twenty-one.
Through the screen door, Marsden could smell food from the kitchen, heard the muffled clatter of cutlery. It was later than she thought, and dinner was starting. She wondered where Wynn had gone to wait for her. She’d been at Ella’s all afternoon, but she’d be back for dinner now.
“Someone’s already cooked and saved you the trouble.” Jude peered through the dust-sheened mesh, trying to peek inside. She wondered what he was thinking. How much of the boardinghouse was simply the town’s best lodging, the place where Marsden happened to live and work? Where her mother was supposedly still employed as a housekeeper? And how much more was it the brothel it became at night, well-known among those with reason to visit? Where her mother was a prostitute?
“It’s Dany’s turn to cook for the house tonight,” she said, “but Wynn and I usually eat in the kitchen, away from everyone.”
His hand was still in hers, and he squeezed it as she hesitated at the door. The press of his skin climbed all the way into her mind and lodged there. “Is this okay, my being here? I can go.”
“No, I asked you.” As long as they stayed in the kitchen, it would be fine. And she wanted him to see her in a place that wasn’t the covert, for him to see past what the town had already decided she was. “Come in, really.”
She saw Jude do his best to not wrinkle his nose at the smell—and fail—as soon as they stepped into the kitchen, and she had to grin. “Dany’s on a health kick, which means her walnut cheddar loaf.”
“What’s that? Wait. Please don’t tell me we’re about to find out.”
“I couldn’t do that to us.” The place was nothing but familiar, but she felt oddly adrift as she watched him look all around, just as he did in the covert, as though trying to connect what he saw to what he knew to be true. Boardinghouse, yet brothel; woods, yet death; the Marsden right then to the Marsden he knew from school, through the eyes of the town.
Other than its size, she thought the kitchen was a typical one. Touches of family, even.
Wynn’s artwork taped to the front of the fridge.
The small potted geraniums and cacti lined up on the windowsill.
A cereal bowl full of rocks and wild ginger on the counter next to the phone.
“This is like the set of a television show,” Jude said, walking farther into the room, “what kitchens are supposed to look like.” His expression was carefully blank. She saw him comparing it to his own, how his own fell short.
“You guys don’t cook?” she asked.
“My father does once in a while. Usually because he needs to assure himself he’s good about spending time with us.”
Us. A slip.
She made sure her face showed no sign she’d noticed.
Wynn was nowhere in the kitchen. Which meant her sister—growing bored as she’d waited for Marsden, getting hungrier and hungrier while listening to the sounds of a meal she’d been restricted from—had likely snuck her way to the dining room.
Marsden dropped Jude’s hand, his fingers lingering on hers a second longer than necessary before letting go. What she’d wondered about earlier in the covert, then, when he’d touched her—he didn’t regret it.
But would that change later, when the leaves fell and the heat went away and they were back in school? When he saw her in the halls and realized he’d forgotten who she was?
Then Wynn was barreling into the kitchen, braids flying, clutching a wadded-up napkin.
“Whoa, runt, hold up.” Marsden went to block her way. “What are you up to?”
Her sister opened up the napkin, giggling now. “Peaches asked me to throw this out for her. She said she never puts anything gross in her mouth without getting paid.”
Marsden sighed, avoiding Jude’s eyes. “Of course Peaches said that.”
“It is gross.”
“I know. Wynn, you should have waited somewhere else for me—not in the dining room.”
“I was just in the hall. Then Peaches called me over.”
Jude came close, staring at the contents of the napkin. His expression made Wynn laugh again. “Is that the walnut cheddar loaf thing?”
“I told you I couldn’t make us eat it,” Marsden said.
“Really good call.”
Wynn skipped over to the trash to throw it away, and when she came back, she was grinning widely, clearly delighted that Jude was there. “You’re staying for dinner, right?”
“If that’s okay.”
“Yes. I guess you actually like hanging around Marsden?”
Jude laughed, a real laugh. Marsden was unable to look away as his face lit up, the way his eyes crinkled just a bit at the corners. “Your sister’s been really nice.”
“She is—most of the time.”
He grinned. “I guess I’ve been lucky.”
Marsden tugged one of her sister’s braids. “Waffles tonight, remember?” She glanced at Jude, half-apologetic. “She picked this morning—sorry, I should have said something.”
“As long as it’s not cold toast, I’m good.”
“Hey, that toast fed a squirrel.” She plugged in a waffle iron to heat, took out the mixing bowls and measuring spoons, and placed bags of sugar and flour on the counter. From the bag of flour, a bloom of white puffed out through the seal and dusted the side of her cheek like a drift of snow.
• • •
Wynn dragged a chair over to the cabinet. She climbed up to stand on it to reach a stack of plates inside. “You should have let me go with you.”
“Well, think of these as make-up waffles. And that was Mom’s decision, not mine.”
Jude reached over Wynn’s head to help her grab the dishware. “Make up for what?”
“Mars wanted to feed them eggs.” Her sister’s expression said she was still disgusted.
He offered an exaggerated wince. “No way.”
Marsden shrugged, enjoying that he bothered to banter with a little kid. She lifted a shoulder to wipe her face clean, knew she was making the mess worse. “You can also blame Jude for coming by when he did.”
“Sorry about that—I’ve always had shitty timing.” He reached over and slowly wiped the flour from her cheek with his thumb. His eyes danced. Her skin jumped. But whether he saw it on her face or it was simply his own survival instinct, he’d already dropped his thumb and backed off before she could warn him away. And then Wynn was talking again, letting them both escape, and Marsden was glad.
“You swore,” her sister said happily. She began to set the small table, using oversize plates that made her appear even tinier than she already actually was. Marsden saw her own build there, the way she’d been at eight—skinny, with a shaky wisp of a frame, scabbed-over knees—and hoped her sister would take her time growing out of it. “But I won’t tell.”
“I did swear, didn’t I?” Jude grabbed syrup from the fridge and placed it on the table. “My manners are also pretty crappy.”
“If my mom heard you, she’d say swearing is only because you don’t know a smarter word. And then you sound stupid when you have to talk to people.”
“People people, like friends?”
“No, like guests at the boardinghouse. She says I’ll have to get used to talking to them. Be entertaining.”
Marsden, busy beating eggs and oil and milk to a froth in the mixing bowl, tightened her grip. She cursed her mother and Nina in turns, with each slap of the spoon. “Our mother is big on the art of proper . . . conversation.” She heard how stiff her voice was and decided there was no point in hiding it. Whatever Jude picked up from it, whatever it might let him think, him knowing or not knowing didn’t change Shine being a prostitute. “She says it helps make people feel important.”
Wynn wasn’t done explaining to Jude the finer points of decorum as dictated by the boardinghouse. “Now if Nina heard you swear, she’d say you have to go outside to do it.” She placed napkins on the table, laid out cutlery on top of them just as Dany had taught her.
“Who’s Nina again?” he asked.
“She owns the boardinghouse and is Mom’s boss. Did you know our mom is a housekeeper here? She helps Dany clean the guest rooms.”
Marsden poured chocolate chips into the waffle batter and stirred, her hands on cruise control. She was strung as tight as a wire, all her nerves electrified. A small and bitter part of her wanted to yell the truth at her sister, make her see the lie. But the bigger, defeated part of her remained grudgingly grateful to Shine and Nina for keeping Wynn in the dark. For sticking to the script she’d written for them.
“It sounds like hard work,” Jude said.
Wynn poured lemonade into three glasses and stirred additional sugar into each one—Marsden heard Jude whistle under his breath, knew he was already feeling his teeth thud in anticipation of the excessive sweetness. “That’s why we live here now,” her sister said. “It was like a trade, after our dad died. Nina gave our mom her job. ”
“And you get your own personal chef, too.”
“Are you going to be coming here to eat all the time?” Wynn narrowed her eyes at him. “If you like Mars’s waffles?”
Marsden poured batter onto the iron and closed the lid to let it cook, relieved that the conversation had turned—all her secrets, safe for one more night. “Everyone likes my waffles, Wynnifred Eldridge.”
“Way to be gross, saying my full name out loud. You know I hate it.”
“The real question is whether or not I would make them for him again.”
“You mean you wouldn’t?”
“Depends—I’ll have to really think about it.” She made a show of deep and deliberate consideration. “And it’s your name, Wynnifred, so you shouldn’t hate it. But fine, I’ll save it for special occasions.”
“Depends on what?”
“How many waffles he can eat.”
“Because I like him.” Wynn spoke as though Jude weren’t right there, hearing every word she said. Her sister’s childish earnestness made Marsden’s throat ache with an odd kind of loneliness, at the inevitable passing of time. “Do you like him, Mars?”
“I like him,” she managed, trying to ignore Jude—who’d gone absolutely motionless at her side—and the steady burn of his gaze that lit the side of her cheek on fire.
Wynn plunked straws into the glasses of lemonade. “And he’s not old, like most of the guy guests around here. Peaches always complains to Lucy about the really old ones she has to spend time with. She usually doesn’t know I’m listening, but she’s also way louder than she thinks she is.”
Marsden’s pulse beat at her ears, and now her face was burning from the inside out. Jude still hadn’t moved.
“That’s . . . enough,” she whispered. She’d been wrong to believe she didn’t care how much he figured out, no matter how likely it was that he already knew.
Spending time with a guest.
Was that how Wynn deciphered seeing Nina’s girls walk into their bedrooms with men? Did she imagine Peaches keeping them entertained with board games? With cat’s cradle and thumb wars?
Marsden scrambled for escape from the moment. “Run out to the dining room for me, okay, Wynn? I bet most of the guests are done eating and have already gone out.”
“Now you want me to go into the dining room?” Her sister was confused. Jude moved to close the bags of flour and sugar.
Marsden nodded and began to place dirty spoons into the sink. “See if you can sneak three slices of the fruit flan. I made an extra-large one for tonight—we had so many fresh berries—so there’ll be leftovers.”
“Her name’s really Wynnifred?” Jude asked as soon as Wynn was gone, his voice light, nearly teasing.
Suddenly, she felt more defiant than humiliated. It was seeing him there, decidedly not judging, almost like a challenge of his own: Why do you care so much about my caring, when I don’t?
She nodded, her hands clumsy as she lifted the lid of the waffle iron. She pried cooked waffles off the hot plates, piled them onto a baking sheet, and placed the whole thing in the stove to keep warm. “Wynn for short.”
“The nickname suits her: Win.” He poured more batter from the bowl onto the iron. He shut the lid and leaned back against the counter. “She doesn’t seem like the kind of kid who likes to wait.”
“She’s not, so I like to keep her in check—hence torturing her with her full name.” Marsden found Wynn being so headstrong maddening. Her little sister always charging ahead meant the risk of seeing too much, too fast. But if she wasn’t just as she was—was fine being molded and guided by Shine or Nina—that terrified Marsden just as much.
She was watching Jude stir more chocolate chips into the batter, thinking about his name and wondering about asking if it’d been his mother or his father who had chosen it, when the answer clicked in her brain.
Her grin, she knew, was decidedly smug—she should have realized it a long time ago. “Speaking of names, I just figured out something about yours.”
He answered with his own grin, even as he narrowed his eyes at her apparent glee. “You look way too pleased with yourself for me to like the sound of this.”
“Your folks were Beatles fans, weren’t they?” Her father had liked the Beatles, had blasted them throughout their old duplex on occasion—while fixing a loose floorboard, while adjusting the TV’s antennae. Those particular images of Grant Eldridge were faint, hazy. But the notes of the songs? They’d been etched into her heart for life, were tiny little song cells in the makeup of her blood.
Jude softened, and his grin melted into a small smile. “My mom was.”
“Because ‘Hey Jude’ and ‘Eleanor Rigby.’”
“I know. It’s kind of ridiculous.”
She transferred more waffles, set more to cooking. “And if you’d been a girl?”
“Eleanor.”
Her mouth twitched, and then she gave in and laughed. “No.”
“I’m not kidding. Rig used to call me Eleanor whenever I really got in his face about something.”
“He could have made it up just to tease you. I’d do the same thing to Wynn.”
“Maybe. But . . . I don’t want to stop believing it now. Know what I mean?”
Marsden nodded. Of course she did. The Beatles coming on the radio never failed to stop her in her tracks, to keep her drowned inside a past where her father was not yet dead. She’d lift her hand to hover over the dial, fully intending that this time she’d simply be able to turn it off and walk away. But she always ended up listening to the whole song, her heart feeling light, then going restless, then back again. For the rest of the day, she’d swear she could sense her father nearby, telling her she’d been mistaken about what she’d heard, how he hadn’t said what he said.
Jude poured even more chocolate chips into the batter and began to stir lazily. “So, how did you get your name, then? With a grandmother named Star and a mother named Shine, I would have expected something different than Marsden.”
“Such as?”
“Something . . . celestial, I guess. Astral, astronomical . . . zodiacal.”
She laughed. “Seems Wynn and I broke that trend.”
“I guess she does call you Mars all the time. Planets count, right?”
“She’s the only one who does. She never used to—I was always just Marsden before. But then last year, she got into my Roman mythology textbook from school and—” She stopped, unsure of how to say it out loud.
“Whoa, hold up, I think I get it.” He dropped the mixing spoon into the bowl, where it sunk to the bottom, out of sight. “Roman mythology?”
She nodded, feeling absurdly and annoyingly tongue-tied. She reached over to the cutlery caddy on the counter and pulled out a fresh fork.
“Rig had had a book on mythology. Powerful gods and goddesses, tons of messed-up families. Fighting and blood. Lots of falling in love and then cheating. Misunderstandings and punishments that lasted for all eternity. Fun stuff.”
“All of that, yes.”
“Mars, the god of war.” Jude’s voice had gone gentle. “That’s what Wynn calls you instead of Marsden.”
She slid the baking sheet with its modest stack of waffles out from the oven, unable to face him, his unwavering stare and the curiosity in it almost too intense. “She said it was because if she ever needed someone to be on her side, it’d be me. That I’d fight for her no matter what, do everything I could to save her.”
“Of course you would. She’s your little sister.”
Marsden nodded and opened the waffle iron. Steam hissed, warm against her cheek; melted chocolate chips clung to the lid, a crust of sweetness. She jabbed the fork into the cooked waffles, placed them on a fresh platter, and piled the ones from the baking sheet on top. She heard the sound of Wynn coming back down the hall. But it freaks me out, too, her needing me. What if I was too busy saving myself and there was nothing left for her? What if I save her doing all I can and there is nothing left for me?
She passed Jude the full platter and unplugged the iron. “These are the best chocolate-chip waffles you’ll ever eat, I promise.”