Tabula Rasa(40)

Sometimes all a person needed was to be treated like they were normal. At a certain point sympathy and empathy become another version of aggression.

“Elodie? Are you going to dinner?”

“I have a choice?”

“About this? Yes.”

“I’ll go, but what will I tell them about who I am?”

“Make something up, but keep it as close to the truth about what you know about yourself as possible. It’ll be easier to remember. You should make up a different last name if it comes up, and I wouldn’t tell them the university you attended. Pick another one, on the other end of the country, preferably.”

“Do I have to wear the brown contacts? Don’t I look different enough without them?”

My hair was much shorter and darker. And while I didn’t wear makeup with just us in the house, Shannon had bought me some. The colors I would wear would be far different than what would have worked with long blonde hair.

“What is your objection to the contacts?”

“Discomfort. Not wanting to touch my eye. And what if we forget them sometime? Or I might forget to take them out. I have to clean them. A lot of things.”

“What about a pair of non-prescription glasses?”

“Okay.”

“Good. I’ll handle it while I’m out running errands today. Finish up your leftovers for lunch so I can get it out of my fridge. I don’t want the kitchen smelling like lo mein for the rest of the week.”

I had thought we might discuss the previous night, or that he might give me some indication of how he saw our relationship progressing. I don’t mean that I thought we’d pick out rings or discuss babies, just that I thought surely he might give me some indication of his plans for me. In reality, it seemed he only planned to let me see a few feet of the road ahead of me at any given time. Whether he’d privately planned any farther than that remained a mystery.





***





At six-thirty, we sat in Shannon’s car in front of his parents’ house. They lived in a really nice—almost posh—upper middle class neighborhood in a generously sized red brick two-story with large white columns in the front.

“I thought you said your parents couldn’t afford to send you to college,” I said, sure I’d caught him in a lie. Not that it would matter in the grand scheme, but somehow I was disappointed he’d lie to me about something so trivial. I’d thought that because it would be easier to be honest for someone with little to no guilt, that he would be. Bad assumption on my part.

“They couldn’t. This isn’t the house I grew up in. We were firmly middle class. I had everything I needed and a lot of things I wanted, but college was still outside of our budget, and I didn’t have the kind of grades for a scholarship. But that was twenty years ago. In that time, my father’s small business has grown and his investments have paid off.”

“Oh,” was all I could manage, ashamed for thinking he’d lied about his family. Though I was sure he couldn’t care less whether I thought he’d been lying or not. He might be a demanding control freak, but it didn’t seem as though anything had the power to make him defensive.

Shannon got out of the car and came around to my side, opening the door for me with a smooth and polished flourish. If we’d been on a real date and I didn’t know the truth about him, I would have believed his act. In one hand, he held an expensive bouquet of pink roses he’d picked up for his mother from the florist on the way. The perfect gentleman.

On the front porch, he rang the bell while I straightened my skirt and my hair and pushed the glasses up the bridge of my nose. I wasn’t sure I would ever get used to these things and thought maybe I should have opted for the contacts after all.

“Stop fidgeting,” Shannon said as the door opened.

“Shannon!” His mom swept him up in a hug and pulled him into the house. I stepped in behind them and closed the door, shutting out the frigid air outside. She seemed to be about early sixties and was slim and polished in a smart red pantsuit. She had chestnut colored hair swept back into a bun and bright green eyes. “Frank! Frank! They’re here!” She called out behind her, a rich, southern twang wrapping around her words like velvet.

I realized suddenly that Shannon didn’t have an accent. Had he worked to rid himself of it? I couldn’t imagine someone wanting to hire a killer who sounded like a lead singer in a country band. There was no reason Shannon should seem less deadly with a twang or drawl, but somehow it didn’t fit.

His mother was far more animated and friendly than her polished presentation might suggest.

By this point, we were in the foyer, easing our way into the belly of the house. “Here, let me take your coats,” she said.

“Millie, for God’s sake, I live in the same house you do,” Frank said, a similar, though more brusque accent flowing from his own mouth. Frank looked like an older version of Shannon, if Shannon were to stop working out and gain about thirty pounds, go gray, and take up pipe smoking. He was similarly dressed to his wife in a nice understated navy suit and a tie. They looked as if they were about to attend church.

I wondered if he dressed this way for his work or if Millie had made him put something nice on for dinner.

“Oh, are these for me?” Millie asked, gushing at the roses and inhaling the fragrance wafting off the pale pink blooms. “You didn’t have to bring me flowers.”