Darkheart

The Present: Good & Evil

The reversal was striking, strange, bizarre--sitting at a table in the dining hall rather than walking past the cavernous room to take a peek at who was working that day. None of it had changed. The building was as stunning a mix of woodsy and high-end sophistication as it'd been a decade and a half ago, its open timber beams spiraling upward into the skylit apex at its center. Everything was set beautifully, from the daring white tablecloths to the periwinkle hydrangea arrangements at the center of each lazy susan, the folded napkins and shiny cutlery to the crystal glassware. And the weirdest thing of all was being waited on by the dining hall staff, local teens, none of whom Kevin recognized but to all of whom he felt instantly connected (though surely they would've scoffed to hear it). The whole thing was so disconcerting that he couldn't even bring himself to order, although he'd been in no place to eat for the past few days anyway, and so the woman he'd once known as Lyra ordered for him.

Her name was actually Francesca Kensington, and she'd been a member of the resort her whole life. In fact, her Nan, as she'd called the older woman at their table, was on the board, as was her aunt, and the two women had raised her. She'd recalled seeing them--Kevin and the others--years earlier. She was younger than they were, and surely none had paid her much attention, but all of the resort members, even the children, had known of the four selected teens from town. The young people in particular had been asked to keep away, to allow for the natural course of events--a course they'd been taught about in the event that it occurred--but Francesca, as she'd told Kevin, had always felt a fascination toward them. And when she'd been asked to help, just as David had been asked to help, she'd done so without reservation. She'd not apologized for lying to him, not the entire time Kevin had stayed with her family. Much like Heather, he'd been disinclined to speak much with any of them and had spent most of the last few days alone. He'd walked the resort road back and forth, wandered a bit in the woods, sat on the upper deck of the house in which he stayed and watched the lake, the lighthouse, the trees and squirrels, and he wondered vaguely at the unimportant self-important world beyond the abyss. Francesca and others left him alone; they knew he'd capitulated, he supposed.

This was the first time he'd been in the dining hall since he himself had been a teen. He wasn't sure why Francesca had wanted him to come. She'd even brought him what she termed "decent" clothing, which he'd passive-aggressively refused to wear. When he saw Heather walk in, though, he was fairly certain he understood. She entered and sat down along the windows with a man--David, Kevin thought, her husband. Well, not so much her husband. Heather had been used as well, hadn't she? It wasn't a surprise. Nothing would've surprised him now, or so he'd thought.

As the resort arrived, dined, and socialized, Kevin sat in silence, unaware for the most part that he spent more time watching Heather across the way than watching anything else. She had her back to him, and yet he felt relatively sure that she was as reticent as he. No one around him, not even the stunning Francesca, could draw his attention, but as the meal wound down, as night fell dark and the heavy air crept in through the open windows, Kevin's apathy permuted into irritation. He reached into his pocket for his pack and lighter and, much to the chagrin of the Kensington women around him, lit up. They'd told him more than once not to smoke cigarettes on resort property--cigars or pipes only!--but he had no interest in gratifying them. Ignoring their complaints, Kevin stood abruptly and, without a word to those at his table, crossed the emptying hall. Upon reaching his destination, he gripped Heather's upper arm with his empty hand and pulled her out of her chair. She momentarily protested until she realized who'd taken hold of her, and then she fell slack and followed his lead.

"Hey, you can't just take her--"

"Keep your shit together," Kevin snarled at David, who'd also risen. He inhaled and breathed a cloud of smoke across the table. "I'm going to have a conversation with the mother of my child, and you're going to leave us the fuck alone."