Dangerous Lover

Summerville, Washington

St. Jude Homeless Shelter

Christmas Eve

He needed Caroline like he needed light and air. More.

The tall, emaciated boy dressed in rags rose from his father’s lifeless body sprawled bonelessly on the icy, concrete floor of the shelter.

His father had been dying for a long time—most of his life, in fact. There had always been something in him that didn’t want to live. The boy couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his father clean and sober. He had no mother. All his life, it had been just the two of them, father and son, drifting from shelter to shelter, staying until they were kicked out.

The boy stood for a moment, looking down at his only blood relation in this world, dead in a pool of vomit and shit. Nobody had noticed his father’s dead body yet. Nobody ever noticed them or even looked their way if they could help it. Even the other lost, hopeless souls in the shelter recognized someone worse off than they were and shunned them.

The boy looked around at the averted faces, eyes cast to the floor.

Nobody cared that the drunk wasn’t getting up again. Nobody cared what happened to his son.

There was nothing for the boy here. Nothing.

He had to get to Caroline.

He had to move fast before they discovered that his father was dead. If they found the body here, the police and social workers and administrators would come for him. He was eighteen, but he couldn’t prove it. And he knew enough about the way things worked to know that he’d become a ward of the state. He’d be locked up in some prisonlike orphanage.

No. No way. He’d rather die.

The boy moved toward the stairs that would take him up out of the shelter into the gelid, sleety afternoon.

An old woman looked up as he passed by, cloudy eyes flickering with recognition. Susie. Ancient, toothless Susie. She wasn’t lost in alcohol like his father. She was lost in the smoky depths of her own mind.

“Ben, chocolate chocolate?” she cackled and smacked her wrinkled, rubbery lips. He’d once shared a chocolate bar Caroline had brought him, and Susie had looked to him for sweets ever since.

Here he was known as Ben. In the last shelter—Portland, was it? — his father had called him Dick. Naming him after the manager of the shelter always bought them some time. Not enough. Eventually, the shelters got sick of his father’s drunken rages and found a way to kick them out.

Susie’s hands, with their long, black, ragged nails, grasped at him. Ben stopped and held her hand a moment. “No chocolate, Susie,” he said gently.

Like a child, her eyes filled with tears. Ben stooped to give her grimy wrinkled cheek a kiss, then rushed up the stairs and out into the open air.

No hesitation as he turned into Morrison Street. He knew exactly where he was going. To Greenbriars. To Caroline.

To the one person on the face of the earth who cared about him. To the only person who treated him as a human being and not some half-wild animal who smelled of dirty clothes and rotting food.

Ben hadn’t eaten in two days, and he had only a too-short cotton jacket on to keep the cold away. His big, bony wrists stuck out of the jacket’s sleeves, and he had to tuck his hands into his armpits to keep them warm.

No matter. He’d been cold and hungry before.

The only warm thing he wanted right now was Caroline’s smile.

Like the arrow of a compass to a lodestar, he leaned into the wind to walk the mile and a half to Greenbriars.

No one looked his way as he trudged by. He was invisible, a lone, tall figure dressed in rags. It didn’t bother him. He’d always been invisible. Being invisible had helped him survive.

The weather worsened. The wind blew icy needles of sleet directly into his eyes until he had to close them into slits.

Didn’t matter. He had an excellent sense of direction and could make his way to Greenbriars blindfolded.

Head down, arms wrapped around himself to conserve what little warmth he’d been able to absorb at the shelter, Ben slowly left behind the dark, sullen buildings of the part of the city that housed the shelter. Soon the roads opened up into tree-lined avenues. Ancient brick buildings gave way to graceful, modern buildings of glass and steel.

No cars passed—the weather was too severe for that. There was nobody on the streets. Under his feet, the icy buildup crackled.

He was almost there. The houses were big here, in this wealthy part of town. Large, well built, with sloping green lawns that were now covered in ice and snow.

He usually made his way through the back streets, invisible as always. Someone like him in this place of rich and powerful people would be immediately stopped by the police, so he always took the back streets on a normal day. But today the streets were deserted, and he walked openly on the broad sidewalks.

It usually took him half an hour to walk to Greenbriars but today the ice-slick sidewalks and hard wind dragged at him. An hour after leaving the shelter, he was still walking. He was strong, but hunger and cold started to wear him down. His feet, in their cracked shoes, were numb.

Music sounded, so lightly at first that he wondered whether he was hallucinating from cold and hunger. Notes floated in the air, as if borne by the snow.

He rounded a corner and there it was—Greenbriars. Caroline’s home. His heart pounded as it loomed out of the sleety mist. It always pounded when he came here, just as it pounded whenever she was near.

He usually came in through the back entrance, when her parents were at work and Caroline and her brother in school. The maid left at noon and from noon to one the house was his to explore. He could move in and out like a ghost. The back door lock was flimsy, and he’d been picking locks since he was five.

He’d wander from room to room, soaking up the rich, scented atmosphere of Caroline’s home.

The shelter rarely had hot water, but still he took care to wash as well as he could whenever he headed out to Greenbriars. The stench of the shelter had no place in Caroline’s home.

Greenbriars was so far beyond what he could ever hope to have that there was no jealousy, no envy in him as he touched the backs of the thousands of books in the library, walked into sweet-smelling closets full of new clothes, opened the huge refrigerator to see fresh fruits and vegetables. Caroline’s family was rich in a way he couldn’t comprehend, as if they belonged to a different species living on another planet.

To him, it was simply Caroline’s world. And living in it for an hour a day was like touching the sky.

Today nobody could see him approach in the storm. He walked right up the driveway, feeling the gravel through the thin soles of his shoes. The snow intensified, the wind whipping painful icy particles through the air. Ben knew how to move quietly, stealthily when he had to. But it wasn’t necessary now. There was no one to see him or hear him as he crunched his way to the window.

The music was louder now, the source a yellow glow. It wasn’t until he had reached the end of the driveway that Ben realized that the yellow glow was the big twelve-pane window of the living room, and the music was someone playing the piano.

He knew that living room well, as he knew all the rooms of the big mansion. He’d wandered them all, for hours. He knew that the huge living room always smelled faintly of woodsmoke from the big fireplace. He knew that the couches were deep and comfortable and the rugs soft and thick.

He walked straight up to the window. The snow was already filling in the tracks his shoes made. No one could see him, no one could hear him.

He was tall, and could see over the windowsill if he stood on tiptoe. Light had drained from the sky, and he knew no one in the room could see him outside.

The living room was like something out of a painting. Hundreds of candles flickered everywhere—on the mantelpiece, on all the tables. The coffee table held the remains of a feast—half a ham on a carving board, a huge loaf of bread, a big platter of cheeses, several cakes, and two pies. A teapot, cups, glasses, an open bottle of wine, a bottle of whiskey.

Water pooled in his mouth. He hadn’t eaten for two days. His empty stomach ached. He could almost smell the food in the room through the windowpane.

Then food completely disappeared from his mind.

A lovely voice rang out, clear and pure, singing a Christmas carol he’d heard in a shopping mall once while he helped his dad panhandle. Something about a shepherd boy.

It was Caroline’s voice. He’d recognize it anywhere.

A frigid gust of wind buffeted the garden, raking his face with sleet. He didn’t even feel it as he edged his head farther up over the windowsill.

There she was! As always, his breath caught when he saw her.

She was so beautiful, it sometimes hurt him to look at her. When she visited him in the shelter, he’d refuse to look at her for the first few minutes. It was like looking into the sun.

He watched her hungrily, committing each second to memory. He remembered every word she’d ever spoken to him, he’d read and reread every book she’d ever brought him, he remembered every item of clothing he’d ever seen her in.

She was at the piano, playing. He’d never seen anyone actually play the piano, and it seemed like magic to him. Her fingers moved gracefully over the black and white keys, and music poured out like water in a stream. His head filled with the wonder of it.

She was in profile. Her eyes were closed as she played, a slight smile on her face, as if she and the music shared a secret understanding. She was singing another song even he recognized. “Silent Night.” Her voice rose, pure and light.

The piano was tall and black, with lit candles held in shiny brass holders along the sides.

Though the entire room was filled with candles, Caroline glowed more brightly than any of them. She was lit with light, her pale skin gleaming in the glowing candlelight as she sang and played.

The song came to an end, and her hands dropped to her lap. She looked up, smiling, at the applause, then started another carol, her voice rising pure and high.

The whole family was there. Mr. Lake, a big-shot businessman, tall, blond, looking like the king of the world. Mrs. Lake, impossibly beautiful and elegant. Toby, Caroline’s seven-year-old brother. There was another person in the room, a handsome young man. He was elegantly dressed, his dark blond hair combed straight back. His fingers were beating time with the carol on the piano top. When Caroline stopped playing, he leaned down and gave her a kiss on the mouth.

Caroline’s parents laughed, and Toby did a somersault on the big rug.

Caroline smiled up at the handsome young man and said something that made him laugh. He bent to kiss her hair.

Ben watched, his heart nearly stopping.

This was Caroline’s boyfriend. Of course. They shared a look—blond, poised, privileged. Good-looking, rich, educated. They belonged to the same species. They were meant to be together, it was so clear.

His heart slowed in his chest. For the first time, he felt the danger from the cold. He felt its icy fingers reaching out to him to drag him down to where his father had gone.

Maybe he should just let it take him.

There was nothing for him here, in this lovely candlelit room. He would never be a part of this world. He belonged to the darkness and the cold.

Ben dropped back down on his heels, backing slowly away from the house until the yellow light of the window was lost in the sleet and mist. He was shaking with the cold as he trudged back down the driveway, the wet snow seeping through the holes in his shoes to soak his feet.

Half an hour later, he came to the interstate junction and stopped, swaying on his feet.

The human in him wanted to sink to the ground, curl up in a ball, and wait for despair and then death to take him, as they had taken his father. It wouldn’t take long.

But the animal in him was strong and wanted, fiercely, to live.

To the right, the road stretched northward, right up into Canada. To the left, it went south.

If he went north, he would die. It was as simple as that.

Turning left, Ben shuffled forward, head low, into the icy wind.