Puppet Master

Chapter Four

The funeral, almost a week later, marked the beginning of their new relationship.

Although he was at her side in the sombre graveyard, as the light rain fell in a grey curtain across the headstones marking the centuries of misery and grief that had passed, his manner was completely reserved, he touched her with no more than a hand to her shoulder, and only in the most upsetting moments of Nate’s touching eulogy, as he told the story of their parents’ love for each other, their perfect happy family, and the darkest mourning periods after Caleb passed away, so proud of him and yet so empty without him.

Dressed as he was in a tailored black suit, with a conventional white cotton shirt underneath, she saw Jayden mimic her only remaining brother. She saw him step into Caleb’s shoes almost before her eyes: A guardian flanking her on each side as she stared down into the freshly dug grave.

A tiny porcelain doll dressed in a conservative black pencil skirt, and a white silk shirt with a pussycat bow at the neck, she knew her black patent heels did nothing to emphasize her stature between the two pillars of masculinity at either side of her. She was as fragile as a glass menagerie.

She knew everyone at that graveside was aware, or at least suspected, that she’d brought that outfit on a recent shopping trip with her mother, for her forthcoming university interviews. That she would never have an outfit like this in her wardrobe, that it belied a maturity that she just didn’t possess.

But the last week had thrust her into maturity far faster than university ever could have done, although she knew that nobody here, none of those faceless friends, neighbours, relatives, offering their condolences, clutching her chilled, slender fingers in their own, would ever realise it.  

She’d looked back at that evening, categorizing the memories, and obsessing about those moments in his arms, when they’d been equal, both driven by a mutual lust for the other’s body. And she’d faced the truth of the matter; that while she was raging with a desire that flamed into every part of her body, he had kept an emotional distance the whole time.

Flattening his palm on the bottom of her spine on their way out of the cemetery, her back arched away from his touch, “Easy baby,” he whispered in her ear, brushing his mouth softly against her temple before he moved away.

He sat close to her in the back seat of her brother’s big black Audi on the way back to their father’s house, rather than up front with Nate, an odd look passing between them as the unspoken decision was taking place, as Jayden held open the door, moving a fraction out of the way for her to fit her slender frame into the vehicle. But Nate had backed down, with a glance in her direction that she was completely oblivious to, and a shrug of his broad shoulders, before he started up the vehicle.  

Odd, that instinctive need she felt to relax. His hand on her leg urging her back to the present.

The reception back at her parents’ home was difficult, to say the least, the hustle and bustle of friends, family and acquaintances, somehow exposing the absence of the two lost souls for whom they mourned. “Savour the memories,” she was told by an elderly aunt, “Remember them for who they were, and celebrate their lives.” And with a quick, sympathetic touch to her hand, she was gone to savour the vol au vents, leaving Tori to wonder how exactly wallowing in leaps and bounds of nostalgia would ever make her miss her family less. And somehow the murmurs of delight at the creamy egg mayonnaise on the sandwiches, and the speculations as to the marinade recipe for the chicken skewers became stifling; a huge, oppressive wall of noise that bleated in her ears, made a mockery of her grief, and her guilt, and she dragged in a ragged breath, suddenly finding her lungs constricted with the threat of another onslaught of tears.