Hemlock Veils

He slung his jacket over his arm, threw a ten-dollar bill on the table, and left the diner. Elizabeth couldn’t conjure words “Don’t mind him,” Regina stammered. “He doesn’t speak for all of us. Besides, Mr. Clayton’s a little grumpier than usual today.” She paused, caution lowering her voice, just as Eustace stood and put on his hat. “You just…have to be careful what you say about the monster around here. It’s the best way to piss folks off.”

The bell still jingled in Mr. Clayton’s wake. It, not Regina, held Elizabeth’s attention. Before she could stop herself, the heat of injustice shot her to her feet and she edged past Eustace before darting out the door. Mr. Clayton was across the street, about to enter his fancy car. Arne Randolph held the door.

“I’m not afraid of you, Mr. Clayton,” she said, stopping behind him.

He threw his jacket on the seat before turning back to her. Again, the condescending smile. She noticed for the first time an irritatingly charming set of dimples. “Just as you aren’t afraid of the monster, I suppose?”

“I know you’re used to ru

“I wonder if Frank Vanderzee would agree with you on that.”

She recoiled, her mind unable to process the name he spoke, or how he even knew it.

“I have to say, Ms. Ashton, I never had you pegged as a woman who would work for such an ostentatious billionaire.”

She tried to take normal breaths. “You don’t know anything about the kind of person I am, Mr. Clayton.”

He stepped closer and the wind played with his hair. While his eyes smiled proudly, she felt the audience behind her, standing outside the diner. “On the contrary, Elizabeth Ruth Ashton. Lost your father at age eighteen, lost your brother at the age of twenty-nine. That was just last week, wasn’t it?”

Swallowing, she never removed her slightly burning eyes from his. For some reason, hearing it spoken from Mr. Clayton’s unworthy lips brought a new kind of pain. She wanted to shake the sound of it from her mind.

“Are you still grieving, Ms. Ashton?” he went on, his pity patronizing. “Is that what this is with the monster: a suicide attempt?”

“How dare you,” was all she could breathe. Air fled her chest, leaving it tight.

As though he hadn’t just said the most insensitive thing possible, he continued, “Straight-A nursing student up until the very end, where you quit one semester short of graduation. A long job history working for one of the nation’s top businessmen, up until you quit just last week. So tell me, Ms. Ashton, why quit so suddenly?”

“How do you know all this?”

“If you’re in my town, I’m going to check into a few things. No one stays this long without my knowing why they’re here.” Another step closer—close enough she had to crane her neck to meet his eyes. He was even taller than she’d previously thought. He had to be somewhere between six and seven feet. Willem was two inches above six, and she’d gotten used to the way it felt to look him in the eyes, how far she had to crane her neck. And Mr. Clayton towered above even the height of her brother. “But none of that answers the question,” he said. “What are you ru

No response formed; instead, she stared defiantly. The longer she did, the more it revealed itself: fear, deep in his eyes. Was he afraid of what she might do? What was she missing about Henry Clayton? Clearly, there was something.

He turned, but before he could enter his car she said, “I know about you, too, Mr. Clayton.”

Twisting back, he lifted an eyebrow.

“I’ve spent my share working with men like you, as you know. I may not know the facts tied to your name, but I know who you are.”

“Who am I?” he challenged, with a trace of vulnerability in his eyes.

“You’re a lonely, bitter man, hiding behind the life you’ve made for yourself—hiding behind your money. I feel sorry for you, Mr. Clayton, because it must be miserable being such an asshole.” She looked to Arne, whom she also felt for. He had some sort of sorrow in his old, bluish eyes.

“You have me all figured out, don’t you?” Mr. Clayton said before entering his car. Arne stood there a moment, slightly dumfounded. “Let’s go,” Mr. Clayton added impatiently, and Arne closed the door, moving to the front of the vehicle. He gave her a nod and a slight smile then he too was in the car. Her feet stayed planted while they drove away, and she tried analyzing whether it had been offense or grief in Mr. Clayton’s eyes. Perhaps both. Perhaps she’d struck a chord.

***

Henry and Arne weren’t even off Clayton Road before Henry loosened his tie and slipped it over his head, throwing it on the seat next to him. He ran a hand over his face then through his hair, and undid the top button of his shirt. Beneath it, he perspired. Amidst an irritated sigh, he found Arne’s eyes in the rearview mirror. And judging by the crow’s-feet in their corners, they were smiling.

“I like her,” Arne said, moving his attention ahead as he turned right onto Road Thirty-Two.

“Just drive,” Henry replied, clipped.

“And you do, too.”

Henry met his eyes in the rearview again. “Don’t.”

“The act may as well be over, Henry.”

“The act will never be over.” He felt Ms. Ashton’s presence in Hemlock Veils breaking him down, piece by piece. He felt himself losing it. He felt the way his soul had shrunk the moment she called him out, the way it had already began shrinking the moment he’d called her out.

How it continued to shrink still.

“She’s…very intuitive, isn’t she?”

The forest flew by his window in a blur of green. His glazed eyes refused to blink. “That’s why she has to leave.”

“Or why she should stay. She could be—”

“No.” Henry closed his eyes, willing himself to forget about her, and how she seemed to know everything without knowing anything at all. The way her green eyes had been filled with only awe the first time he’d looked into them, and how when he had, she seemed to understand. He clenched his hand into a fist, heat flowing to his every extremity.

“She didn’t deserve that, Henry.”

“Arne, please,” he begged, tiredly. “I don’t want to talk about Ms. Ashton. Not now, not ever. It doesn’t matter what she is or what she knows; she will be gone soon, and things can finally resume as normal.”

Arne sighed, and the set of his eyes in the rearview was somber. “That is exactly the problem.”

Chapter 9

Over a day had passed since Elizabeth’s encounter with the bitterest man this side of the universe. The most she’d seen of Mr. Clayton was when walking from the diner to her motel room yesterday evening before sundown—after she’d just eaten the best club melt she’d ever tasted. And she didn’t even see him, just his streamlined Maybach flying by on Clayton Road, back toward the mansion. She’d been tempted to throw something at it.

Really, it was easy avoiding him, since the only time he made appearances was at the diner first thing in the morning. Today she’d simply waited until after he was gone to mingle with the public of Hemlock Veils.

She hadn’t even given into her curiosity and looked into the forest last night. The last thing she wanted was Mr. Clayton to have more fuel, and that’s exactly what her curiosity of the forest was: fuel to the fire of his unfair hatred. Instead, she had closed the curtain in the motel room and watched the old box television, turning up the volume every time she was tempted, just to distract herself.