My Step Brother's Midnight Obsession

The Question at the Breakfast Table

Where is it?"

My mother had my arm before I reached the dining room door. She never raised her voice, and she did not raise it now.

She steered me into the alcove under the stairs and held on to my sleeve so hard that her nails pressed through the wool.

"Where is what?"

"The bracelet from Caleb." She searched my face. "You promised me you would keep it covered, and it is not covered, and it is not on you at all."

The lie came out before I had decided on it. "I took it off."

"Good." The tension went out of her shoulders, and she let go and smoothed my sleeve flat as if she owed it an apology.

Then her eyes narrowed. "Why is your hair wet?"

"I took a shower."

"At this hour?"

"I could not sleep."

"You look as though you have been crying."

"I haven't," I said, and she let it go, which told me she was worried about something much bigger. "Mom, what is wrong?"

"Mrs. Ferrara's daughter has told three people that you left the ballroom with Caleb at eleven and never came back."

"He was sick, so I helped him upstairs."

"Alone?"

"He did not want a doctor, and he did not want Gerald to find out."

"Elise," She said my name very quietly. "If anyone asks, you took him to his room, you went back to the party, and you stayed until the end. That is what happened."

"But that is not what happened, Mom."

"That is what happened." Her fingers closed around my wrist, and I felt them shaking. "I cannot stand any more talk, do you understand me?"

I understood her. She was frightened, and I had never learned how to say no to her when she was frightened. I opened my mouth to tell her the rest of it, all of it, and the words stuck in my throat, because she was already looking past my shoulder to see who might be listening.

"Smile," she said, and walked into the dining room ahead of me.

The dining room was all marble and white linen and cold light. Gerald sat at the head of the table behind the financial pages. Across from my chair, buttering a croissant with slow and careful strokes, sat Preston.

He looked up as I sat down. "You look tired."

"I'm fine."

"You look as if you haven't slept." His voice was friendly, as it always was, and I had never once believed it. "Neither did I, to be honest. I am a terrible sleeper. Around five I heard someone on the back stairs."

I reached for the coffee pot to give my hands something to do. "One of the staff, probably."

"That is what I thought." He bit into the croissant. "But the staff wear shoes, and this sounded barefoot."

The pot knocked against my cup, and I set it down carefully.

"The villa is old," I said. "It makes noises."

"It does." He tilted his head. "You didn't hear anything?"

"I was asleep."

"Of course you were."

Under the table my mother's foot pressed down on mine, hard. I could not tell whether it was a warning or whether she had felt my knees shaking. Preston held my eyes a moment longer than politeness allowed, and I thought that he knew something, and then I thought that he could not. Then I remembered the bartender slipping out through the service door, and the glass Preston had raised in my direction across the ballroom, and my coffee went cold in my hands.

"Preston, really," my mother said, with a small laugh that did not reach her eyes. "Must you?"

"Aunt Rachel, I am only making conversation."

"Let the girl eat." Gerald lowered the paper at last and frowned at me. "You are pale, Elise."

"I'm not hungry.

"Eat something anyway."

I tore a piece of bread in half and then in half again. I could not swallow it, so I kept tearing it into smaller and smaller pieces.

"Where is Caleb?" Gerald glanced at the empty chair beside my mother. "He missed the toasts last night, and now he is missing breakfast."

"Sleeping it off, I imagine," Preston said. "It was quite a party."

"My son does not drink like that."

"Doesn't he?" Preston shrugged. "Everyone has a bad night."

The door opened, and every head turned.

Caleb stood in the doorway in yesterday's trousers and a wrinkled white shirt, with the collar open and a day of stubble on his jaw. His skin was gray under its tan, and the shadows beneath his eyes looked like thumbprints. One hand gripped the door frame as if it were the only thing keeping him upright. He looked like a man who had walked out of a fire, and I was the one who had lit it.

"Caleb." Gerald folded his paper. "Sit down, you look terrible."

"I am not sitting down." His voice was low and level, the one he used in boardrooms when someone was about to be very sorry. "Somebody put something in my drink last night.

My mother's cup clinked against its saucer.

"That is a serious thing to say," Gerald said.

"It is not something I am saying. It is what happened."

"Are you accusing someone at this table?"

"I am telling you what happened." He looked at his father, then at my mother, then at Preston, who raised his coffee and took a slow and calm sip. "And somebody put me to bed. Somebody was in my room last night, and I want to know who."

The room went very still. I could hear the clock on the wall, and the crumbs of bread falling onto my plate from between my fingers, and I could feel my mother's foot on mine, which had stopped pressing and gone rigid.

His eyes moved around the table one face at a time. They passed my mother, and they passed Preston, and then they reached me, and they stayed there. What was he going to ask me?