He grumbled. “Fine.”
Silence slipped between Evelyn and me. I could tell a thousand words formed on the tip of her tongue, but she didn’t utter any of them. She just stared, her face stamped with as much worry as the day we’d finally let her into our ground-floor unit.
Five long minutes later, Everest arrived. “What?”
“Show Evelyn,” I asked him.
“Show her what?”
“What we are.”
His eyes widened. “Ness…”
“I can’t keep this a secret from her any longer.”
He turned his face toward Evelyn. Alarm deepened the little lines around her eyes and mouth.
“Please,” I whispered.
“Okay.” He raised his hands. In seconds, his nails lengthened and curled, and then his fingers retracted into his palms.
Evelyn became as pale as her pancake batter. She crossed herself, and then…and then she fainted.
Everest caught her before her head could knock against the tiles. I scrambled off the stepladder and helped him situate her there. I rushed to the sink, wadded up some paper towels, and wet them.
“Why did you haveto tell her?” Everest muttered, his voice still a bit groggy.
“Because she would’ve found out. It’s not like our existence is that much of a secret in this part of the world.”
“Just because people suspect we exist, doesn’t mean they all believe it.”
I crouched beside her and moved the damp compress across her forehead. “I needed her to believe it.”
Her eyelids fluttered, and then her mascara-laden eyelashes lifted. She blinked as she came to. And then her black eyes settled on me. An emotion-I couldn’t tell if it was fear or astonishment-flitted through them.
“Please, say something, Evelyn.” I dabbed the wet towel along her neck.
“Breakfast,” she murmured. “I need to make breakfast.” She pressed my hand away, latched onto the island for support, and wobbled onto her feet. Everest hadn’t released her, but she brushed his hands off as though they were spiders.
She picked out a serrated knife and turned toward me. I backed up and fell, my buttocks hitting cold tiles. Was she going to kill me?
“Can you cut the bread, Ness? Make thick slices.”
Working on evening out my thudding pulse, I scrambled back up to my feet and reached out to seize the knife. The serrated blade whispered through the air and gleamed in the bright lighting.
Evelyn returned to her batter and picked up the whisk as though my reveal hadn’t happened, as though Everest’s hands hadn’t morphed into paws.
“If I’m no longer needed, I’m going to go crash a couple more hours.” Everest pivoted toward me. “Unless you want me to stay?”
“No. Go. Thank you.” Before he left, I told him, “Read your messages.”
“I read them.”
I plastered on a weak smile as he passed through the swinging door, and then I walked to the cutting board topped with three loaves of challah.
“Evelyn, are you-” I was about to say angry when she stopped me with a raised palm.
Tears pricked my swollen lids. She didn’t want to talk to me. She was horrified, and how could I blame her?
We worked in silence next to each other. While she tossed thick slabs of bacon in a cast-iron skillet, I soaked the slices of bread I’d cut in egg and milk, prepping them for the griddle Evelyn had already buttered. Not once did we look at each other. I was afraid of what I would see there, and probably, so was she.
While she cooked, I sunk my hands in rubber gloves and soaped up the toppling tower of bowls and cooking paraphernalia. Then I aligned the stainless-steel containers and helped Evelyn arrange the golden triangles of French toast, the fluffy pancakes, the crispy hash browns, the fried sausage, the glistening bacon, and the scrambled eggs.
As I carried the lidded metal containers into the deserted dining room, dawn fanned out over the mountains and raked through the majestic pines, tinting the rock lavender and the bristly leaves blue. Dawn had always been my favorite time of day. Perhaps because it was the quietest, or perhaps because it felt like a piece of blank paper upon which anything could be drawn.
But not today. Today its blankness felt barren and smudged by Evelyn’s silence.
After I slotted all the dishes into their cradles and lit the small candles that would keep them warm until the pack descended upon the dining room, I brewed coffee and tea in the pantry and filled several thermoses with the dark, steaming liquids, going through the motions robotically.
The swinging door flapped.
“Do you know where I could get-” Liam’s gaze collided into mine.
I raised a thermos. “Coffee?”
Slowly, he nodded and extended the ceramic mug clutched between his long fingers.
I filled it for him. “How do you take it?”
“What happened to your face?”
I licked the scab on my lip. “I fell. Do you want milk? Sugar?”
His dark eyebrows pressed together. “Just milk.”
I poured some into his mug. “More?”
He was still looking at my mouth.
“Do you want more milk?”
He shook his head, then tugged a hand through his brown hair, mussing it up. I didn’t remember his mother in great detail-she died when I was five and he was nine-but I remembered she was a beautiful, gentle woman. Instead of looking for Heath in Liam, I looked for her, but the square, chiseled jaw, the brown eyes, the dark eyebrows, those were all Heath.
“Ready for today?” Liam asked as I set the milk down on the large wooden platter.
“For the meeting with the elders or the paintballing?” I lined up the jugs and thermoses, then filled glass pitchers with ice and tap water and placed those on the platter.
“Both.”