Page 31 of Just for a Taste

I traveled on a train for the first time when I was nine years old. I had religiously read a chapter of Around the World in Eighty Days to Pa every night that summer, waking him up to hear every last word if he dozed off. He got train tickets for all of us near the end of the book, and when Ma told him he should have waited for my birthday to get them, he joked, “But she might’a got ’round to readin’ Murder on the Orient Express if I waited any longer!”

It was all I could think or talk about for days: being like Phileas Fogg. The tickets were for a nice passenger train, and it was the first thing I had ridden other than a rusty pickup or a bike too large for me. As far as I was concerned, going on that ride was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me, or ever would.

My first panic attack was on that train, right after I saw dirt underneath my nails. I tried to figure out for years what exactly made it happen, to no avail. Maybe it was something about the floating sensation of wheels on rails beneath me, or maybe seeing the grit on my hands was a subconscious reminder that I was out of place beside the tourists.

Now, with the subtle, rhythmic jerking of the car beneath me as we navigated through paneled roads, I knew both were to blame.

You don’t belong in that world, and you don’t belong at my side.

I stared down at my hands. My fingernails had been painted, and my palms had been scrubbed meticulously. But neither got rid of the dark hue of my skin, the freckles that washed over them, or the old burn scars I’d gotten working in the bakery.

Of course you don’t belong with nobles, you idiot , I thought, tightening my fists into balls and burrowing them in my skirt. You never belonged anywhere.

No—I had belonged once, or I’d felt like I did, at least. When I was gardening in the abbey, sitting with Zeno in the aviary, or just wandering the gardens. If nowhere else, that was a home.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked Signora Rafia, lurching forward in my seat.

Signora Rafia hadn’t said a word the entire time, or even looked back at me. She simply sat there with both hands on the wheel, head fixed forward. That was how she remained even now, seemingly unaltered by my outburst.

“Because,” I continued, leaning back in my seat and forcing my tone to soften a bit, “I—I don’t know what Zeno meant when he said I should go back. I don’t know if he meant the abbey, or London, or . . . somewhere else.”

“I have been given orders to drive you to the Abbazia di Santa Dymphna,” Signora Rafia stated. “I do not have any further orders.”

I closed my eyes and tried to convince myself I was asleep and that the events of the night were all some hydroxyzine-induced nightmare. I could have that, I decided, at least until after the ride back. Perhaps I could even convince myself that the blood on my chin—which had just reopened—was actually drool, and the pressure behind my eyes was a sleep mask worn slightly too tight.

Despite my efforts, I couldn’t drift fully into this fantasy. My phone, resuscitated for the first time in nearly seven months, sat against my thigh beneath my dress, and some part of me waited for it to buzz. Maybe, just maybe, in that brief span of Wi-Fi going through the city, Zeno would call me and explain that this was some misunderstanding. Even the clarity of being told he wanted me to leave forever would have felt better than this limbo.

Eventually, the ground beneath the car felt familiar, and it slowed to one final stop. Signora Rafia helped me out, and I was shuffled from person to person like some package on a conveyor belt. Based on how delicate the words and movements of everyone around me (even Signora Carbone) were, fragile, this side up was clearly plastered on my forehead.

I was led by Signora Rafia to Signore Urbino, to Signora Carbone, to Lucia, and finally, Doctor Ntumba in the clinic. She sat me down squarely, already prepared with her wound-care supplies.

Zeno had been mostly incorrect in his assessment of my wound. It was a thin yet deceptively deep cut from the right corner of my mouth to the middle of my chin. I had landed on a chipped piece of tile, which had unfortunately shattered and lodged into the muscle of my chin, but fortunately not into the bone. After a lidocaine shot and quick extraction of the pieces, Doctor Ntumba informed me the rest would be easy.

“How did you know I got hurt?” I asked as she flushed the laceration on my chin with saline.

Doctor Ntumba did not look up from what she was doing and moved on to washing the skin around the cut. “Zeno told me,” she answered curtly. “He said that the night went poorly, and you fell and hit the ground.” She leaned back and tilted my head to the side. “Hmm. We’ll try some butterfly bandages. It will likely still scar.”

“Do you know what’s going on?” I said to her back as she dug the bandages out of her bag.

Doctor Ntumba returned and pinched my jaw between her fingers. “Hold still.”

“But—”

“Stay still and I’ll tell you.”

I did as she said, but it was difficult to steady myself when I was shaking so much. A few minutes and two butterfly bandages later, however, she was successful.

“Now,” Doctor Ntumba finally said, taking off her gloves, “I can tell you what I know.”

I folded my hands in my lap and nodded eagerly, urging her to continue.

“Zeno did not tell me very much, truthfully. He stated you were injured and that I should expect you in a number of hours, but that he would not return until Monday.”

“Where is he? And what will he be doing for two days?”

Doctor Ntumba sighed and slumped ever so slightly. “That, I do not know. I could likely track down his precise location with ease, as I’m sure he is aware. He is still nearby, I assume. Doing what, however, is a mystery I do not wish to know the answer to.”

She quickly gathered up the remnants of the kit, then extended the step from the base of the exam table, a clear signal it was time for me to leave.

I tightened my jaw so much that the pain broke through the steadily decreasing numbness. “What am I supposed to do, then? Just sit around and wait for him to explain what the hell is going on?”

With the kit fully packed up, Doctor Ntumba tossed it over her shoulder and started for the exit. “It’s late, Cora. Get some sleep for tonight,” she replied somberly, hand on the doorknob.

She gave me a small smile and shut the door softly. I remained in that room for a long time, and for once the chill felt comfortable.

∞∞∞

When I staggered to the dining hall the following evening, I wondered if I would find breakfast, lunch, or dinner. I quickly discovered my meal to be a hybrid of the former two. My stomach gurgled at the sight, and with nobody around, I was free to scarf it down. Nobody met me for my bath.

Nobody but Lucia spoke to me at all.

Signora Carbone worked twice as fast as usual and busied herself with cleaning every inch of the house. Signore Urbino became utterly infatuated with specks of dirt on the wall or took far too long with a basic task whenever I entered the room and was constantly off doing “duties.” Doctor Ntumba didn’t show up for tea and had seemingly disappeared from the abbey. Lucia attempted to converse with me as usual, but any time she thought I couldn’t see, she would gaze at me sadly from a distance. Even Leonore treated me differently, her coos ever so slightly somber, her movements more delicate.

That night, I heard the low voices of Zeno and Doctor Ntumba coming from his room, intense and snipped and far too soft to decipher. But I never heard music.