The Heartbeat Thief (28 page)

The tea kettle hissed, the steam building up to a whistle. She plucked it off the heat before it could reach full shriek. She didn’t like noise. She’d become far too accustomed to quiet and stillness. It had been ages since she made tea, a proper tea with a full service and decorative sugars. She’d missed the routine.

Grandmother had always taken three lumps of sugar in hers. She’d preferred a Darjeeling, earthy and fragrant, over the milder Assams and startling Keemuns that Father would bring home. Darjeeling, she’d insisted, was an expression of liquid divinity.
If you could taste the earth, you could touch the stars. Be one with everything.

Senza blinked, stirring herself from the hazy memory. Grandmother had always told her to live in the moment. Senza seemed only to live in the past.

Wrong moments in which to live.

She rubbed her temple with the bend of her wrist and spooned tea leaves into the pot. Funny that he’d procure a tea service for her in this rustic shanty, a proper set with a silver empress tea strainer and matching sugar and creamer pots. Odd that he’d provide a service for two people, especially since she’d always been completely alone.

Senza arranged the service on a broad silver tray and arranged a spread of biscuits onto a saucer, next to a plate of cucumber and spread cheese sandwiches. A small bowl of candied fruits completed the tea. All had been conveniently located in the small pantry, as if she’d shopped the list on her own.

Stepping back, she surveyed her work. Grandmother would approve. A good host always saw to the tea herself, taking every pain to ensure her guests lost track of the time of day.

Hefting the tray, she carried it into the front room, still startled by its shocking transformation. A small but cozy fire blazed in the simple brick fireplace, near to which an unfamiliar tea table stood. Hand-embroidered flowers trimmed the edge of the linen, matching the elegant bunch of flowers that topped a grey ceramic vase.

The rest of the cottage had been transformed into a proper shanty, its insides matching its outsides. Worn but comfortable furnishing had replaced the luxurious suite she’d earlier enjoyed; hand-made rugs patched the hard-wood floor, the deep plush carpets vanished like a memory.

Even the bookcases, she’d noted, a heaviness to her heart. Gone. Only a few books remained, stacked on a neat pile on an otherwise bare coffee table. They were the ones she’d packed when she first left home, so many, many years ago, the ones that had accompanied her every step of her journey.

The man sat on the small sofa in front of the window, looking through one of those books. He looked up at her approach.

“Remarkable.” He lifted the volume. “This looks like a first edition.”

“I’ve had it a long time.” She set the tray on the small table, feeling it wobble under the sudden weight. “It had belonged to my father.”

“I’ve never seen a book this old. You should have it in plastic or something. The sea air may ruin it.”

Senza nodded and poured a cup for him. “Do you take cream or sugar?”

He waved a hand. “I’m not much of a tea drinker. Please, make it as you’d make your own.”

Sugar it was, then. Three lumps.

“So.” She held out the saucer to him before taking her own to the rocking chair. “Piotr, you said? That’s a strange name. Not very American.”

“Neither is Senza. Then again, you don’t sound very American.”

She blew across the top of her cup. “English.”

“I gathered that.” His eyes twinkled in the afternoon light, catching glints from the kitchen window. It seemed to be a very bright afternoon today. “How did you end up here, in the middle of nowhere?”

“One foot in front of the other, same as you.”

“No. I don’t believe it was the same.” He cupped his hand around the delicate china, trapping its warmth.

She sipped and said nothing, not believing him but unwilling to prove him wrong.

“I suppose you’re wondering what I was doing down there.”

Actually, she didn’t have to wonder. She knew a suicide when she saw it. “I wouldn’t presume to pry into your affairs, Piotr.”

“It’s not prying. I was trespassing on your property. You have a right to know.”

“If it makes you feel better, you can talk about it.”

“What’s a man to say?” He lifted his cup, snatching a quick sip, testing the temperature. “I meant to jump. Then you shouted and I slipped and you know the rest.”

She hid her frown behind her cup, not wanting to seem impolite. Inside, her belly twisted into a knot. He wanted to die. How reviling a thought. Who would willingly want to meet Death early? It was horrifying enough to meet Him on time—

“Your situation must be grim, indeed, to choose such a drastic undertaking.”

He chuffed out a laugh that was swallowed in a fit of coughing. When he regained his breath, he shrugged, a quick shake of his head. “We all have to die. I’d rather die by choice rather than by consequence.”

“Ah.” She lifted a finger toward the tea tray. “There’s biscuits, if you like.”

“You seem nonplused.”

“I am unsurprised. However, I have a rather unique philosophy regarding the nature of death and so it would be quite rude of me to remark critically upon someone else’s views.”

“Not a big fan of death, are you?” The smirk on his lips didn’t reach all the way up to his eyes.

“Almost everyone dies,” she said.

“Almost?”

“I’ve learned to avoid speaking in absolutes.”

“You’re very young,” he said. “Too young to be too wise.”

“I’m much older than I look.”

“How old do you think I am?”

A familiar game. She’d played it over and over throughout the years. Guessing another’s age was more than putting a number to a face, however; it was measuring the distance in someone’s eyes. It was gauging the length of their journey while considering the terrain they’d tread. Lives were made up of more than a succession of days. Lives were to be weighed for the experiences, the trials, the joys, the losses that rippled the satin smooth flow of time. People would look at Senza and proclaim
you are eighteen
.

And she always responded
you are right
. She never told them just how wrong they were. They’d never tried to measure the distance in her eyes.

She surveyed Piotr as he sat on the couch, waiting for her judgment. His clothing was simple but clean, denim jeans and a button shirt. Cuffs rolled back from his wrists, top two buttons undone. Could be a mark of casual dress, could mean the shirt was too small for him. He was rather tall, she’d noted earlier, when she showed him into the cottage. His brown hair was neatly trimmed, and the glint of a gold chain flashed inside his collar. He wore a wristwatch and his boots were polished black, or at least had been before he scuffed them on the side of a cliff.

Hmm. Casual, then, rather than negligent in his wardrobe.

For all the casual air about his dress, he sat with excellent posture, not a common thing in this era. He neither hunched nor slouched, especially odd in a man of his stature. It spoke of discipline, or pride. She suspected a little of both once she glimpsed the tattoo on his forearm, a fuzzy blue-black anchor. He had a past military history.

Now, for the face. Brown eyes, creased on the sides. Could be age, could be a remnant from a lifetime of laughter. Or it could be the cigarettes. She spied the outline of a paper pack in his shirt pocket. Smoking would add years to his face.

But the litmus test would come when she looked into his eyes. When she measured the distance.

She leaned forward, peering at his face. That distance was lifetimes long.

She blinked in surprise. What could have aged him so? All these twists and turns and trials were variables in an equation but when it came right down to it, she was better than anyone else at this game.

“Fifty-two,” she announced, feeling more than a bit of smug certainty.

“Wrong.”

Her mouth fell open. “I am not.”

“You are.” He reached behind him and tugged his billfold out of his back pocket. Flipping it open he slid out his identification card and held it up for her inspection.

His picture looked so much younger. Less weight about his mouth, more buoyancy in his eyes. She saw his birthdate but couldn’t calculate his age.

She’d forgotten what year it was.

He stowed the wallet back in his pocket. “I’m thirty-five. I know. I look much older. That’s cancer for you. It wears a guy out.”

She covered her mouth. Cancer was a word that had not improved in its connotation over the last several decades. “I’m so sorry. The treatment is difficult, yes?”

“It’s ineffective. Stage four lung. Worst of the worst. Thanks to these, among other poisons.” He patted his breast pocket. “Speaking of which, do you mind if I smoke?”

Smoking did not bother her. The lack of a proper receptacle, however, did. She was not overly fond of ashes. “I don’t know if I have a proper tray.”

Senza went to the kitchen and opened a cabinet, hoping for a bowl. Inside the second cupboard, she found a yellow glass ashtray, a heavy cut-crystal design.

Closing her eyes, she pinched her lips together. Why would Knell have left this here?

The warmth of the fire did not reach all the way into the kitchen, its tiled walls and hard floors chilled from the constant wind. Although there was no draft, nor any open window, an icy weight brushed her neck. She turned, glances darting about the empty room, expecting to see Knell.

No one. Just her nerves. A stranger in the parlor, and everything required for his ease provided. Knell knew. He always knew.

Returning, she smiled, but it was a tired stretch of lip that lacked humor. She held out the ashtray, not willing to make prolonged eye contact.

He seemed to note her expression. “I can go outside.”

She shook out her head and gestured for him to take the ashtray. “Should you be smoking if you have…?”

“Just say it. Cancer. Cancer,” he repeated, leaning toward her.

“Cancer,” she echoed, her voice scant. She set the glass dish on the coffee table and retrieved her tea, the safety of her chair.

“There you go. First battle, victory to you.” He plugged a cigarette into his mouth and lit it, drawing deeply. The tip glowed like fury. Inhaling loudly, he held the puff before letting it billow out in a thin plume. “Say the word and you conquer it.”

“You can conquer cancer?”

“No, just the word. Don’t give it more power than it has the right to have.”

“So.” She watched him enjoy his cigarette, the draw of the smoke, the tap of the cigarette against the glass dish. He maneuvered the cigarette with such grace, as if it were an extension of his hand. It was rhythmic, almost a dance. She’d never smoked herself, other than occasional dalliances on the elaborate hookah pipes in Victorian parlors. That had always been for show, not for satisfaction. “Is there no hope?”

“Nope,” he said, almost cheerfully. “I’m one-hundred percent a goner. Death is fast on my heels.”

She wrinkled her nose. His teasing references to death were distasteful.

He sighed a plume of smoke. “I just don’t want to give the bastard the satisfaction of having the last word. I figure he gets to do that a lot, and I’m a stubborn jerk. I want to ruin it for him by dying before he can come for me.”

“But either way—”

“Yeah, yeah. Either way, I’m a dead man. But I always lived on my own terms. I want to die that way, too.” He started another deep inhale but began to cough, a shoulder shaking wrack that dislodged him from his seat in an effort to quell it. She reached for the cigarette and ground it out for him, and held his tea ready. He sat, the spell momentarily passed. Taking the tea cup, he drained it in three rough swallows. “I’m sorry. Guess this is more than you bargained for when you went out for a walk today, huh.”

Her walk today. She’d forgotten. She walked out to the cliffs. She remembered the moments before she had spied him. The locket—

Senza felt around her neck. Not there. Not there! And yet, she lived.

She felt the lump of metal through her bodice and plucked it out. The chain spilled out, dangling from her palm. It was broken.