The Unknown Beloved(15)

The resemblance between the three women was unmistakable. Zuzana and Lenka had the same pearly skin as Dani, though theirs had pooled beneath their eyes and around their mouths with age. They were wrinkled and bent, but their skin was still unspotted. He suspected that once they had both been quite beautiful. Maybe as beautiful as Dani.

He sneaked a quick look at her across the table, and her different-colored eyes met his before dancing back to her plate. Her skin was as buttery and poreless as whipped cream. He thought briefly that it might simply be her youth, and then had to remind himself that she was the same age he’d been when they met. When they’d met, he’d already been to war and back again. He’d already outlived his children and left his wife.

Dani had been a child when they met. She was not a child now.

What a strange vortex the years suddenly seemed. The jump from ten to twenty-five was a lifetime. The leap from twenty-five to forty was but a long weekend. It was like being trapped in a Jules Verne novel.

He caught his reflection in the big mirror that sat over the long sideboard, the same way he’d seen himself in the washroom mirror when Dani was showing him to his room. He made himself look harder, simply to ease his disorientation.

He didn’t have a boyish face or a youthful glow, but he’d looked old when he was young, so aging wasn’t as marked in him as it was in some. He had deep-set, downturned eyes that were always shadowed, and skin like leather. He was currently the color of a brown paper bag, but even without the tempering of a year in the sun, he never burned.

We thought you were a changeling, with your dark eyes and all that dark hair. But then you smiled, and Dad saw himself. Thank goodness for that. They might have left you for the faeries or given you to Father McDonough to raise.

Molly had always said this with great affection, but young Michael had worried about it. What if he was a changeling? His pop’s skin was always pink, and his eyes were a vivid blue. How could Michael be the son of Martin and Kathleen Malone and look the way he did?

Have you ever seen a litter of pups where one is spotted and one is not? Where one is brown and one is gray? It’s no different than that.

Molly always had an answer for everything. But Michael had taken his looks as something of a sign. He was the outsider. The black sheep.

“You must tell us about yourself, Mr. Malone,” Lenka insisted, drawing his attention back to the dinner table and his present company. “Where are you from? And what brings you to Cleveland?”

He was ready for the questions now, though he would have to stay much closer to the truth of his life than he’d intended. Knowing Dani demanded it.

He gave a glancing biography: Raised in Chicago. Served in the Great War. No children. Wife deceased. Former policeman. Currently worked for the Department of the Treasury.

“And what is it you do for the Treasury Department?” Lenka asked.

“I’m essentially a tax man. I consult with local governments on receiving and meeting the requirements of federal assistance,” he said, then droned on about budgets and public welfare just long enough and drearily enough that they wouldn’t want to inquire again.

“How fascinating,” Lenka said, though she didn’t ask a follow-up question. None of the women did.

Daniela said little, Zuzana even less, though she reiterated that she did not like Irishmen and reacted in horror when he addressed Dani as Miss Flanagan. He didn’t even know what to call her, and calling her Miss Kos felt ridiculous. They had too much history to address each other as strangers. It was like saying Pardon me in a foxhole.

He ate as quickly as was politely possible and excused himself as soon as he was finished. Then he bid the women good night and descended the stairs, knowing he would be the topic of discussion as soon as he shut his door.



“He has said we can keep the rent, all six months, even if he leaves before then,” Dani told her aunts. “He will be a good boarder.”

“Nobody has money like that these days. Not honest men,” Zuzana said, tossing her napkin onto her plate.

“He works for the government,” Lenka protested.

Zuzana scoffed. “So? Never trust the government.”

“He’s quite handsome,” Lenka whispered, though her whisper was louder than her regular speaking voice. “I like a man with a good head of hair.”

“He’s handsome, is he?” Zuzana huffed. “What does he look like then, Lenka. Hmm? You can’t see the buttons on your own frocks without your spectacles. He could look like the dog that hangs around the sandwich shop, and you wouldn’t know the difference.”

“But he doesn’t look like the dog, does he? Not at all. He’s handsome. And well put together. And he smells nice.” Lenka drew in a deep, cleansing breath. “I can smell him all the way up the stairs. He must have just washed.”

“Lenka. Good heavens,” Zuzana snapped.

“It is good to have a man in the house again,” Lenka said, defensive.

The last man in the house had been their brother, Pavel, Daniela’s grandfather, almost fifteen years ago. The youngest, by far, of the four siblings, he’d been the only one to marry and have a family, though neither the marriage nor the family had lasted long. His wife died when his daughter, Aneta, Dani’s mother, was three years old, and she had been raised, primarily, by his three older sisters who had never had families of their own.