The Taken by Inger Ash Wolfe Page B

fleshly drift had taken place. Her navel was somehow not centred. It might have been her skewed posture, but she suspected something more sinister. Her twisted heart communicating its ways to the outside.
    She had to hold on to the sink while the hot water rose up the sides of the tub. Five minutes gripping its cold edge. Then the bath was ready and she manoeuvred herself over the rim and into the hot water. It was always an instant relief to be in this heat and she shuddered as she lowered herself into it. She had to sit with crossed legs as it was too hard to sit flat with her legs out in front of her. The warmth spread in her limbs and climbed her trunk.
    She leaned back and closed her eyes. Immediately, the room Wingate had shown her online appeared in her head. The stink of the lake-rotten mannequin and the vision of that dank room were immediately allied in her mind. These two presences, the black photos, and the story in the newspaper triangulated to something that demanded attention. Who were this couple, Bellocque and Paritas? Or should they be focussing on Barlow and Jellinek? And this Eldwin – it was as if his story had metastasized, and now he was “out of town.” On the lam, or out of commission? She rotated the facts as she knew them in hermind and looked through their facets, but there was nothing in them but a bending of the light. It made her think she was standing on the outside looking in. Waiting was the worst part when it came to an investigation, but sometimes you had no choice. She was still weaving and reweaving the facts when she heard the door to the upstairs open. Andrew called her name.
    “What is it now?” she said, and she cupped a handful of water to her face.
    “I come bearing orders.”
    “Whose?”
    He came and stood outside the door. “Your mother’s. I believe she said
take my mulish daughter her dinner and tell her to eat it or I’m pouring every drop of whiskey in this house down the sink.”
    “She said that?”
    “Doesn’t sound like her?”
    “Whatever.” She heard something clinking. He’d laid a tray on the floor. “I’ll leave it here. Glynnis can come down and help you out in a few minutes.”
    “I’ll be fine on my own.”
    “Okay then.”
    She waited for the door to upstairs to close, but then she heard his clothes brush against the door. “Are you still there?”
    “Yeah,” he said almost inaudibly. “I just wanted to apologize. I didn’t mean the charm thing. Well, I
meant
it, but it wasn’t nice.”
    “Some apology.” She ran the hot washcloth over her arms. “I’ll accept it, though. I collect your apologies.”
    “How many you got?”
    “I don’t think I’ll be completing the set any time soon.”
    “I’ll send Glynn down in ten minutes.”
    “Hey, you know?” He didn’t say anything, as if dreading participating in this conversation any further, with its strange intimacy. “You there?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Let me ask you something.” He waited. “Do you think the world would end if you came in here?”
    “Absolutely. In a flash of light.”
    “Well, you have to agree, it’s not much of a world.” He laughed. Then there was another long, agonized pause. “Oh for god’s sake, Andrew, bring me my supper before it gets cold, would you?”
    She heard him retreating into the room, but then he returned and the door opened and he was holding a chair in one hand and the tray in the other. He put the chair down behind the tub and laid the tray down on the floor, pushing it with the tip of his slipper toward her.
    “Andrew.”
    “I’m fine here.”
    “I can’t reach it.” She heard him sigh – the sound was directed toward the floor, and she turned as best she could and saw him sitting there with his head in his hands. “Just come here,” she said. “You’ve already crossed the Rubicon. You might as well help me eat.”
    He got up and moved the chair over and sat down again, this time facing her at the side of the tub. He