The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [99]
He slyly avoided giving Melony the courtesy of specifics. He bore a methodical rationality to his accounts, which swayed Melony towards believing that Bari existed solely within the mind of a fatherless child withdrawn into an irrational WalterMitty way of daydream living. It distracted her from all those theoretical versions of the truth that Max had compiled so convincingly for so long. She had slowly become unaware of forsaking even the more concrete examples of Andrew’s alleged nonhuman involvements. Whenever he made mention of an elusive twin, for example, whose existence could never be confirmed nor denied for the longest time, not even by Andrew’s own mother, Melony began to suspect that the elusive twin he spoke of was Simon BoLeve.
Simon’s enigmatic origins and history were scattered throughout Max’s research but always remained inconclusive. It was by accident that Max even learned of his name to begin with and death had always surrounded him.
Certainly the consideration of Simon’s dark deeds and manipulations was more sound by far than any conjured depictions of ghost—like women beasts and aliens.
Weren’t they?
Max claimed to know for sure, beyond the shadow of a doubt. And he held all the convincing data to back him up. Could he be wrong? If he was, he was wrong despicably. And because of him, Melony was wrong despicably, too.
It made Melony wonder what Matt McGregor actually saw of Nigel’s death as a boy so long ago, an event which Max’s pursuits were clearly indebted to, indeed.
It made her wonder about a great many things.
It also made it all the more easier to distance herself from the husband who dispirited her so.
Enough was shared by Andrew to erase Melony’s fears of the otherworldly unknown and to replace them with an unknown of a different kind...the sort of unknown, which attaches itself like a parasitic leech to the evening of a first date in the home of a man Melony increasingly found herself wanting.
Wanting?
Yes, it was okay to admit that she wanted him by the conclusion of their conversation, just as long as she could impose most of the blame upon the brandy and nothing or no one else.
Anything to smother the guilt, which such feelings often tended to resurrect, burdening any married woman upon the verge of infidelity.
***
Andrew had taken Melony’s bathroom break as his cue to begin to clear the table, and Bari appeared to him fully as soon as it was safe. He couldn’t believe how close to the truth Melony and her husband’s findings actually were about him, and he couldn’t believe how dishonest he was in defending that truth behind preplanned lies and half-truths. He had done very well with the bullshit and Bari commended him on a bullshit job well done. Though she didn’t put it that way, Bari understood his feelings and attempted to console him by reminding him of the implications of telling Mel the truth...of how the truth could lead into a potentially harmful new frame of mind for Melony, and how it could upset Andrew’s anonymity in society, which Bari insisted was a necessity kept sacred.
Bari was quite the bullshit artist herself, wasn’t she? Andrew truly wished he could have told Mel everything, for Andrew himself never totally understood what his life was all about. Bari had been forever elusive towards the more painfully enlightening subjects, the specific subjects, which would ultimately disclose to Andrew the nature of who or what he was.
And it would have been nice to gather insight from an outside observer.
Bari disappeared again, leaving Andrew to his dishes and frustrations and the kitchen sink.
Andrew didn’t know it yet, but the truth was about to reveal itself fully for the first time soon, very soon.
And to more than just Andrew.
***
Melony emerged from the bathroom to find Andrew at the kitchen sink washing the dinner dishes. He appeared to be tilting at an awkward angle to the left, but then she realized that it was in fact she herself that was leaning a little too much over to one side. She didn’t say a thing. At first.