The Girl in the Mist: A Misted Pines Novel Read online

  Having those boxes out of the way, the shelves sorted with my books and things that had great meaning for me, would be a mental coup. A powerful visual that I was safe and home, my treasures around me, which would free headspace for me to move on.

  Celeste was placing the contents of box fifteen on the shelves, working closely to me, when she said, “There are a couple of authors you like a whole lot.”

  I did indeed.

  “Mm,” I hummed.

  And that was when she said, very low, “I know who you are.”

  I stilled, a bubble of panic rising in me, before I turned my gaze to her and realized she knew, but she didn’t know.

  I therefore replied in the same tone. “I know you do.”

  She pressed her lips tightly together.

  I smiled wanly.

  She moved away and broke down box fifteen to start on box sixteen.

  I was working with her, and we were in the twenties, when I decided it was time.

  “It’s not my business, however, I feel as the adult in this scenario I need to at least note that you should be in class right now.”

  Her shoulders went up before they drooped.

  She said nothing.

  “Again, it’s not my business,” I murmured and turned a discerning eye to the shelves as it was close to time to start rearranging and adding more personal pieces.

  “I said something mean to a teacher,” she blurted.

  My attention went back to her.

  “I used the F-word.” Lengthy pause. “As in F you.”

  “Ah,” I replied, not taking my eyes from her.

  She shoved some books on the shelf without what had become her customary care.

  “She was being mean,” Celeste declared.

  “Mean?” I asked.

  At my question, she engaged fully with me—eyes and body.

  Automatically, I braced.

  “She’s the chemistry teacher, and I don’t get chemistry. My mind…” a head jerk, “it doesn’t think like that. And I did really badly on an assignment. It wasn’t the first assignment I’d screwed up. But she’s not a good teacher. She just expects us to get it, not that she needs to teach it. And a lot of people are doing really badly in that class. A lot of them. I’m not the only one. She got mad and used me as an example.”

  At this point, Celeste stomped to the boxes and brandished the letter opener.

  She was mumbling and slitting open a box when she went on.

  “I always get picked on when stuff like that happens.”

  I had very little doubt.

  Curvy girls thought thin girls had it so good.

  Beautiful girls were passed up for dates to the prom because boys were so intimidated by their looks, they were too scared to ask.

  Smart girls were destined to feel odd and wrong, because it was understood that they should be more worried about fashion than interested in code or equations.

  As I’d noted, life was a daily battle.

  For everybody.

  Particularly if you were a girl.

  She moved to shelve more books.

  I moved to arrange more things.

  “So she embarrassed you,” I noted.

  She made a noise that was frustrated but also remarkably attractive. It sounded like how Celine Dion might grunt.

  “Do you need chemistry to get into college?” I asked.

  “I’m going to do hair. I’m really good at hair,” she decreed. “All my friends, and people who aren’t my friends, always ask me to do their hair. People say I’m even better than Shelly, who’s a stylist in town. The most popular one. Everyone goes to her. She’s sweet, and she taught me a few things. I even do the highlights and lowlights in one of my friends’ mom’s hair, and I haven’t gone to school to learn how or anything. Just got a few tips from Shelly.”

  Her shoulders went straight for the first time since I’d known her, to the point I hadn’t realized they were slumped.

  She then finished, “And my friend’s mom says it looks like she paid two hundred dollars for it.”

  She was very certain about this statement for her future. Certain and proud of her talent.

  It was not a make-do-because-I-live-in-a-small-town-in-the-middle-of-nowhere-and-I’ve-been-raised-to-understand-my-options-are-limited decision. Nor was it a people-like-my-chemistry-teacher-have-ingrained-in-me-I’m-not-good-for-anything-else decision.

  She wanted it.

  “Then why are you in chemistry?” I pressed.

  Celeste Bohannan was not difficult to read now.

  Her story was lit in neon.

  In this case, her cheeks went pink.

  A boy.

  “She embarrassed you in front of your boyfriend?” I asked quietly.

  Her gaze came to me, startled.

  And she was even more beautiful.

  Lord.

  “How did you—?”

  “I’ve lived a lot more life than you,” I lied.

  She turned her head, dipping her chin almost to the point she rubbed it against her collarbone.

  With that, she returned to the boxes.

  It took a few minutes before she told me, “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  “But it’s a boy you like.”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  All of a sudden, I’d gone stone-still.

  This girl’s fragility had nothing to do with recently being embarrassed in front of a boy she liked.

  No, it was something else.

  Perhaps her teacher was aware of it. Perhaps not.

  But I’d lay money, a good deal of it, on the fact that her teacher was not conventionally attractive. She might be young. She might be old.

  However, she saw the beauty and promise of Celeste Bohannan, and even if there was no excuse to single any child out in class for ridicule or to be made an example of, the fact it was Celeste was maliciously conceived.

  And as such, I was livid.

  Consumed by it to the point I was unable to move.

  “Ms.…uh, Larue?” Celeste called.

  I turned to her with a jerk.

  She blinked.

  “I’d like you to call me Delphine,” I told her.

  “Okay,” she said shyly.

  There was a time I’d been shy.

  I was that no longer.

  Including right then.

  “There are occasions, Celeste, in anyone’s lives where we have to make decisions. Decisions about situations that it was not our choice to be in, but regardless, it’s up to us to make those decisions. It seems now the decision you made to curse at your teacher was a faulty one. But I can assure you, in the future, when you realize you found the courage to stand up for yourself, you will understand that the consequences you face, which arguably you should not be facing, were entirely worth it.”

  Now she was staring at me.

  “Of course, a school will need to have zero tolerance for that behavior,” I continued. “There are many lessons you learn in high school, and they need to do their best to blanket them so the same rules apply to everyone. And sadly, for the most part, that has to be no matter the extenuating circumstances, which is totally unfair, but it’s a way to teach a lesson. But this particular one, what was happening to you and how you refused to accept it, is precious because it’s yours and yours alone. And I hope you will stand on that decision many times in the future. Stand on it as your foundation so that you allow no one, not one single soul, to shit on you again.”

  She was still staring at me, now understandably astonished.

  “You’re helping me immensely,” I told her. “The kitchen is done, so this is the biggest job that’s left.” Not including my closet, of course, but she didn’t have to know that. “It was blocking me psychologically. I’m glad you came up to—”

  I didn’t finish that.

  A knock sounded on the door.

  Not any knock.

  A cop’s knock.

  And I watched with grim fascinati
on as the color drained from Celeste’s face.

  Four

  Alice

  I did not know, until I discovered the ID Channel, what a cop’s knock was.

  Retired detective Joe Kenda explained it to me.

  It was loud.

  Authoritarian.

  And brooked no argument.

  You were to open the door.

  Now.

  No one should be at my door without Mo, or someone else on Hawk Delgado’s team calling.

  No one.

  “That’s Dad,” Celeste said, a tremble in her voice.

  Thoughts cascaded through my mind, too many of them, and none of them nice.

  “Why are you afraid of your father?” I rapped out before I could stop myself.

  “Because I’m suspended. I’m supposed to be home, cleaning the house and considering my actions.”

  Her final three words penetrated, being so normally parental, rather than scarily abusive, I found it in me to temper my reaction, which had been poor and would not be conducive to her sharing.

  In my defense, she was putting me on edge, not her fault, but it was the case nevertheless.

  However, I needed to pull myself together so she would confide in me.

  “And since you’re not, what’s going to happen to you?” I asked far more gently.

  She appeared confused.

  “Well, he’s gonna get mad.” Her expression shifted to one I’d seen many times in the raising of two teenage girls. A mixture of frustrated, rebellious and guilty. “And I might be grounded for another day or something.”

  Grounded.

  If that was her greatest fear from her father…

  The knock came again.

  I moved to the door and opened it.

  And my world went into a tailspin.

  First impression, he was taller than me.

  Second, he was broad at the shoulders, lean at the hips.

  Third, his hair was dark, but strands of silver threaded through it. Long hair that brushed his shoulders but was held back at the top and the sides, probably in a tail at the back of his head. His beard was full. It also was dark with silver in it.

  After that, I noted he was wearing sunglasses. Completely black lenses that gave you no entry to what might be discovered behind them.

  Onward, he was wearing a heavy, tan button-up shirt under a navy quilted vest, faded jeans and brown boots. He was also wearing a medallion hanging from a leather strap at his throat.

  He was tanned.

  He was weathered.

  He was mildly unkempt.

  He had features that were a mixture of sharp (his cheekbones, his nose) and broad (his full lips and deep forehead).

  With this information presented to me, I made a snap, but very informed decision.

  I wanted to fuck him.

  I wanted to know every inch of his body, and I wanted to expose every inch of mine to his touch and taste.

  I wanted him in every room in my house.

  I wanted a solid week of having his cock buried inside me or his face shoved deep up my cunt, or my mouth filled with him, and my every movement, every moment dominated by him.

  And then we’d be done, and he could go.

  I hadn’t had that feeling in a very long time.

  But I couldn’t have any of that.

  Because he was my neighbor.

  And Celeste’s father.

  He tipped his chin to me, and then his sunglasses moved in the direction of his girl.

  He said not a word and didn’t walk into my house, even after I shifted to the side as a silent indication he was welcome.

  Nevertheless, Celeste spoke.

  Fast.

  And whiny.

  “But I was bored, Dad.”

  Those sunglasses swung my way for naught but a second before he took one step over my threshold.

  Another step.

  Still silent.

  He stopped.

  I closed the door.

  Celeste spoke.

  “I was going crazy. I told you. It’s been a week.”

  A week?

  She’d been suspended an entire week for saying, “Fuck you” to her teacher?

  That seemed excessive.

  “I had to get out of there,” Celeste continued.

  “She’s helped me a great deal,” I put in.

  The sunglasses again focused on me.

  It was, by the way, a misty, gray and dreary day.

  The Terminator.

  Those glasses reminded me of the Terminator.

  I felt it.

  I tried not to feel it.

  But it was there.

  Swirling.

  Forming.

  But not coming together.

  I needed to ignore it.

  I wasn’t going to be able to ignore it.

  “I have a lot of books. She’s helped me unpack at least thirty boxes,” I went on.

  “I mean,” Celeste caught his attention, “she’s nice. Delphine.”

  He made some movement, and Celeste quickly spoke on.

  “Ms. Larue,” she corrected. “She’s nice.”

  “I told her to call me Delphine,” I shared.

  He turned to me.

  It was back to his daughter when she said, “But I’m not up here kicked back with popcorn and a movie.”

  He crossed his arms on his chest.

  And remained silent.

  All right.

  Enough.

  “May I speak to you?” I requested.

  The sunglasses came back to me, but he still said not a word.

  There was also nothing on what I could see of his face beyond beard and glasses. Not anger or disappointment.

  How Celeste was reading him was a mystery.

  “In private,” I pressed.

  His head swung back around to his daughter.

  “No,” I said swiftly, “She can stay here. We’ll—”

  I stopped abruptly because I had his attention again and it was the first thing on him I was able to read.

  I was right, I wasn’t able to ignore it.

  Against my will, the edges of the puzzle were slowly lining up.

  Though, that was the easiest part.

  But the way I had his attention now meant two of the thousands of pieces that made him came together and landed inside the frame.

  This was his daughter, and some stranger did not contradict his authority.

  In fact, no one did.

  Perhaps in anything, not just his daughter.

  I’d been wrong earlier.

  I did not want to fuck him.

  I wanted him to fuck me.

  “Please, just five minutes of your time,” I pushed.

  His body language adjusted minutely, which I took as the answer, yes.

  I glanced briefly at Celeste, who hurriedly moved back to the boxes, a ploy to show her father how much help she was being, and that she was not up here having fun with the rich and famous lady who’d moved in next door. Instead, although she chose it, it was an extension of her punishment.

  I took him to the small study, a room I’d be making a reading room.

  It was at the current juncture my favorite room in the house, regardless it was a shambles.

  I’d selected a chair that would behoove anyone to describe it as merely a chair. It wasn’t a loveseat. It wasn’t a chaise. It wasn’t a small couch.

  It was a miracle, as it managed to be all four.

  There were lamps sitting around that I had not placed, a table beside the chair, and in the boxes I had yet to unpack, a plethora of pillows, a chunky throw, candles and a tray to put on the chair so I had somewhere on the expanse of the seat to set drinks or plates or other if the table was out of reach.

  I decided in that second, once the bookshelves were done, to set up this room.

  I did not close the door when I turned to him.

  “First, I’m Delphine Larue.”

  “I know who you are.”<
br />
  Of course he did.

  And of course his voice was a deep, rough rumble.

  “And you?” I asked.

  From my question, I received my first expression from him.

  Surprise.

  He thought I knew who he was.

  I didn’t, even if I partially did.

  Still, introductions were in order.

  “Cade Bohannan.”

  His name was uttered in grunts, and they were not dulcet by any stretch of the imagination.

  “May I ask…Celeste has been suspended for a week?”

  His chin jerked up.

  I had to be sure she wasn’t making light of things.

  Therefore, I went on, “For cursing at her teacher?”

  Another chin jerk.

  Lord, how he could make that movement both ludicrously attractive and faintly annoying, I had no idea.

  However, I feared the annoying part would increase if he didn’t start using his words.

  “Just that?” I pressed on.

  “Just that,” he rumbled.

  Good.

  Words.

  “Have you heard of the concept of the Five Voices of Criticism?”

  He stared at me a brief moment before crossing his arms on his chest.

  I took that as, go on.

  I did just that.

  “In any creative endeavor, though, I would extend it to any endeavor, if someone says something critical about your work, and that point is made by one voice, it should be ignored. Two voices, the same. Three, four, you see the pattern. The fifth voice makes the same point, that’s when you start paying attention.”

  He made no reply or even gave any indication he was listening to me outside the sunglasses staying rooted to me. Sunglasses he was still wearing in a room that had even dimmer light than the great room.

  “Obviously, depending on your reach, that five would be multiplied.”

  “For instance,” he broke in, “your five would be fifty thousand.”

  That was exaggerated, but his message was clear.

  “As a for instance, yes,” I agreed softly.

  He said nothing further.

  “As another for instance, if you were a teacher, and one, or two, or four kids in your class were having trouble with that class…”

  He shifted his weight.

  I soldiered on.