The ground drops out from under me. I gasp a scream and jump up from my chair, knocking it to the floor with a clatter. “Daniel,” I yell, grabbing my starched white napkin. On my brother’s left temple, sliding into his hairline, is a huge crack; brain matter is exposed. Blood runs down his cheek and pools at the collar of his shirt.
Tears stream from my eyes, my heart rate soaring as I fight with shaky legs around the table toward him. I look at my dad, expecting the same horrified reaction, but instead he’s staring at me, wide-eyed.
“Audrey,” he says in a harsh whisper, glancing around at the other tables like he’s embarrassed. “What are you doing?”
I can’t even respond, instead I grip my brother’s shoulder and press the napkin to his seeping wound. “Stop it,” Daniel says, swatting my hand. “Audrey!” He finally succeeds in pushing me back, but I’m hysterical. I can’t lose my brother, too. I’ll die without Daniel. I’ll die.
I rush toward him again, but he puts up his hands defensively. “Stop it,” he says, wrapping his fingers around my wrists. The napkin falls into his lap, and I look down at it, surprised it’s still white with all that blood. Oh, God. Why isn’t anyone helping us?
“Aud,” Daniel begs, his voice cracked with worry. It draws me out of my hysterics, and when I focus on Daniel again . . . the blood is gone. The wound, too, as if it were never there. I sob out a relieved sound and take a step back, bumping into the empty table behind me.
I open my mouth to speak, but the words don’t find their way past my lips. While Daniel’s head is perfectly fine, his expression, and my father’s, is one of extraordinary concern. As if I’m the problem here.
You were bleeding to death, I think, but can’t say. Your brains were falling out, and yet you were still talking to me. How is that possible? My face is wet with tears, and I dart my eyes around the room at the people who are staring at me. The moment grows heavy, expectant. But I have no explanation for what I just saw.
I reach a trembling finger to run it over Daniel’s forehead, checking to make sure it’s really still intact, but he shifts his head away. I’ve never seen my brother more scared than he is in this moment.
“Jesus, Audrey,” he says. “Are you okay?”
“No,” I respond hoarsely. “I don’t think I am.” Yesterday I saw blood on Tanya, and today I imagined my brother’s skull was split open. What sort of person does that? What the hell is wrong with me? “I’m going to the bathroom,” I mumble, leaving for the back of the dining room.
My body shakes, my jaw quivers, as I try to catch my breath. My left leg is suddenly stiff, and my gait shifts to a limp. I could be having a stroke. Like my mother, my mind whispers. I choke back a cry, pushing away the thought—terrified of it like it’s a curse.
No. This is probably a reaction from the pill Lourdes gave me last night. It’s causing hallucinations.
I push the swinging bathroom door, grateful to find the room empty. There’s a wrought-iron bench in the corner, and I go to sit, bending forward with my head lowered in crash position.
What is happening to me?
The door flies open, the handle smacking the white tiles on the wall. I nearly jump out of my skin, and clutch my shirt over my heart. Lourdes stands there in her housekeeping uniform, her hands on her hips. She runs her dark gaze over me, gauging the situation. Then without a word she walks to the mirror and examines her reflection.
“I heard you scream, and your brother said you ran off.” She swipes her fingers over her eyelashes to unclump her mascara. “He was worried about you.” Lourdes glances back at me. “Should I be worried too?”
“I don’t know,” I say with a quick shake of my head. Now that I’ve left the dining room, the image of a bleeding Daniel seems utterly ridiculous. “Did my brother . . .” I pause, not sure how much I should share about my current mental state. “Did he look all right to you?”
Lourdes turns back to the mirror with a devilish smile. “He’s hot—even with a hangover.” She pulls a compact of foundation and a tube of lipstick out of her apron. “Why?” Lourdes pops the top off her lipstick and rings her lips in red. After smoothing them together, she runs her finger along the lower line.
As I watch her now, the moment is so filled with normal that my nerves begin to calm. “I’ve been seeing things,” I offer vaguely, and wave my hand. “I’m also losing time—not blacking out, but just . . .” I stop and sigh. “I’m just confused, really.”
“Have you eaten today?” she asks casually.
“No, not yet. Do you think that could be it?”
“Well, that and you had alcohol,” she points out. “And you took a muscle relaxer. And you stayed up all night with Eli.” She meets my eyes in the mirror and winks. “See where I’m going here?”
I’m feeling more ridiculous by the second. I haven’t exactly been making the healthiest life choices the past few days. “Or,” she adds, tapping her palm under her curls to fluff them, “it could just be the ghosts fucking with you.” She laughs before turning around, her hip against the porcelain sink.
“I’m definitely blaming the ghosts,” I say, calmed now that Lourdes has shed some light on the situation.
“By the way,” she says, “I’m not sure what happened last night, but Eli hasn’t shut up about you.”
“What did he say?” I’m slow to stand, still a little shaky, and make my way over to the mirror to check my reflection. It’s not too terrible, although I have to wipe away a bit of mascara from under my eyes.
Lourdes purses her lips as if weighing how much to tell me. The scale doesn’t tip in my favor. “Doesn’t matter,” she says. “But I told him to be careful. Elias is a really good friend of mine, and I don’t want him to get in trouble because of this little thing you have. It is a thing, right? Because he seems to think so.”
“We’re just hanging out,” I say. “It’s not a big deal.” I have a hard time holding back my smile. In reality, I’m only here until tomorrow. Our “thing” is going to be short lived no matter what.
Lourdes watches me, and a slow drip from the faucet echoes in the silence. “He’s in the garden,” she says. “I can’t remember the last time I saw him outside.” Her expression softens, and I can see how much she cares about him. “He’s worth it,” she adds quietly. “If it were me, I’d think he was worth it.”
“Worth what?”
The door opens and two older women with fur shawls stagger in as if their shoes are painful. One woman moves to the sink nearest Lourdes, knocking her compact into the sink without apologizing. Without acknowledgment. Lourdes quickly snatches up her supplies and shoves them into her apron. She’s flustered, and I expect her to confront the woman, but instead the housekeeper rushes out without another word.
The gray-haired woman glances at the powder residue spilled from Lourdes’s compact. “The help in this place is disgusting,” she murmurs to her friend. “Absolutely worthless.”
“Report it to the front desk,” her friend replies, hobbling over to the stall door. “They’ll straighten them out. This place does have a reputation, you know.”
How dare they? “You’re the one who knocked it over,” I say, grabbing a paper towel from the dispenser and tossing it at her. “Report that.”
The woman gasps, looking offended that I’d even suggest she clean up after herself. She stares at where the paper towel landed on the side of the sink. She straightens her back, skin paled, and then goes to enter the stall next to her friend. At first her voice is shaky, but then she and her friend continue talking between stalls, complaining about the food, the service. I stare at their closed doors, wondering how they could be so rude.
I’m angry, and I want to kick open their stalls to tell them they’re not allowed to treat people like this. That money doesn’t buy class. I’d tell them not to report it to the front desk because Kenneth is an asshole and the staff is afraid of him.
Instead I pull open the main door and then flick off the light,
submerging the room in darkness. The women yelp and howl for help, but I pretend I don’t hear, and shut the door behind me.
Chapter 10
I’m not hungry when I return to the table. Dad and Daniel seem to be at the tail end of an argument I luckily missed, and my plate of crepes are pale and withered. I tentatively sit down, anticipating their questions. Daniel is the first to look over, and my breath catches but is soon replaced with a sigh when his head is still wound-free. I imagined the entire thing.
“You all right?” he asks, halfway between panic and annoyance. I nod and then cut a piece of crepe and shove it into my mouth. If starvation is the cause of my hallucination, I’m going to ensure I’m well fed through the rest of this trip. The food is dry and cold. I take a sip of water and force down another mouthful.
“Your sister said her arm’s been hurting,” my dad says for me, then shoots me a worried glance. “Could this . . . outburst be related?”
He’s thinking stroke. I know he is.
“I’m fine,” I reassure him, sipping from my water before taking another bite. Lourdes already placated my fears, and I don’t want to think more about it. See the flaws in her logic. “Probably need to eat more,” I add, and smile unconvincingly, judging by the looks on their faces.
“Lay off the drugs, sister,” Daniel mumbles, drinking from his coffee. I laugh, but Dad has turned his attention to my brother. He folds his hands on the table with a show so parental it seems fake.
“Now let’s talk about you,” he says in his new-and-improved Dad voice. “Drinking? Blacking out? Daniel, this isn’t acceptable behavior.”
My brother straightens in his chair, knocked sideways by the fact that our father would criticize him now. He clenches his jaw, and leans his elbow on the table. “Dad, we’ve been past acceptable behavior for a long time. Starting with you. Don’t think you’re fooling either of us with this father-of-the-year bullshit.”
“Daniel,” I whisper, stunned that he would confront our father so plainly. Normally, he’d storm off and then vent to me later. But right now his cheeks have gone red, his fist curled up. I repeat his name and he looks over at me. The fight evaporates from his expression.
The three of us stay silent for a long moment, digesting the new dynamics. I watch my father, waiting to see his reaction. See if he really is the doting man who showed up for lunch today. My father picks up his water and takes a calm sip, then sets his glass down with a clank.
“You’re right,” he says calmly. Daniel and I exchange a look, unsure if he’s just being passive-aggressive. “I’ve changed, Daniel,” he says. “I’m finally seeing clearly again. And I’ll do anything to keep this family together. Forever.”
Okay, then. My dad’s eyes are sincere, which only succeeds in making him sound and look like a deranged cult leader. Now that our conversation has taken a turn into the truly bizarre, I stand up from my seat at the table.
“Thanks for lunch, Dad,” I say, “but I have to go. I’m meeting up with my friends at the pool. Find you later?” Daniel pushes his cup aside, standing as if I’ve made an excuse for him to leave too. Smooth.
“I’m happy to hear you’re making friends,” my father says. I wait for a dig at my past, the mistakes I’ve made since my mother died, but no insults follow. He might actually mean it. “Let’s meet for a movie later,” he suggests to me and Daniel. “Around six?”
“Sure,” I say. It’s been years since I’ve been to a movie with my father. A wave of nostalgia sweeps over me, and I smile at my brother. Daniel rolls his eyes, still skeptical of my father’s sincerity. He hums something noncommittal, and then he takes my arm and tugs me toward the exit. Since arriving at the Ruby, Daniel’s been standing up more to our father. There’s a new resentment there, anger.
“You didn’t have to be so mean,” I say when we get out into the crowded lobby. The light filtering in through the windows is blinding at first, setting the room in a haze. Little specks of dust float around us. When my eyes adjust, the people are gone, leaving just me and Daniel in the large room. Confused, I glance around before my brother is talking again.
“Does he think he can erase what he’s done?” my brother asks. “That we’ll just forget after a movie? No. How stupid does he think we are?”
“He doesn’t think we’re stupid,” I tell him. “He’s probably having second thoughts about Grandma Nell’s. I mean, wouldn’t you after spending more time with us? We’re kind of awesome.” I smile, trying to lighten Daniel’s mood. I know it’s naive, but part of me wants to believe that my father really can change.
My brother scratches his head, right where I thought I saw the crack, and I look away. For all its grandeur, the hotel lobby has taken on an eerie quality. Where did everybody go?
“Look,” Daniel says apologetically. “I’m not ready to forgive him, okay? But you and me”—he waggles his finger between us—“we’re okay. Always.”
“Forever,” I say in a spooky voice, imitating our dad’s strange statement earlier. Daniel laughs, pushing my shoulder like he’s mad at me for cheering him up.
“It’s fucking Poltergeist up in here,” he says with a grin. He exhales heavily and glances back at the elevator. “I’m going to grab a shower,” he says. “And I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to count me out on that movie date. I’m not in the mood.”
“I get it,” I say. “Although . . .” This is probably not the time, but I can’t stop myself. “Are you going out with Catherine?”
He nods. “Yeah. Why?”
Is he already defensive? I keep talking anyway. “Well,” I say, “she kind of sucks, Daniel.” I hold up my hand, counting off the reasons why on my fingers. One: “She’s rude to me, borderline threatening.” Two: “Joshua—the valet—actually said that she stabbed him in the gut—like with a knife. And I’m not sure he was joking.” I hold up a third finger. “And she’s Elias’s ex. He says she has a bad temper and that you should be careful.”
Daniel is so still for a moment that I think he didn’t hear me. But then I notice the anger welling up, and I swallow down any more reasons I was about to give.
“That’s awfully convenient, don’t you think, Aud?” he asks. “The guys are the ones saying this about her.”
I laugh off the beginning of his argument. “Sure, Daniel. She’s the toast of the Ruby and everyone’s in love with her. Or,” I allow sarcastically, “she’s a whack job who’s going to murder-suicide you in a jealous rage before we check out. Sleep with one eye open.”
“You don’t know her like I do,” he says, ignoring my joke. “She’s not that person anymore. None of us are the same anymore, Audrey. Things change.”
“What?” I curl my lip. “You’re starting to sound like Dad. Look, how do you know she’s not just—”
Daniel puts his hands on my upper arms, bending so he can look me in the eyes. “Stop worrying about me,” he says. There’s a sharp pain—rejection. Even though he doesn’t say it, he’s telling me I’m not Mom. He must notice the hurt in my face, because he forces a smile. “Besides,” he adds, “I can handle myself in a catfight if I need to.”
I groan and brush his hands away. He’s not going to listen to me about Catherine, and I guess it doesn’t really matter. Tomorrow, Daniel and I will be on our way to our grandmother’s. Or back to Phoenix, I think hopefully.
“Fine,” I tell him with an exhale. “Do what you want. I’m going to wander for a while. But if you change your mind about the movie—”
“I won’t,” Daniel says quickly. He winces and rubs at his scalp. “Plus my head is still killing me,” he mumbles. “I’ll see you later.” Partly dazed, he turns to leave. I watch him walk away, looking unsteady as he gets into the elevator.
The hallway is wide, with gold-framed pictures, quiet and still. Peaceful. I pause in front of a picture labeled THE HOTEL RUBY, 1936. There, in black and white, is a wide shot of the building itself. Possibly more impressive than it is now, if only because of its age
. Standing in front is a crowd of people, well dressed and smiling. Are they the stockholders who helped erect this place? I lean closer, trying to find one who might look a bit like Elias, a peek into his past.
“Now it just looks like I’m stalking you.”
I jump, and laugh when I find Elias resting his shoulder against the patterned wallpaper a few feet away. “Are you?” I ask. He shrugs, admitting that maybe he is. He holds up a rose, and I’m ten shades of flattered as I take it and smell it. Light and powdery. Utterly charming.
Elias smiles, and it’s the strangest thing—I know we’re both embarrassed, shy, about our almost kiss in his room, but I don’t think either of us plans to stop meeting like this. With my heart thumping, I go to stand next to him against the wall.
“How are you today?” he asks. “I was absolutely miserable after you left last night.”
“I’m sure,” I say teasingly. “If it helps, I had a nice chat with Catherine in the elevator, so I think I beat you out for biggest buzz kill.”
“Ah, yes. You win.” His glance drifts past me, and it’s clear that he doesn’t want to talk about Catherine. I’m glad we can agree.
“I’ve actually had a terrible day,” I tell him, still trying to process what happened at lunch. “I think I’m having a bad reaction to drinking, or to searching for ghosts, or”—I smile—“to staying up with strange boys until dawn.”
Rather than laugh, Elias shifts in concern. “What sort of reaction?”
I wave my hand to let him know I’m not taking it too seriously, or at least, that’s what I want him to think. “Cracked skulls, blood, the usual,” I say, immediately filling with unease at the memory. It wasn’t real, I tell myself. Daniel was fine just a second later.
Elias widens his eyes at the gory details, and I quickly change the subject. “So I have nothing to do,” I say, twisting the flower nervously between my fingers. “Planned to spend the day exploring. Would you . . .” I tilt my head, waiting for him to agree before I have to ask.