Page 94 of The Beast's Heart

I blink. Deja vu. I feel heavy and warm and safe. When did I fall asleep? The rain is still drumming against the glass. “Can’t we stay here?” I mumble.

“No can do.” He smiles down at me. “We’ve got cocoa to deliver.”

36

JONATHAN

On Saturday morning, Adam joins me for my usual walk up the hill to check in with Zane. It’s nice. The weather is crisp but clear. Wispy clouds dot the blue sky and a gentle breeze brushes the leaves overhead and the long grasses below.

Adam wraps an arm around me and tucks his other hand into his jacket pocket. We don’t talk much, but the silence doesn’t feel uncomfortable. It feels sort of like… we’re adjusting to the weight of this new thing between us.

We come to the lake and a lump forms in my throat as we pause on its banks. Adam squints out at the water, eyes narrowed against the glare bouncing off its mirror surface.

“I haven’t been here since…”

“I’m sorry. I should have realized. We can go back, if you want?”

He shakes his head, drawing a deep breath into his lungs. “Do you… never mind. It’s stupid. Let’s go on.”

He makes to continue up the path but I catch his arm, anchoring him in place. “Do I what?”

He shakes his head. “You’ll think I’m crazy.”

I smile at him, hoping that my expression conveys my fondness for him. “I highly doubt that.”

He looks back at the lake. “Do you believe what Lily-Iris says about him? That he’s still… here?”

I lace my fingers through his. What I don’t say is that I dreamt of Lloyd last night.

He was walking through the house, showing me the rooms. We were on the second floor and he led me into the West Wing with a wink. Instead of sheet plastic and concrete, the passageway had been decorated in warm, rich colors. There was a fireplace there—because, dream logic—and candles along the walls. When we entered the bedchamber, it was something out of a Seelie Court, decorated like a glade deep in the darkest heart of the forest. The king-sized bed sat between carved wooden posts that stretched up to the ceiling, where they broke into flowering branches, twisting around natural skylights that look up at the stars. The covers weren’t gray but iridescent, silky greens. The room was carpeted in plush tones of gold and brown like a forest floor and the walls were covered with that Blackthorn wallpaper.

I know it was nothing but the feeling I had in the greenhouse made manifest by my subconscious. Still, I want to believe that Lloyd was sharing some vision with me. I woke up feeling so peaceful and content.

What I say to Adam is, “In a sense, I feel like he’s very much here.”

His attention on me is absolute.

“You can’t walk through a single room in the house without feeling his presence, can you? You know, the artist Andy Warhol once said?—”

“I’d rather be remembered for what I created than for what I became.”

“—The idea is not to live forever but to create something that will.”

Our words overlap and Adam ducks his head with a small chuckle. “Damn, babe, you got it wrong.”

I know he’s not addressing me but it’s still so strange to hear an endearment fall from his lips. “Lloyd?”

“Yeah. Something he once said.”

The coincidence is more than a little spooky. “Well, there you have it. He lives on. Is he haunting his grand piano, rattling windows,”visiting me in my dreams, “watching over Ben and terrifying Geoff? That I don’t know. But I know that he lives on in his music, in the work he did on this house and in the impact he had on your life.”

I’m surprised, when Adam lifts his chin again, to see his eyes are glassy. “Thank you.”

At the top of the hill, Adam keeps his distance while I check in with Zane.

After giving the usual assurances about Dad’s health, he asks me how I’m doing. He says it in a sing-song way as if heknows.

My heart starts beating harder. “I hear you spoke to my employer?”

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