What does he think, Darius Hawke who has always looked the world right in the eye?
I don’t want to know. Unlike when I was younger, I hadn’t experienced a flood of joy and excitement when my father told me Uncle Darius was coming back. Knowing how much we’d both changed, I didn’t know what to think or feel.
I still don’t.
The smell of coffee comes from the kitchen. Darius is already there, an unfamiliar and suddenly unwelcome sight.
I want my regular morning back—the one where I come downstairs in my pajamas and eat a bowl of cold cereal at the old wooden table with its uneven legs, the morning where I make coffee for my father and knock once on his closed office door to let him know it’s almost ready.
This is a different morning altogether. Sunlight splashes over the worn linoleum floor, old appliances, and laminate countertops. The big man by the stove seems to take up half the room—despite the size of the house, the kitchen is disproportionately small.
He turns, though I’ve made no sound. “Morning, Nell.”
“Morning.” I cross my arms. “I always brew my father’s coffee.”
“Sorry, I didn’t know. But considering I make the world’s worst coffee, your father will be glad to have you in charge of it tomorrow.”
Though he doesn’t smile, his face relaxes a bit and amusement rises to his eyes.
With a spatula, he gestures to the stove. “Hope you don’t mind, but I found eggs in the fridge and decided to scramble a few. There’s toast in the toaster too.”
“I usually just have cereal for breakfast.” I get a box of cereal and a bowl from the cupboard. I sit with deliberately firm movements, as if staking my claim to this house, this kitchen.
Then I realize I’ve forgotten the milk. Before I can rise again, Darius opens the fridge and takes out the milk carton, which he places beside me. I don’t bother thanking him. The milk belongs to me and my father, after all.
He turns back to the stove. I eat the cereal and watch him surreptitiously as he finishes cooking and loads eggs and toast onto a plate.
He’s so different from my father. Darius is tall and he moves with purpose, like he both needs and wants to take up space with his body. I’d assumed that he’d have wasted away in his captivity, but he must have undergone intense physical rehabilitation over the past year because nothing about him appears weak.
Just the opposite. His arms are heavily corded, and the muscles of his long legs are evident beneath his worn jeans. His T-shirt stretches over a powerful chest and shoulders that look even wider than they did when he was younger. Maybe packing on muscle was part of his therapy, a way to make him stronger, in control, to feel as if he’d never be vulnerable again.
A slight ache constricts my chest. Even now, it’s painful to think of him having been vulnerable in the worst possible circumstances. But he doesn’t appear to have let his defenselessness define or become a part of him. Instead, he looks as if he obliterated it from every cell in his body.
He eats by the sink, leaning back against the counter. The upward motion of his arm, the close of his lips around the fork, the ripple of his throat—all have a deliberate edge, as if he doesn’t take any movement for granted. Everything he does has a point.
He looks up. I jerk my stare from his hard forearms to his face. For an instant, he holds my gaze, like he’s trapping a butterfly in a net. His eyes are no longer the warm, gold-flecked brown that I remember. They’ve been cast over in shadows, clouds, darkness.
I drag my attention from him and focus on my cereal. A funny feeling appears in the pit of my stomach, a tense winding like thread around a spool.
After setting his plate in the sink, he pours another cup of coffee, then pulls out the chair opposite me and sits. The rickety old table creaks. He leans back and folds his arms, still watching me.
I don’t like being looked at. I don’t like attention at all, and his is more unnerving than all others’. He has a stare that’s penetrating, as if he’s looking at me through a camera lens and assessing everything. Light, color, shadows, subject matter.
I hunch over the cereal, letting my hair fall forward on either side of my face. He watches that movement too. I can feel his gaze like a weight, heavy and immobilizing.
“Your father tells me you go to Monarch High,” he finally says.
“I’m a senior. I missed a year and have to make it up.” I glance up to see if my father had told him why I missed a year, but his expression registers nothing.
He can’t have known what happened to me after my mother died. If he had, there’s no question he would have come back much sooner. Right?
Smothering a wave of unease, I force my voice to sound casual. “Art is one of my favorite classes.”
“Have you ever taken photography?”
“I took the intro class last year. This is my third year in art.”
“What’s your favorite medium?”
I shrug. “Just pencil, I guess. I like to draw.”
Heat crawls up my neck. How juvenile—I like to draw. I might as well tell him I still like to look at picture books too.
“I admire people who have a talent for drawing,” he says. “I never did.”
As if he doesn’t have enough expertise and knowledge to share with the world.
“What are your other favorite classes?” he asks.
“English, especially when we do creative writing.”
“Your father told me you enjoy writing,” he says. “Do you play an instrument? Or are you involved in sports?”
I shake my head, embarrassed to admit I don’t do much of anything except go to school, draw, and read. Why is he asking, anyway?
“Good morning.” My father’s voice breaks into my thoughts.
He never comes into the kitchen this early. Though still in his pajamas and bathrobe, he’s handsome and ordered with his perfectly knotted belt and combed hair, his short, dark beard enhancing the angularity of his features. “Smells good in here.”
“Darius made the coffee,” I say.
“She’s letting you know in advance since it’s terrible,” Darius tells my father.
My father’s eyes crinkle with humor. “Guess your coffee-making skills haven’t improved over the years.”
“Neither has anything else.”
My father moves behind me to get to the coffeepot, patting my shoulder by way of a greeting. “I told Nell you’d be willing to start driving her to school today.”
“Sure.”
“I don’t need a ride.” I dump another helping of cereal into my bowl. “I can take the bus.”
“Why bother, when Darius can drive you? He’ll use the Toyota until he gets a car of his own. Besides, you’re in art for both homeroom and first period, so it makes perfect sense.” He takes a sip of coffee, glancing at Darius over the rim of the mug. “Ready to face a few dozen teenagers?”
“I imagine it’s a different kind of conflict zone.” Faint amusement curves Darius’s mouth. “My first official day isn’t until next Monday. We did all the paperwork and meetings through email and video calls, but today will be the first time I meet the administration and other teachers in person.”
I try again to picture him as a teacher...and can’t. He has more knowledge than anyone, even my father, and when I was younger, he’d been infinitely patient with my endless questions. He’d been a wonderful listener, and I always understood his explanations about even the most esoteric of topics.