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“Ex what? Ex-con?” he asked. “You’re terrified of him, I can tell.”
Lia stood up and took a candle from her mantel. By the light of it, she pulled two wineglasses from her cabinet and a bottle of Syrah from the wine rack.
“Not terrified. I just... I didn’t want to talk to him. He’s not a nice person.”
Understatement of the century.
Flustered, Lia broke the cork off when twisting in the screw. The corkscrew landed with a metallic clatter onto the table.
“Damn.” Lia put her hands over her face and breathed. She faked a smile, dropped her hands, muttered a “Sorry.”
“Let me help you.” August walked to her and picked up the wine bottle, examining the broken cork as Lia rubbed her forehead. He slapped the base of it once, twice, three times with the palm of his hand. The broken cork wriggled its way to the top of the bottle and, with his fingertips, August pulled it out.
“Voilà,” he said.
Lia stared at him, wide-eyed. “How did you do that?”
He raised his right hand. “It’s my spanking hand.”
Lia shook her head as she poured the wine. If mischief were a kingdom, this man would be the prince of it.
“Who is he?” August asked. “Really?”
“His name is David,” Lia said softly. “A few years ago we spent the night together. I was serious about him. He wasn’t about me, apparently. Next day—literally the next day, he slept with someone else. He’s a bit older than I am. My parents have no idea we were involved. They don’t know some of the things I know about him. Seeing him out of the blue tonight with my mother was...a bad surprise.”
A very bad surprise. The worst of all surprises. But she couldn’t and wouldn’t go into that. David was a wound far too tender to touch.
“Do you want me to toss him out of the house?” August asked.
Lia was so shocked by that question that she laughed.
“What? Why wouldyoutoss him out of my house? You don’t know him.”
“Because he hurt you,” he said. “And that’s all the reason I need.”
“You don’t know me, either,” she said.
“But I’d like to.” He raised his wineglass to his lips. In the flickering candlelight, his fingertips looked dipped in gold.
Lia wanted to say something to him, something likeI’d like to know you, too. But that would be stupid, and Lia didn’t say stupid things to men anymore.
Instead she said, “I need more wine.”
She turned away from him to top off her glass. When she turned back, she found he’d taken the cover off her loom and was examining her tapestry.
“I keep that covered for a reason,” she said as she came to stand by him. The reason was Gogo’s wiry hairs. And embarrassment.
“Lia,” August breathed her name, “your work is magnificent.”
She blushed in the dark. “Thank you. Still learning.”
She’d woven the ocean, the dark red evening ocean, from one corner of the fabric to the top edge. A shadow lurked near the right center. The candlelight fluttered across the surface of her tapestry and tricked her eye into seeing the wine-dark ocean moving in flickering waves.
“This is Andromeda and Perseus,” August said. “Yes?”
“How did you know that? I haven’t put in Perseus yet. Or his Pegasus.”
“I know my mythology,” he said. “This is Cetus, yes? The shadow? The monster about to emerge.” He pointed at the shape lurking in the red water. “But where’s Andromeda, the teenage maiden being sacrificed to Zeus’s sea monster?”
