Chapter 6
Liv
“What are you doing?”
Stephen looked appalled as Liv shrugged off her trousers and blouse. She flung them onto a low tree branch.
“What?” she asked, following the line of his gaze to her undergarments. Her bra was a bit worn and her britches frayed at the edges, but it wasn’t as if she’d stripped naked.
Stephen’s face had gone red.
Liv stuck a hand on her hip.
“Don’t blow your wig, Stephen. It’s only underwear.”
He continued to gaze at her with a stupid expression, so she rolled her eyes and ran to the water, flinging herself off the little dock jutting into the pond.
The cool water swallowed her in its sumptuous, clammy mouth and she dove deep, trailing her fingers over seaweed before bursting back to the surface.
Stephen had finally closed his mouth and set about removing his own clothing, folding them neatly on a flattened patch of grass. His underwear looked white and crisp, and Liv noticed for the first time the shape of him. He stood long and lean, with hard patches of muscle rippling beneath his chest and arms.
She kicked her legs and felt a little tremor of curiosity. She’d seen half-naked men before. Her own brothers had spent most of their summers in tattered shorts, bare-chested and not the least modest. But as she watched Stephen, she noticed his body in a way her brothers’ had been invisible to her. She’d never had a boyfriend, never really wanted one, though at times the girls in school wearing their boyfriends’ letter jackets and showing off their promise rings had triggered something deep in her gut. She called it loathing, but envy might have been closer to the truth.
Stephen did not jump in, but walked out on the little dock and sat on the edge, dipping his feet in the water.
“Come on! It’s like jumping in an icebox,” she called before diving under again.
When she popped above the pond, he hadn’t moved.
“How deep is it?” he asked.
She swam closer and splashed him.
He recoiled at the spray of water, and Liv noticed that his hands clutched the edge of the dock as if he were a cat getting shoved in.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he snapped. “I just don’t feel like it, is all.”
Liv paddled her legs and watched him. She didn’t believe for a minute he didn’t feel like it. The sun bore down, angry and sweltering.
Through the haze, Liv watched Stephen take a deep breath, as if gathering his strength before slipping off the dock and into the water. He stayed close to the dock treading water and slowly paddled away, moving closer to where she dove in and out of the cool lake.
After they toweled off, Liv regarded Stephen, who sat on the dock, his legs pulled to his chest.
“You jumped in and saved us. You can’t be scared of the water,” she murmured.
He turned and glared at her.
“I wasn’t scared,” he snapped.
She closed her mouth.
Stephen didn’t speak again until they were walking in the woods.
“I taught myself how to swim,” he told her, gazing steadily at the ground as they walked. “My mother forbade me from swimming. Her baby brother drowned when she was a teenager. She insisted if I never swam, I’d never be tempted to go near the water. My father tried to teach me once, and she caught him.”
Liv listened, glancing at his profile, but his face remained unreadable.
“What did she do?” Liv asked.
Stephen’s cheek twitched.
“He never tried again,” Stephen said. “But when I was thirteen, some guys at my boarding school started going out to this lake and jumping off the cliffs into the water. They talked about it all the time. The exhilaration of the fall, and then the sensation of disappearing into the cold, black water. They invited me a few times, and I made up excuses. I wanted to go so bad. I started to follow them. I checked out books on swimming from the library.”
He laughed, though the sound echoed hollow and empty in the forest.
“One night, I jumped in. I climbed up to the highest cliff and stared at the moonlit water and just jumped.”
Liv stopped, gazing at Stephen.
“You didn’t know how to swim, but you jumped off a cliff?”
He put his hand to his chest, as if recalling the sensation.
“Yeah. Those seconds as I was falling…” He shook his head and turned to her with wide, almost bewildered eyes. “Were the most alive I’ve ever felt.”
“And then what?” Liv breathed, imagining Stephen vanishing into the dark lake, the surface only a spread of ripples where he’d gone in.
“And then I swam. Or flailed might better describe it. I swallowed a gallon or so of water. It took me ten minutes to reach an outcropping of rocks, but when I pulled myself up on those rocks, I was a different person. I realized I could do anything I wanted. Anything.”
“This is your house?” Liv gaped at the enormous house flanked with high, unruly bushes. “It’s huge.”
Stephen squared off against the house, hands planted on his hips as if he stared down a ferocious adversary rather than his own home.
“And you live here alone with your mom?”
“Yeah, come on.” Stephen led her up the wide wooden steps and pushed in the heavy oak door. The door creaked and swung in, revealing a long, dusky hallway. Paintings with gilded frames lined the walls. Liv glanced up at the sallow, unsmiling faces, their dark eyes seeming to watch her mistrustfully as she followed Stephen down the hall.
“Is your mother here?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“You couldn’t come over if she was. No one is allowed in the house.”
“Why?” Liv asked, following Stephen up a polished wooden staircase. Long, fringed rugs lay along the hallway. They walked another hallway thick with paintings, and then up another set of stairs.
“How many levels are there?” she whispered as they ascended.
“Four, including the attic. My room’s on the third floor.” He stopped at a black door and pulled out a skeleton key.
“You lock it?”
Stephen nodded and slid the key into the brass keyhole. He wiggled it until it popped open, and they slipped inside.
A claw-footed bed, sheathed in a dark satin coverlet, stood in the center of the room.
A polished bookshelf held rows of books. Liv leaned down and smelled them, running her hand over the leather bindings. Gold-embossed titles read The Ingoldsby Legends, Worship of the Serpent and Lives of Necromancers. The titles reminded her of George’s books, though George’s were worn, with pages ripped and stained. Stephen’s books looked untouched.
“I’ve never brought anyone here before,” Stephen admitted, sitting on a velvet bench at the foot of his bed.
Liv looked up, surprised.
“Why not?”
“Have you read any of those?” Stephen changed the subject.
“I don’t think so. I’ve read a lot of Nancy Drew.”
Stephen grimaced.
“Nancy Drew?”
“I like to escape when I read,” she admitted. “I get enough textbooks in school.”
Liv stood and flicked a tasseled lamp near the window. The little black strands shimmered in the yellow light.
“It’s a beautiful day. Why don’t we open the curtains?”
Liv started to pull back the heavy blue drapes, and Stephen jumped from his seat.
“No,” he shouted, quickly wrenching them closed.