Fate Forgotten (10 page)

Adam waited at the shop bright and early the next morning. She fumbled with the keys, her eyes hidden behind dark glasses. He didn’t think she noticed him at first, leaning against his car. She dropped the keys, and mumbled what might have been the most obscure curse he’d ever heard before she retrieved them and finally managed to get the door open.

He chuckled and she turned, dropping the keys a second time. “You again!”

“I didn’t mean to startle you.” He picked up the keys and handed them back to her.

She pushed the glasses up into her hair and stared at him for a long moment. As if something had pained her. He could well imagine she was suffering from the wine, especially if she didn’t drink often.

He softened his voice and smiled. “Can I speak with you?”

“Somehow I don’t think saying no will stop you.” She held the door open and he walked in.

The smell of the place on a wine-soured stomach would be revolting, but he wasn’t sure if there was anything he could to do help her with that. Eve might have known. It was the sort of thing she wouldn’t have considered offensive to the rules she lived by. Renata flipped on lights and moved around the store without more than a swallow to indicate any kind of distress.

He’d spent the night mulling over her response to him at the restaurant, but he still didn’t know what to make of it. Why did women have to be so infernally confounding? They always had been. And he had never understood Eve, though he didn’t remember the details of their earliest days.

“Well?” she asked, coming to a stop behind the register and counting out the money into the till. It was bizarre to watch. How many cash customers could they really have? “Are you going to talk, or just lurk in the doorway all morning?”

“You disappeared on me again.” It wasn’t what he’d meant to start with, and he shook his head, crossing the room so he wouldn’t have to shout. “Did you expect me to just ignore that?”

She stopped counting and looked up at him. “You told me you might love me. After two dates. When you’re only here for a month. How was I supposed to respond?”

“I thought women were supposed to be sensitive.”

“I thought men were supposed to be emotionally stunted.” She pressed her lips together into a thin line, studying his face. “I’m sorry. I guess I just… panicked.”

He laughed. “First you’re upset because you think that I’m interested in another woman, then when I tell you I’m interested in you, you run. Was there any possible way for me to win?”

She almost smiled. “No, I don’t think so.” But it faded away too soon. “Not at all, really.”

“What now, then?”

She shook her head and went back to counting the money out, her lips moving soundlessly.

“Maybe you could admit that you’re interested in me, too,” he suggested.

Her hands froze and she bit her lip. She moved slowly then, putting away the money and closing the drawer. “Even if I was, there’s no point. You’re only here for a month and a half at the most. There’s no future for us, Jeremiah.”

“You’re so sure of that.” It was infuriating, this not knowing. Having these pointless conversations which got them nowhere. But she couldn’t be Eve. He didn’t want her to be Eve. It was simpler this way. “But my not living here doesn’t have to stand in the way. It’s really quite easy for me to travel.”

“Maybe for you, but not for me. I can’t afford to go gallivanting off and fly around the world for a man I’ve only just met. And even if I could, my parents need me here.”

Her parents. That was something he couldn’t ever understand. That bond of familial loyalty to the people that had born her. He was her parent as much as anyone. Maybe more so. He’d certainly had enough children over the generations to account for it, even if he hadn’t been First Made. The mold from which everyone else had sprung. But born and reborn as he was, with new parents in every generation, he felt no special love for them, no obligation once he had become an adult. He had his own money, his own life to live.

“You’re an adult, Renata. You’re free to make your own choices. But if you stay here, make sure it’s for you, too. Not just them.”

She stared at him as if he’d said something astounding, then shook her head. “I don’t see how you can be so convinced after a handful of hours that I’m someone you could love.”

Always the hard questions. The things he couldn’t explain. But he was sure. Certain. And he knew she felt it too. There was an ache underlying all of this, as if she were trying to convince herself even while she spoke to him.

“What’s the harm of spending the time we have together? These aren’t decisions you have to make now. And if at the end of a month you still feel the same way, you’ll never have to see me again. But why not just try?”

She looked away. “I can’t afford to fall in love with you. You’re not the kind of man who would be happy settling for the things I want.”

“You don’t know that. You’ve barely had the chance to get to know me at all.”

“I know you well enough to know that you’re rich.”

He laughed at the way she said it, as if it were some kind of slur. “Is it a crime to live comfortably? Do you really prefer to scrape by, counting every Loonie? Is that such a good life?”

“It isn’t a bad one!”

“Renata, please. Be reasonable.” He didn’t want to know why she was being so difficult about it, but the worry was nagging at him all the same. Clawing about in the back of his mind. Were these the specious arguments of his sister? Of his Eve? Excuses to avoid seeing him again? Made to force him to leave her alone? “I just want to know you. To enjoy your company. Can I have that much, while I’m here?”

“It isn’t going to be enough,” she said, shaking her head again. “You know it won’t be.”

“I’ll worry about that when the time comes. It won’t be your concern, I promise you.”

“Won’t it?”

He sighed, reaching out to touch her cheek. The heat, the fire that raced through him was less of a shock this second time, though he still marveled at the sensation. “I’ll make sure of it.”

She closed her eyes and turned her face away. “I don’t see how.”

“Just trust me. Please. Look at me.”

Her eyes opened, and he caught them with his own. It wasn’t that he wanted to take away her choice, or her will. Just to reassure her. To convince her that he could do as he said. Could make it all go away for her, if it ever came to that. The suggestion that it was impossible that he would hurt her.

She blinked several times and then pulled his hand away from her face. “It would be so much easier,” she said softly, “if you weren’t so used to getting your own way.”

He smiled. “Does that mean you’ll have lunch with me, after all?”

She sighed and dropped her eyes to the countertop between them. “I can’t. I have to work.”

“Then I’ll bring you something. What would you like? Just tell me where to go and get it. Anything.”

She looked at him, frowning slightly, and he thought she would refuse.

“There’s a little deli south of here that makes an incredible roast beef sandwich. My father used to bring one home to share with me and my mother as a treat sometimes when I was a little girl.”

“I’ll bring you one.”

She smiled. “You won’t regret it. It’s the best sandwich I’ve ever had in my life.”

He left the shop with her directions some time later and walked the two blocks south. He had worried for a moment, when she seemed to hesitate, that she was sending him out for a sandwich that didn’t exist just to get rid of him, but the deli waited for him just where she had said it would be, and it was doing a brisk early lunch business when he arrived. It made a startling contrast to Renata’s shop, in which he had yet to see a customer other than himself. He waited in line, and ordered precisely what she had told him to.

The sandwich-maker smiled with appreciation and put it together while he watched. Adam almost balked at the price, but if they were as good as she seemed to think they were, it would be worth it. It would be worth it even if they weren’t, as long as she enjoyed hers.

It was a ten minute walk back to the shop, and he stepped confidently through the door, only to find himself facing a thick, balding man. What little hair was left on his face and head—primarily his eyebrows, though there were tufts left above his ears—was all gray, and he looked at Adam with narrowed eyes. “Can I help you?”

He stopped short, his stomach sinking. “Where’s Renata?”

The man shrugged, his eyes narrowing further. “We’re having a sale on the cherry flavored chew this week.”

“No, thank you.” He pressed his lips together. When would he learn not to let her leave his sight? But how long could she really hide? He stepped up to the counter and set down the sandwich he had brought for her. “If Renata comes back, this is for her.”

“If she’d really wanted it, she would’ve waited.” The man sniffed.

There was no sign of her in the shop. He thought he would have felt her if she were hiding. If she were actually present. All that he felt was the old man, and his mistrust. He left and sat in the car, waiting and watching the door, hoping that perhaps if he wasn’t there she would come back.

The old man locked up the store at dusk and left. Adam watched him walk away, considering for a moment following him, but he doubted it would get him anywhere. And even if it brought him to her, it would only aggravate things.

He spent a sleepless night in his hotel, and all he could think of was how right she had been. The sandwich had been excellent. But he would have traded a thousand of them for a night with her.

Adam haunted the shop for days after that, but every time he went in, it was the same man at the counter, with bushy graying eyebrows and suspicious eyes. The man’s scrutiny had begun to make him self-conscious, which wasn’t at all a feeling he was used to and something he resented to the extreme. By the second trip into the shop he felt compelled to buy something in order to justify his presence, and by the end of the week he thought he’d given the place more business than it had seen in months.

Eve, he thought. It had to be Eve, or why else would she run off this way? Unless it was just that she worried about falling in love with him when she thought he would be leaving. But he didn’t have to go. He had no reason to go on, to keep looking, when what he sought was right here. Either way, it was here. Either way he had found it, if she was Eve or not. And he was determined to find her again.

“You know Renata?” he finally asked the man while he purchased yet another bunch of tobacco he didn’t need. He was running out of places to store it in his hotel room.

The man grunted, his eyes narrowing. “What about her?”

“I was just hoping to see her. Can you tell me when she’ll be working again?” He offered an ingratiating smile and as much persuasion as he could, but the man’s mind was hard as a rock; an unmovable boulder against his attempts.

“I can, but I won’t,” the man said, spitting into a bowl he kept at the register for the purpose. He seemed to enjoy chewing the very leaves he sold, taking pinches right from the inventory. Either he was some kind of cheat, or he was the owner, but worrying about it got him no closer to finding Renata.

Adam pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to forestall a headache. “Is there any way that I can contact her? Could you give her a message for me?”

The man chewed slowly, watching him with narrowed eyes. “Depends on what the message is.”

“Will you tell her I’m not going anywhere? I’m going to stay.” He took out a card from his jacket pocket and scribbled the hotel and room number where he was staying. “Give her this. Tell her I want to see her. Whenever she’s ready. The lobby is very public, there’s a bar that’s frequently full. She can have the concierge ring me and I’ll come down and meet her there, if she’d like.”

The man grunted again, pocketing the card. Adam wasn’t sure if that was an agreement or not, but it didn’t matter. He’d come back again tomorrow. And the day after and the day after that. As many times as it took. She couldn’t stay gone forever. This was her job.

He left the shop with his package, pushing it off on his driver. “Smoke it, sell it, give it away, I don’t care.” Then he waved the man off, determined to walk off his frustration at another fruitless day.

The thing of it was, he wasn’t sure which way he wanted it to be. Did he want it to be Eve? Or didn’t he?

Chapter Ten: 168 AD