The New Husband(39)
“Well, I have something to tell you, too,” Simon said, spinning around, bringing the rake along with him. “These branches are crossing over into our property. Now, I told your mother about it, but she won’t let me cut them down, and the neighbor won’t cut them down either. Property law, Maggie, is not something to trifle with. The framers of the Constitution treated private property as the cornerstone of a free society.”
I was too worried about my covert recording and what I was about to tell him to try and make sense of his little speech.
“Speaking of property,” I said, pushing the words past the lump that had sprung up in my throat. “I am really, really, really sorry.”
I bit my bottom lip, remembering that flickering dark look I’d seen, praying I could capture it.
“Sorry about what?”
Simon grew edgy, and then noticed my closed fist, instinct telling him that’s where he’d find the source of my sorrow. Adrenaline (I’d learned about it in bio) shot through my body and caused my sprained foot to throb. I shifted my focus to the ground, mindful to keep the camera lens pointed at him.
“I was downstairs, looking for something, and I sort of stumbled on where you kept your antique musket, and—”
I thought I saw the color drain from Simon’s cheeks, but for certain I heard the sharp breath he took. He was bracing himself, like I did when Mom asked me to sit down at the kitchen table because she had something to tell me about Dad.
“What did you do, Maggie?” Simon asked warily.
“I was just checking it out and … and … and this happened.”
I uncurled the fingers of my left hand to reveal the looping piece of metal and splintered hunk of wood with ancient screws still attached. Simon’s eyes opened wide at seeing what was in my hand, and … and … there it was, the start of the flicker I’d been hoping for, that shift from Simon to Simon 2.0. At almost the exact same moment the transformation began, his eyes darted over to my other hand, to my phone, and I swear, I swear, he noticed the camera lens pointed right at his face.
I tried to keep my hand steady, but I’m sure my recording of Simon would look like it was taken during an earthquake. I felt light on my feet and started to get super dizzy, as if I was having an allergic reaction without having eaten a peanut. I tried to push past the discomfort to focus on Simon, but what I saw made me feel even sicker to my stomach. Instead of capturing the look I was going for, recording his other personality, or worse, documenting some kind of attack on me, what I caught was his expression shifting as fast as I could blink. The darkness slipped from his eyes, and to me, he looked like one of the poker players Connor sometimes watched on TV, men and women who tried like heck not to reveal their hand.
I was thinking to myself: Did I get it? Was it enough?
Simon shook his head from side to side to signal his supreme disappointment in me.
“Boy, oh boy, Maggie, this is really, really unfortunate,” he said in an emotionless voice. “You knew you weren’t supposed to play with that gun. Any gun. It’s not safe. It’s not primed to be fired, but you didn’t know that. You could have been hurt.” He reached out and took my wrists in his hands, like he needed to touch me to drive home his point. I felt him apply gentle downward pressure on my wrists, lowering the camera in the process, so the only thing I’d be recording would be his khaki pants.
“I thought you were more mature than this, Maggie. I’m really, really angry at you.” But he didn’t sound really angry; in fact, he didn’t sound angry at all.
“I can’t send you to your room. Honestly, I can’t do anything,” he said, coming across as more sad than mad. “So I guess I’ll just have to wait for your mother to get home and she’ll have to deal with this. Could I have the piece you broke off, please?”
I gave it to him, my hand shaking. As he took the broken piece into one hand, he continued to gently hold on to my wrist with the other, keeping pressure on it so I couldn’t raise my phone and record his face. Then he did the strangest thing ever—worse than the dark look I was after, worse than anything I could have imagined. He cocked his head slightly to one side, keeping his expression a complete blank, the perfect poker player all the way. Then he looked me right in the eyes, cold as a snake’s stare, and he gave me a wink.
CHAPTER 22
The second call Simon made to Nina on her first day at work was to apologize for his apology, which he sweetly worried hadn’t sounded sincere enough. Simon’s third call came while Nina was chatting with Dave in Human Resources, and that was to ask about dinner. The fourth call came twenty minutes after the dinner conversation to ask about weekend plans, something Nina patiently told him would have to be discussed at home. She couldn’t remember what he wanted on his fifth and sixth calls, but by that point her annoyance was starting to grow and show.
While Nina appreciated that Simon cared enough to keep in touch, he was making it difficult for her to concentrate on her work. She remembered what Dr. Wilcox had said about the job bringing up buried feelings for Simon, unearthing dormant insecurities, and her anger faded.
“You need to stop being so anxious,” she told him. “You’re acting like a jealous boyfriend.”
Simon laughed awkwardly, as though embarrassed at being caught. He promised he wouldn’t bother her again.