Tiny Little Thing: Secrets, scandal and forbidden love

I wipe my fingers on the kitchen towel and think, What tax dollars? Your trust fund’s in nice sweet tax-free municipal bonds, yielding three and a half percent, or I’ll eat my stockings.

I say, “Actually, Tom, if he’d wanted to kill you, he would have punched a lot harder.”

“Are you saying this isn’t bad enough?” Tom points to his jaw, which sports a thick purple bruise but appears otherwise intact.

“I’m saying he could have done worse. A lot worse. I assure you.”

Constance looks up from her fervid examination of Tom’s jaw. “I can’t believe you’re defending him.”

“I’m not. For one thing, my dinner party is ruined.” Ruined, I tell you.

I wrestle down a smile.

She turns back. “He’s a bully. He always was. For God’s sake, Tom, let me have that. You’re not supposed to dab it.” She snatches the pack of ice, braces the other side of his face with her hand, and smashes the cheesecloth against his jaw. “Anyway, good riddance. Between you and me, he never did fit in around here. Even as a kid, he didn’t.”

“Good riddance?”

Constance nods to the open door of the kitchen. “I saw him leave, just now.”

I throw down the towel on the counter. “Excuse me.”

Just before I cross the threshold, I remember something. I pause and turn my head over my shoulder. “Oh, and Constance? The two of you might want to start making sure you’ve locked your bedroom door at night, if you’re thinking of getting frisky.”

Outside, Fred and Mrs. Crane are still picking up the broken china, and the ocean crashes on regardless. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Crane,” I say, “but did you see Major Harrison go by?”

“Yes, ma’am.” She straightens. Her face is expressionless. “He came through a minute ago and went off that way.” She waves to her right, toward the old Harrison house.

“His house, or the beach?”

“I couldn’t tell. Is everybody all right, ma’am?”

“Everybody’s fine, Mrs. Crane. Thank you so much for cleaning up like this. I’m awfully sorry.”

“It’s no bother, Mrs. Hardcastle. Oh, and ma’am?”

I pause on my way to the stone steps, down to the beach. “Yes, Mrs. Crane?”

“He did apologize, Major Harrison did. Just now. I thought you should know that.”

I smile. “I certainly hope he did.”

The beach is dark, except for the phosphorescent waves kicking energetically to my right. Behind me, in the distance, Frank’s voice rises in laughter. He’s taken the men down to the flat patch of sand near the breakwater, where they’re playing a drunken game of blind midnight football, patching up any hurt feelings after the brawl. The women, of course, are putting the children to bed. And the teenagers? God only knows.

Brawl. Not a brawl, really. Most of them were on Cap’s side, after all. But there was some pushing and shoving, some broken crockery, some feminine panic and some masculine settling of various scores. Any pretext for that, among the competitive Hardcastles and their competitive spouses.

I look up the dunes to the Harrison house, just as the porch light flicks on.

Apologize, Caspian says again, this time in my own head, and the word sends another surge of feeling in my veins, the familiar crazy hope, and I tell my veins sternly: Stop it. You know better. And: You have too much to lose, this time. And: Think of Frank.

And finally, when even that didn’t work: The photograph, damn it.

My veins settle down. But my legs carry me in the direction of the Harrison house, guided by the light on the porch.

By the time I reach the steps, the light is off again. I pound on the door anyway.

The tread of footsteps, and the door opens.

“Tiny.”

“Caspian.”

He opens the door wider and slips through to stand on the worn entry mat, shutting the faint light of the entryway firmly away behind him. His body fills the porch. My pulse falls into my fingertips. Veins again. The last glass of wine seems like a very long time ago. I can’t even taste it in my mouth anymore, which is now dry and sticky, perched above my strangled throat.

Why am I here?

Worse. What if someone sees me?

“I’m sorry about what happened,” he says. “I was going to tell you before I left, but you were busy in the kitchen.”

“Oh, that’s all right. I couldn’t blame you for that. Tom’s a …” I search for the word, but it seems to have escaped me.

There’s not much light, but his smile makes itself seen. “Yes, he is.”

He’s taken off his magnificent dress coat, the one with the medals. I picture it lying across the back of the chintz chair in the living room, where he’s tossed it. Or—more likely, knowing Caspian—hanging up neatly in the entry closet, behind a white-painted door, between an old mackintosh and a plaid beach blanket. His shirt is stiff and white, smelling of laundry starch. And of him. Caspian. I breathe through my mouth, to inhibit the flow of scent to my brain: scent, after all, is the sense most directly linked to the brain’s emotional centers. Or is it memory? Well, either one, emotion or memory, they’re the last things I need stimulated just now.

But I can’t quite shut it all off entirely.

I lift up my chin. “Are you sorry for anything else?”

There is a pause, a sort of expressionless instant that might mean anything, and then he shakes his head. “Everything seems to have turned out all right, after all.”

“Oh, yes. Turned out perfectly.”

“I was just thinking that, actually. At the exact second you knocked on the door. How well things turned out for you. How perfect you looked tonight. And Frank. The two of you headed for big things, exciting times, just as you always wanted.”

“All’s well that ends well, as they say.” I hold out my hand. “No more hard feelings. You’re forgiven.”

He gives my hand a single shake. His palm is dry and warm. “Forgiven. Good. Now, if you’ll excuse me?”

I withdraw my hand behind my back. “Of course. Just …”

He’s already turned back to the door, already placed his hand on the knob. “Just?”

I haul in a deep breath and smash my hands together, in the small of my back. I say, in a rush: “The photographs. The ones you took. What did you do with them?”

There is a small half-crescent window above the door, and the entry light spills through and falls on his brow, illuminating his forehead and nothing else. An eyebrow lifts, out of the shadow and into the glow. “The photographs? Why do you ask?”

I shrug. “Just curious.”

I watch his face carefully, but when did Caspian Harrison ever leave anything lying about unguarded? When could I ever have trusted the expression on the outside of him?

He shifts his weight and turns his head to the beach. The sight of his profile hurts my ribs. His hand still rests on the knob. “I packed them up. Haven’t looked at them since.”

“Really?”

He looks back at me. “Really.”

I want to probe further. Well, what did you do with the boxes? Are they sitting in a Hardcastle attic somewhere? Could anyone have found them? Broken in and stolen them? Sent one to me enclosed in a manila envelope, with a friendly note included free of charge?

Or was that you, Caspian? The man I trusted once.

Surely not. Surely Caspian would never do that.

I press my damp palms against my dress and try one more time. “So you never looked at them? Never showed them to anyone?”

“Jesus. Of course not.”

“All right, all right.”

The floorboards creak under his shifting feet. “Something going on, Tiny? Does Frank know something?”

“No! No. I just … I was thinking. When I heard you were coming. Obviously it’s not something I’d care to have spread around.”

“And you really think I’d do that? You think I’d goddamned tell about us? Breathe a single word?” He slams a fist against the doorjamb. Not too hard, but enough to rattle the frame a bit.

I look downward, to the tips of his shoes. Slippers, actually. He’s changed from his shiny black dress shoes into worn gray slippers, scuffed in all the usual places.

“No. I guess not.”

“Okay, then. Anything else?”

“No,” I say. “That’s all. Good night.”

He hesitates, as if he’s about to say something more. My veins, my stupid blood lightens again, the way it did as I looked out the window this afternoon, the way it did just now on the beach, the way it did when Caspian held out his hand and introduced himself in the humid air of the coffee shop, eight million lifetimes ago.

And then: “Good night, Tiny.”

He slips back inside the house, as noiselessly as a six-foot mouse, and I am left alone on the porch, in the darkness, drenched in disappointment.

I return home through the terrace doors, patting my windy hair as I step over the threshold. The rooms are still, except for the distant crashes in the kitchen. Granny has probably gone upstairs to her cold cream and her Gothic paperbacks.

As I pass the library entrance, however, I catch the rumble of a man’s voice, the faint smell of fresh cigarettes. I can’t hear the words. It’s a hushed sound, a compression of urgent words: the sound of someone who doesn’t want to be overheard. Frank’s voice. I push the door open.

Frank stands next to the window, staring at the darkened beach, talking quietly into the telephone receiver. The box dangles from the opposite hand, hooked by his first two fingers, which also contain a nimble white cigarette.

He glances at me, and I can’t decide how to read his expression. Startled? Guilty? Annoyed?

“Sorry. I’ve got to go. I’ll call you later. Yes. Me, too.” He settles the receiver back in the cradle and returns the telephone to the round table next to the armchair. A faint brrring echoes back from the startled bell. Frank smiles. “Campaign staffer.”

“They must be hard workers, taking phone calls at this hour.”

“Campaigning’s a twenty-four-hour job, these days.” He takes a swift drag on his cigarette and stubs it out in the ashtray next to the telephone. “Drink?”

“No, thank you.”

He heads for the drinks tray anyway and pours himself a neat Scotch in a lowball glass. The ice bucket is empty. He takes a sip and turns in my direction, and it seems to me that his face is stiffer than it should be. That his brow is hard with tension. “You’re quiet,” he says. “Something wrong?”

I fold my arms and laugh. “Other than your cousin starting a fight at his own celebration dinner?”

“That Tom. Jesus.” Frank shakes his head and laughs, too, a dry laugh. “I don’t know what Connie was thinking when she married him.”

“She was in love, I guess. We can’t always choose whom we fall in love with.”

He finishes off the whiskey and clinks the glass down on the tray. He stares at it for a second or two, bracing his fingers on the rim, like he’s expecting it to do something, to sprout legs and jump off the tray and run down the hall to the kitchen for Mrs. Crane to clean. He says softly, “No. That’s true. I’m just lucky I fell in love with you, I guess. All those years ago.”

“We’re both lucky. Lucky to have each other.”

“Sweetheart.” Frank approaches me and puts his hand behind my head. He kisses me on the mouth. His lips are soft and smoky. “Going upstairs?”

“Yes.”

He follows me to our bedroom, footsteps heavy and quiet on the stairs behind me. When we reach the door, his arm stretches out before my ribs to turn the knob. The room is dark and warm, a little stale with the dregs of the afternoon.

“Could you crack open a window?” I ask.

Frank heads for the window. I reach for my earlobes and turn to the mirror above the dresser. Frank’s reflection appears behind me. He unfastens my necklace; I take off my earrings. When the jewelry is safely stowed in the inlaid mother-of-pearl box in the center of the dresser, Frank puts his hands around my shoulders. The warmth of his skin shocks me.

“I was so proud of you tonight,” he says. “You looked so beautiful. So composed. You handled everything perfectly.”

“Oh, I have my uses.”

“You certainly do. You’re a miracle. My one true love.” He bends his head and kisses me, first in the hollow where my throat meets my collarbone, and then another kiss an inch farther down, and then once more, right at the neckline of my dress. I sift my hand through his sun-brushed hair, while he lingers on me, holding his warm mouth against my skin for an age or two, like a lover tasting his mistress after a long absence. My belly blossoms. A final kiss, and he looks back up to study me in the mirror. “Happy?”

I gaze at Frank’s mouth. The safe, familiar dent above his upper lip. “Of course I am. Dear Frank.”

“Good,” says Frank. “Anyway, I thought I’d take a walk for a bit. Clear my head. Are you all set? Any zippers needing attention?”

“Just the one in back.”

He unzips my dress, fondles my waist, kisses my temple. “Good night, then, darling. I’ll try not to wake you up when I get back.”

When I startle awake the next morning, seized by a newborn determination to confront Caspian about the photograph, Frank grunts and throws an arm across my middle, enclosing me in a haze of stale booze and dried-up ocean. Percy’s face regards me hopefully from the edge of the bed.

The beach is deserted at this hour. I remove Percy’s leash and watch the exuberant pattern of his paw prints form on the flat damp sand, the receding tide. It takes me two miles up the beach and back to screw up the necessary courage, but on my return I march up to the door of the old Harrison cottage and knock, bang bang bang

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