“Let’s just say it’d be nice to see her back looking like yours did.” She dropped a hand onto Rose’s shoulder, and it wasn’t very hard not to shrink from it; it felt nice there, warm and grounding, like when Beck had gripped her by the elbows last night.
“You’re safe here,” Kay said. “That I can promise you.”
People lie, Rose thought. But no one had ever promised her she’d be safe. Not ever.
She let out a breath. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure. Here, you done with that? I’ll rinse it.”
It helped to keep working; to not have to make eye contact. Still, she swallowed a lump of nerves. “Yesterday…Beck said he and Tabby – Miss Tabitha. That they go way back. How did he know her?”
Kay chuckled. “That’s not the question I was expecting, kiddo. But it’s a better one. Let’s just say Tabby’s always had a habit of trying to make money off kids in some way or other. And she’s always been absolute shit at it.”
A memory assaulted her: Miss Tabitha’s hand clamped to her chin, squeezing tight enough Rose felt the bones grind together, her foster mother furious and spitting. “You’re damn lucky, you little shit. Three years ago, I would have given you to one of my boys for talking back like that.” Rose had said stop when the belt crashed against her back; a tiny squeak of pain she hadn’t been able to hold in. It was a mistake she hadn’t repeated.
She shuddered.
“No need to worry about that now. Beck’s damn good at taking out the trash.”
~*~
Kay gave her a tour of the first floor. Several sitting rooms, all with furniture in various states of dustiness. A few held showpiece furniture that looked antique and untouched, but one boasted more modern leather sofas that bore the distinct impressions of human inhabitance on the cushions. There was a TV in that room, one Kay waved toward with an explanation about technology and picture quality that Rose didn’t follow.
Beck had a study, its door shut. Kay advised that he needed time alone to work on his “projects,” and that he was best left alone unless the door was open.
Then came the library.
Rose had never seen so many books all in one place. Heavy, leather-bound tomes with gold lettering on the spines. And small, cracked-spine paperbacks stacked haphazardly in every direction on the shelves. The fireplace mantle had been carved with snarling lions, and a hunt scene done in dark oils hung above it. Two chairs were positioned at angles by the hearth, each big enough for two, and with their own tufted ottomans. A table stood by one, littered with a few empty glasses and a small stack of books. The room smelled of dust, and ink, and ash in a wonderful way.
“If he’s not working, this is where he spends all his time,” Kay said, voice fond. “I have no idea how many books there are. Thousands, I guess. I know he won’t mind if you want to read some of them. Heh. Or all of them.”
Rose didn’t realize she’d walked deep into the room until she turned and found Kay still at the threshold. She felt like she’d intruded, but Kay was grinning at her.
“You like books?”
“I never had any of my own.” One of the other girls who worked for Mr. Fisher, Claire, had owned a battered old secondhand Kindle, and she’d read romance novels on it in the break room in back of the grocery store. She always let Rose crowd in close to her, and waited to swipe to the next page when Rose nodded that she was ready. That wouldn’t happen anymore, Rose supposed with a swift tug of sadness…but here was a whole library of books. “But I love stories,” she said, voice hushed against the weight of all the volumes around them.
“You look like you do,” Kay offered, not unkindly. “Everybody with eyes as haunted as yours likes to get lost in other people’s stories. You and he’ll get along real well, I think.” She offered a smile that was knowing, smirking, and which Rose didn’t understand at all.
She was still stuck on haunted. She looked haunted? By what?
FOUR
Kay invited her to watch TV in what she called the “comfy parlor,” but Rose chose to stay behind in the library. She explored, tentatively at first, and then, fingertips electrified by the feel of fine leather on the spines, more boldly. She made slow laps around the room, titling her