“I know,” Skylar murmured, reaching out to trace Brandon’s jaw with her fingers until she traced his lips too.
All at once, the big man stood and pulled his much smaller wife up with him.
“Friends,” he said. “Stay as long as you like. But my wife and I need to finish this storytelling on our own. Good night.”
I watched again as they meandered back through the orchard. Skylar’s laugh filtered through the trees when Brandon paused to lift her into his arms and carry her inside like she was his new bride, not his wife of five or more years.
“I think that’s a night for us too,” Kieran said as she and Pushpa stood and collected their glasses. “Nina, it was nice to meet you.”
“And you,” I called as they left. “I hope to see you again.” And I meant it too.
“And then there were four,” Eric said softly, reaching for Jane’s hand.
He, Jane, Matthew, and I scooted our chairs closer to the fire, so the flames licked our faces and cast a corona that ringed us in the black of night.
Jane sighed, burying her face into his shoulder. “Talk some poetry to us, Eric. It’s a good night for it.”
Eric raised a brow. “You think, pretty girl?”
Jane’s eyes closed dreamily. “I know.”
Eric smiled sweetly at her, then began to recite.
I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossoms in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
“I didn’t know you were such a poet,” I said once he was finished. I was learning all sorts of things about Eric tonight.
He offered a hesitant, lopsided smile. “I’m not. That was Yeats. I was an English major at Dartmouth. Didn’t you know that?”
I shook my head. There were so many things we never shared with each other after he left.
“I thought of that poem a lot when I was in New Hampshire, out by the woods. And later…after Penny died.”
Everyone was quiet. Jane clearly wasn’t surprised to hear about Penny, the girl Eric had planned to marry before she died when they were only twenty-two. I, however, had barely heard him speak about her.
“She’s why you left New York,” I said.
It wasn’t a question, but Eric nodded anyway.
“The first time, just to get away from the family bullshit and take her with. And then after…yeah. Grief really messes you up,” he said.
“So does family pressure,” I remarked dryly.
“Well, sometimes the people we want aren’t the people others think we should have,” he said as he stoked the fire, causing a blast of sparks to shoot into the air “It’s so common with the de Vrieses, it’s practically a rite of passage.”
I frowned. “Who else do you mean besides you?”
“Well, my mother, for instance. John Carson definitely didn’t want my father to marry her. And neither did Grandmother, from what I hear. And then, of course, there was Penny.”
“After what they did to her, I’m surprised you ever came back,” I said, in spite of the years of resentment I’d felt toward him for just that.
Eric shrugged. “Penny was tough. She took it on the cheek most of the time.”
“I shouldn’t think suicide as taking it on the cheek,” I said more bitterly than I intended.
“Doll,” Matthew hummed a warning under his breath.
“Oh, Nina…” Jane murmured, shaking her head.
But Eric wasn’t angry. Instead, he just looked up in surprise. “Nina, do you think that Grandmother was responsible for Penny’s death?”
I blinked. “Of course it wasn’t her fault. She wasn’t holding the knife or whatever the poor girl used, but—”
“It wasn’t her fault at all,” Eric cut in. “And Penny didn’t kill herself. Jude Letour murdered her. He was sent by John Carson, a nasty fucking power play when I was first initiated into the Janus society.