Sacrificial Animals by Kailee Pedersen

Author:Kailee Pedersen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

Xxii.

NOW

Much to Nick’s slight disappointment, the evening—and several evenings not unlike it—passes without so much as a single dramatic outburst. His father and Joshua return from their dinnertime walk; Emilia sets the table; they eat. There is talk of everything and nothing. The weather (poor, as usual), the crops (good, as usual), Joshua’s job at a bank where he moves money back and forth in an aimless dance of wealth. Occasionally Carlyle opens a window and smokes a cigar, the smell of it causing the kitchen to reek of damp tobacco. He remains in a remarkably pleasant mood. Always good to have my sons back home, he says. As though neither of them had ever left.

They do not discuss his imminent, approaching death; nor the uneasiness that permeates Stag’s Crossing, that has seeped into the floorboards underfoot. How quickly they both set out to defy their father—never to return to Stag’s Crossing, never to look upon the face of the man who had made such a grievance of their childhoods. And now Joshua has come back as faithfully as any of the greyhounds that still roam the premises. Nick moments ahead of him, already lying pathetically at his father’s feet.

Shut away in what was once Joshua’s old room, Nick has kept himself busy. Writing feverishly and pausing only to look out the window down at the gravel road leading up to the front of the house. The menacing slope of the driveway. Over the years he has gotten into his head the strange idea of one day writing about Stag’s Crossing, though he wonders if he might even possess the words to give it shape and form.

When he emerges later that day having written nothing and read even less, he carefully goes downstairs and finds himself in the midst of preparations for a minor feast: Emilia has peeled and mashed potatoes and impeccably seared four rib eye steaks, leaving Nick to steam the beans and fetch the tablecloth where it was hidden in a dusty cabinet near the fridge. Running his hands over the worn cotton he feels the frayed edges, the slow separation of warp and woof. Taking it to the table to spread it out in an ocean of blue fabric he realizes it is the same tablecloth his father has used since he was a child. Standing barely taller than the table itself he was fascinated by the fabric, the feeling of each individual fiber beneath his fingers like the wild rills of an unknown tide.

Smoothing down the tablecloth he sees Carlyle and Joshua coming through the backyard. One of Carlyle’s elegant hounds trailing him, lunging forward to lick his hands as he walks. What a pair they make—father and son, Joshua in full glory, Carlyle almost uncountably aged.

Emilia comes up behind him and taps his shoulder. Wordlessly she passes him the plates of food, the silverware, a pitcher of water, a vase of freshly cut daffodils.

Where’d you get the daffodils? They don’t grow around here.

I thought you said you were going to find out all my secrets, she says.

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