The Fallow

“I can read your mind.”

He said this before I learned that his name was Dunhill. At that point, he was still just He. Only ten minutes at the bar and already the dress I’d stolen from my sister’s closet was proving to be worth the fight we’d eventually have about it.

“No one can read minds,” I said without so much as a glance his way.

“I knew you would say that.”

Clever.

“What am I thinking now,” I asked.

“That’s always the next thing people say.”

I bent down and took the straw between my teeth, mostly to finish the Tom Collins, but a little to keep from smiling. Couldn’t let him score a victory that easily. In the mirror behind all the liquor bottles I could see him watching me. His gaze was a physical thing, like eyelashes brushing against my temple.

“You’re thinking that you could use another drink.”

“Holy shit,” I said, still not looking. “You really can read minds.”

I could hear him grinning. He waved at the bartender and then pointed at me. Bobby looked my way, eyebrows up, a glass already in his hand. I nodded and he fetched the gin.

“Your name is…,” the guy whispered, and it was a nice whisper, not the creepy kind, “Gwen.”

Heat bloomed in my chest. When I spun toward him, he held his palms out, the smile still there, but dialed down a few notches.

“Did you follow me here,” I grunted. “How do you know my name?”

“I heard the bartender call you Gwen earlier,” he said as calmly as stating the time. “Seems they know you here.”

I kept up the hard look for a few more seconds and then gave him a laugh. It was my charming laugh. Bobby sat a fresh drink in front of me and I made a show of gulping it halfway down.

“Well done, with the name thing,” I said, catching my breath after the long sour swallow. “That one caught me off guard.”

“Sorry.” He offered his hand. I turned to shake it but saw that there was a business card between his fingers. I took it from him and laid it on the bar, returning to the straw while I squinted to read it in the dim light.

Meadway Investigative Services

Dunhill Pratt

“Dunhill,” I said.

“Dunhill,” he repeated, rhyming it with tunnel.

“You’re a P.I. or something?”

“Or something.”

“Are you investigating me or hitting on me?”

“Let’s just say that being good at the former tends to help with the latter.”

“Well, I don’t date liars.”

He looked surprised by that. “I’m a liar, am I?”

“You said that you could read my mind.” I ventured a little wink. “That’s a lie. So far, anyway.”

He leaned back into the bar seat and picked up his glass of iceless bourbon. A serious look replaced the playful one. He studied me for a moment, dark eyes staring into mine. Really looking. A warm thrill coursed through me. I knew then that I’d let him take me home if he tried for it.

“You are thinking,” he said, “about The Fallow.”

No.

He couldn’t mean that.

Couldn’t know that.

“And which fellow are you referring to,” I laughed. It was my impervious laugh.

“Fallow. You know what I’m talking about. It’s that place where your heart lives. The real you—inside.”

The anger was back. Fire burning in my gut. Throat throbbing. Carotids and jugulars swollen with blood.

“What’s the trick?” I didn’t let the mask slip, maintaining a hint of flirtation to keep him pliable. “How could you know about that?”

“I told you. I can read your mind.” Dunhill took another drink and waited. When I didn’t react, he went on. “Like now. Right now, you want to hurt me. Just allow yourself to detach from the moment and let fists and teeth do all the work. But you won’t. You won’t because you have tamed that animal over the years. For the most part. It’s not like when you were thirteen. Not like when your dad left. Back then it was out of control—hurting everyone, including you. Can you still see the scars, or have they faded away?”

The edges of the world were charring, blackening. I watched him through a shrinking aperture. Soon, it would all be dark, and I would have to wait until it was over to find out what happened. I don’t know why, but I rolled my forearm out to let his eyes walk up the ladder of white rungs. His face revealed nothing.

“A year ago,” he went on, “you met my cousin, Emily. Like I assume you’ve always done, you saw her vulnerability, sensed all the love she had to offer. And that’s your food, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter if it’s a man or woman. It’s not about sex, or even love for you. There’s a void in your center. A rotten core. She told me all about it. Told me you called it The Fallow. A dead, empty field. And when they finally realize that you can only take, that you give nothing, they eventually leave you. But sometimes you manage to strike first. Sometimes, they end up like Emily.”

My vision was just a pinhole. I let a tiny growl escape my gullet.

“Like your father.”

I reached and he flinched. I think I even surprised myself when I took the glass from his hand and finished off the bourbon without clawing his eyes out of their slick sockets. I sat it on the bar gently, knowing that it would shatter all too easily if I lost control.

His relaxed demeanor had gone, replaced with a buzzing, threatening kind of tension. When he reached into his suit coat, I held my breath. He drew out two twenty-dollar bills and a small white envelope. He laid all three on the bar, stood, and walked silently out the door.

“Everything okay, Gwen,” Bobby asked from a safe distance. A smile and a nod got rid of him. The Tom Collins was half water by then, but I took the rest of my medicine, then chewed on the inside of my lip while watching myself in the mirror—a wolf snarling at its reflection in the surface of a bottomless lake.

Eventually, the darkness receded and I could think again. I opened the envelope and took out the folded piece of paper with a steady hand.

My Gwen,

I used to roll my eyes when people would talk about soul mates. I felt like a lock who didn’t know the shape of my own tumblers until the key of you came along. All of your points and notches fit so perfectly. I couldn’t believe my luck.

Little by little, I started to catch you filing at that key. As you learned more about me, you molded it, changed it, trying to unlock every part of me. But the more you file a key, the closer it gets to being a knife.

When I demanded the truth, you turned on me with the knife you’d made, sticking it into all the soft places that I had revealed to you. If you would have just left, just stopped speaking to me, that would have been bad enough. But you had to hurt me, to turn everyone against me with lies.

To ruin me.

I want you to know something. One last thing—I don’t blame you. While I don’t think that I ever really knew you, the real you, I know that you are badly broken, and that doesn’t happen by accident. I’m not strong enough to live with these wounds that you inflicted, but I hope that you are. I hope that you get help.

I hope you find the key that unlocks you. The hurt little girl somewhere inside you deserves that.

Love,

Emily

Out on the sidewalk, the November wind cut into my face and arms. I took a left for no reason and walked, unsure where I was going. Where I’d end up.

For most of my life, there had been room in my body for just two feelings—numbness and rage. Drifting through the gray city, wet cheeks pink and freezing, I sensed something new, something small and delicate and green, beginning to sprout up from between all those rows of frosty soil.

And that tiny, fragile curl of green was terrifying.

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