a lot of practice.” He laughed, delighted, and missed it completely.

“And Vanessa?” she asked lightly, spooning cake. “You’re always so worried about her.” “She’s like a little sister,” he said at once, a shade too quickly. “She’s so fragile, Ev. The doctors don’t know how much time she has. Honestly, I think about it a lot, how much your family has been through.” “How kind of you,” Evelyn said, “to carry them all.” She excused herself to the washroom, locked the stall behind her, and took the little linen ledger from inside her sleeve. In small, tidy letters she wrote: 4:20 p.m. T. Brooks. Promises flat by river, 'for good.' Brings up V. unprompted, twice. Says she is 'fragile.' Says doctors give 'no time.' She read the line twice, and for a moment the old ache rose, the ghost of the girl who had believed him, and she shut it away as carefully as she had shut the book.

When she came back to the table his phone was buzzing against the wood. He read the message, and his whole face rearranged itself into something grave and tender in a single practiced movement, like a man pulling on a coat. “It’s your stepmother. Vanessa’s had a relapse. She collapsed in the hall, and they’re asking for me.” His eyes flicked to Evelyn. “And you.” “Me,” said Evelyn. “How touching.” She finished the last bite of lemon cake, patted her mouth with a napkin, and stood. “Let’s not keep the invalid waiting.”

* * *

Diane was at the front door before the car had stopped, her pale silk gone and her face composed into a mask of brittle grief. She did not look at Tyler. She looked straight at Evelyn. “Your sister is lying on the sofa gasping for air,” she said, her voice trembling with well-rehearsed force, “because of the way you spoke to her this morning. The cruelty of it. The doctor says her heart cannot bear such shocks.” Evelyn removed her gloves finger by finger. “I told her to eat her breakfast, Diane. If that’s enough to stop her heart, the doctor should look at her tea.” Diane drew a sharp breath. “How dare” “And you might ask your daughter,” Evelyn said, stepping past her into the hall, “why she can gasp for air and scream across a room at the same time.” Diane’s fingers closed around her arm, nails biting through the sleeve. “You will regret speaking to me like that,” she hissed, too low for Tyler to hear. Evelyn looked down at the hand, then at her stepmother’s face, with the polite, level interest of someone examining a stain. “I regret a great many things, Diane. Not this.” She removed the hand from her sleeve the way one removes a fly from a plate.

The drawing room had been arranged like a stage. Vanessa lay on the long sofa under a cashmere blanket with her hair spread across a cushion and one white hand pressed to her chest, her lips parted, her lashes fluttering at exactly the pace of a girl who has been told how it looks. Beside her stood the family physician, a nervous man with a leather bag who had never once in thirteen years been able to find a fever. Evelyn counted the pulse flickering in Vanessa’s throat, which was quick and strong, and noted the healthy pink of her lips. A dying girl, she thought, had never looked so well fed. Robert loomed by the window with a whiskey in his fist. When he saw Evelyn, his face went dark. “Apologize to your sister,” he said. “On your knees.” “No,” said Evelyn.

The word dropped into the room like a plate. The doctor looked at his shoes. Robert took one step forward, his knuckles whitening on the glass, and Evelyn stood where she was, arms loosely folded, and watched the muscle jump in his jaw. “You told me last night to do as I’m told,” she said evenly. “I gave Vanessa the room. I gave her the key at midnight. I have done everything you asked, Father, and none of it was an apology, because I have nothing to apologize for. If she is dying, call an ambulance. If she is acting, call a theater.” “Robert.” Diane’s voice cut through, soft and quick. “Leave it. This isn’t the moment.” Evelyn noticed that, filing it away: Diane stopped him. In the life she remembered, Diane had never once stopped a fist. Whatever her stepmother wanted today was more important than a beating.

Tyler had gone straight to the sofa and dropped to one knee, and he held Vanessa’s hand between both of his. “Hey. Hey, I’m here,” he murmured. Vanessa’s eyes fluttered open and found his, and for half a second, and half a second only, something passed between them that no one was meant to see: a flash of quick, bright understanding, like two people on a stage who have just hit their mark together. Evelyn watched it with the patience of a hunter. Then Vanessa’s lashes drooped again, and she whispered something too faint to hear, and Tyler bent close.

He straightened slowly. When he turned toward Evelyn his face was full of compassion, so gentle and so warm that she might once have wept to see it. “Ev,” he said, in the soft voice she had once mistaken for love. “She’s asking for you. Vanessa needs a favor. Just one small favor.” Across the room, Diane lowered her teacup, and smiled. And Evelyn, who knew exactly how this favor ended, felt the locket warm against her skin like a coal.