Page 39 of Salt Kiss
I follow the overgrown footpaths up to the edges of the valley and find I can’t see any other houses or buildings at all. There’s only the road, barely visible under its lattice of branches, and very far off, I can see a brown smudge of forbidding moor on the horizon. In the upper reaches of the valley, bluebells are starting to press up between the trees, and they’re also growing along the edges of the graveyard behind the chapel, magnolia petals caught in the tangles of their long leaves.
The gravestones are too worn and moss-covered to read, but inside the unlocked wooden door of the chapel, I see a small plaque:In memory of Albert Trevena, who fell at the Somme, 1916.
So this is a family property, some kind of ancestral Trevena house. I read the other plaques on the wall—other Trevenas, with a handful of Tyacks and Teagues mixed in, and then note that the altar and font—while empty of religious appurtenances and water—are dustless and gleaming.
Back inside the house, I find the library door still shut, and so I start exploring the space beyond my bedroom and the kitchen.
I expect more clutter and antiques from a house passed down through generations, but the place is as impersonal and spare as a rental, although still comfortable. I find two more guest rooms, and then a larger room I presume to be Mark’s when he’s not cuddling a bottle of scotch in the library. A dark coverlet covers the bed, with only one pillow. It hasn’t been slept in. I notice discreetly recessed rings embedded into the dark wood of the bed’s posts.
Definitely his room, then.
I know I shouldn’t snoop, it’s not polite, it’s not at all my job to scout the territoryinside, but it’s like a burning in my blood. To know him. To touch the things he’s touched.
I’m over to the dresser before I can stop myself, peeking in the drawers.
They’re empty, except for the bottom one, which has a sweater folded neatly inside, next to a dried rose. The rose is old and brittle enough to have left a dredge of brick-colored dust underneath it. The sweater is sealed in a clear bag, the kind of bag you put winter things in to protect them from pests.
Or to preserve a lingering scent.
I’m intruding. I was expecting to see pajama pants that I could imagine hanging from his hips or rolls of rope I could imagine wrapped around my wrists. Not...not whatever this is.
I shut the drawer carefully and am about to leave when I see the bedside table has a drawer too. Sticky with shame but too curious to stop, I open it.
From the dangerous king of kink, I expected all sorts of perversions near at hand to his bedside: lube, toys, condoms in bulk. But it’s just the remote for the TV and a picture frame, laid on its face.
I pick it up to see a handsome man with light brown hair, blue eyes, and a heart-pangingly gorgeous smile. He’s looking away from the camera, his thick eyebrows down in an expression of unmitigated mischief, a giant silver watch on his wrist.
I study it a moment. It’s partly out of focus, but I’m almost certain it’s the same wristwatch Mark wears every day now.
There’s no date on the picture, but judging from his clothes, this picture is less than a decade old. With the thin lines around his smiling eyes, I guess that he was in his thirties when the picture was taken. Close to Mark’s age.
I put it together with the lonely sweater and rose, with Mark’s one-man scotch festival in the library. This man was someone to Mark, someone he loved, and he isn’t around anymore.
He either left Mark—or he died.
Fifteen
I wakeup too early the next morning and stare at the ceiling, cataloging my options.
I can either stay here, in this strange mausoleum of old roses and new scotch, or I can leave and let Mark suffer properly. Grieve all over the house and grounds and roam drunkenly into the kitchen when he wants without worrying about running into someone else.
Having haunted my dad’s farmhouse for days on end, I understand it. There are some things so miserable, so private, that even their beingwitnessedfeels like an additional agony.
Also I’m worried he hasn’t eaten since we got here, despite my trying to give him clumsily made sandwiches through the library door.
I shower and dress, and when I emerge, I see one of the library’s doors hanging open, and the dim space beyond it empty. I think I hear a shower somewhere else in the house, down the far hallway, where Mark’s bedroom is. That encourages me. If he’s able to leave the library, then maybe he’ll be able to have a conversation with me about whether it would be better if I left.
I wait half an hour or so, drinking a cup of coffee in the observatory and watching a slow drizzle take up on the glass, trying to give him plenty of time to get dressed.
I’m restless, bothered. I don’t know what by. That he has a picture in a drawer of a man wearing the same wristwatch as him? That he might indeed want me to leave?
It’s all ridiculous, and I still can’t help it. I want to be near him. I want to watch those infinitesimal twitches in his jaw while he’s thinking; I want him to quirk an eyebrow at me in faint amusement. I want to watch those blue eyes flash when he forgets to control himself.
But it’s not up to me. And maybe this is a chance to show how obedient I can be for him. How submissive. Going away when I’m told.
I go back to the kitchen and pour two cups of coffee, two glasses of water, and pile a bowl with berries and cut bananas. I load up a tray and go to the library door, which is once again closed.
I knock. “Sir?” And then I add, pointlessly, “It’s Tristan.”
