Page 8 of Her Dreadful Will
But as the mayor’s wife, she did need to keep up with her oral hygiene. So when a new dental clinic had opened on the edge of town, between McAdams’ Garage and A Cut Above, she decided to make an appointment.
She was regretting it now, though—leaning back in a chair so glossy it squeaked, with that infernal dentist’s lamp blazing in her eyes, making them weep. Elena shifted her gaze to the ceiling, where an odd series of stenciled markings formed a circle above the chair. Squinting through the film of tears, she deciphered a half sun with wiggly rays, a square with an eye in it, a trio of 9’s—or was it 6’s?—a few interlocking circles, and a small triangle connected to a larger one by a straight line. There were more symbols, but Elena’s eyes were too cloudy to make them out. The design seemed out of place in a dental clinic. Most likely something left behind by the previous owners of the building.
She sighed, closing her eyes. At least the woman cleaning her teeth didn’t bother with small talk. The hygienist was in her early thirties, a full two decades younger than Elena. She had a comfortingly familiar Spanish accent and abundant dark hair tied carefully out of the way.
“We’re almost done now, okay, Mrs. Brownell? A little more flossing and then I will ask the dentist to come look at you.”
Elena grunted in response. Her fingers dug into the armrests of the chair as the floss wiggled in, popped out—wiggled in, popped out.
“Perfect,” said the hygienist. “Dr. Gilliam will be in soon.”
She tidied the tray and swept out of the room, leaving Elena with the smell of leatherette and mint, and the quiet tinkle of piano music from the speaker on the wall.
Now that most of the ordeal was over and the horrible lamp had been angled away from her face, Elena could inspect her surroundings. The clinic took up the first floor of a hundred-year-old two-story Victorian home, but the remodel had been a hurried affair of barely a month. The fresh white paint, elaborate art prints, and gleaming new equipment couldn’t disguise the hairline cracks in the corners of the room, the cloudiness of the old windows, or the general sense of time-worn decay that crept along the edges of the place. And then there was that odd circle of symbols above the chair—
Steps clipped across the hardwood floor, pausing with a creak by the exam chair, and Elena swiveled her gaze to the dentist.
Dr. Gilliam was much younger than she had expected—mid-twenties, if she had to guess. Slim, with thin gloved fingers and wrists so delicate they seemed as if they might snap under slight pressure. And his face—Elena’s mouth went dry, her tongue thickening. Faces like that only belonged to male models, or actors in vampire TV shows. Cool green eyes surveyed her from behind rectangular glasses.
But it was the sinful curve of his mouth when he smiled that turned Elena’s insides gelatinous and her skin hot. She despised herself for the reaction. She was many years older than him—she shouldn’t be thinking this way. But it had been so long since her husband touched her—since she’d even wanted him to touch her. She had been eyeing other men more often lately, lingering on their faces, admiring the lines of their bodies. Wondering, tempting herself with more “what if’s” than were healthy for any marriage.
“Good morning, Elena.”
Oh god, why did he have to say her name in that soft voice?
“How are you today?” he continued. “Any concerns?”
“No,” she croaked. “Everything’s fine.”
“Wonderful.” He tugged his mask into place over his mouth. “I’ll just have a look. Open, please.”
His gloved finger touched her lips, and she opened her mouth.
He leaned closer, a lock of dark hair springing from the neatly combed mass above his brow. Elena tried not to look directly at him, though she wanted to. She could smell him, though—oranges and crushed leaves and woodsmoke.
His rubbery fingertip slid inside her cheek, pulling it aside so he could angle the tiny silver mirror. “You’ve been having some pain here?” Elena felt him tapping one of her upper molars on the left side.
“Umf,” she said, trying to say “no,” because there hadn’t been any pain. She’d never had so much as a cavity.
“Are you sure?” The low melancholy of his tone and the press of his finger on the tooth sent a swirl of confusion into her mind; and suddenly she did feel agony—sharp and intense. She gave an open-throated grunt of pain.
“It’s deeply diseased,” said the dentist. “I think we’d better remove it, don’t you? I happen to have a little space in the schedule—we could do it right now.”
Elena’s brows contracted. A routine cleaning, and now she was losing a tooth? Her heart kicked into a faster rhythm and she began shaking her head.
“Now Elena, I know this isn’t easy,” said Dr. Gilliam softly. “But it’s better to lose one tooth and save the rest, isn’t it? You don’t want to lose them all, do you?”
Of course not, but—
He withdrew his fingers from her mouth and wiped each one carefully on a paper towel.
“I don’t have time today,” said Elena, barely able to form the words through the flashes of pain in her mouth. “I can come back—”
The young dentist’s green eyes sparkled, and she knew he was smiling under the mask. “Why come back when you’re already here? It’ll be the work of a moment, I promise you. Now—relax.”
Elena hated that word. Her husband said it to her often, usually when she was trying to pummel through his thick layer of apathy and make him understand her concerns about something. He’d said it just this morning, when she expressed her anxiety about the dentist visit.Relax, Elena, it’s just a cleaning.
The word usually worked like a trigger, skyrocketing her to a higher stress level.
