Chapter 19

Downtown was bustling with activity, and my mom was greeted with raucous cheers when she emerged with Raphael and me in tow. She'd barely set everything up when a line began forming outside our rickety booth.

"Say, if it ain't little miss Platt!" called one of the guys. He shouldered his way to us and grabbed one of the buckets that I was struggling with. "How you doing, little lady?"

I took one look at his gap-toothed smile and felt my face break out into a grin. "Buck!" He and my dad always had arguments when he turned my every chore into a prank. It took my dad months to forgive him for letting me ride the cow I was supposed to milk.

"You're just as airy and pretty as you were back then," Buck said. "We thought you'd never be coming back."

"For a while, I didn't think I would be either," I confessed.

"Well, it's all good now." He swung the buckets to their place behind my mother so she'd have easy access to them before turning to me. "You're not staying, though," he stated.

I shook my head.

"Then you came on the perfect day." Buck finally noticed Raphael. "And who's this young man?"

I looked at Raphael helplessly. He wiped his hands on his jeans and proffered it to Buck. "Raphael Lazarus, sir. I'm Ariadne's boyfriend."

"Boyfriend?" Buck and I said at the same time. Then Buck let out a hoot of laughter. "Looks like you've done well for yourself out there, little miss. I can see why you're not going to stay!"

I glanced at Raphael and mouthed boyfriend?

Sorry, he mouthed, but he gave me a shy smile, and I couldn't help beaming at him.

Raphael had a mindset for business and interacting with people; that was clear from the way he drew people towards him, especially women. His smile came with ease, and he was easy on the eyes, too.

"Your boy is getting us twice the customers," Ma said, nudging me. "Maybe we should charge people just to speak to him."

I rolled my eyes and went to free Raphael from the clutches of a gaggle of girls who were currently surrounding him.

"Hey," he said to me, wrapping an arm around my waist when I came beside him. I smiled at the girls, and one of the older ones came forward.

"You're Ariadne, right? Arissa's sister?"

"Yes," I said hesitantly. Most people in town had known me for the longest time as only Arissa's sister, and the huge scandal that her departure had given us had made me famous in a way that I didn't want. It was only people like Buck who didn't really care what the rumor mill was churning out.

She thrust out her hand. "I'm Sarah. I was friends with Arissa in high school. She talked about you a lot, you know."

I stared at her before taking her hand and shaking it. "Really?"

She nodded. "Oh, yeah. Talked about how smart her little sister was and how she'd become famous one day." Sarah lowered her voice. "When Arissa met Jeb—"

Jeb. His name made me shudder, and Raphael squeezed my hip comfortingly. I'd seen Jeb once, when he'd brought Arissa home. He was handsome, to be sure; a dangerous sort of handsome that Arissa loved, both in real life and in fiction.

"A lot of stuff changed," Sarah continued, "but Arissa never stopped talking about you."

"It didn't matter," I said. "She still chose Jeb."

"But it does," Sarah said, giving me a secret smile. "She knew she was losing something important. Jeb was most important, but he wasn't everything. Not everything she needed."

I sighed. "I get that."

Sarah drew back, throwing her arms around the girls with her. "Well, it was nice meeting you, Ariadne." She cast a coy glance at Raphael. "And your boyfriend."

"My boyfriend," I repeated, hoping I was giving off he's-mine vibes. It must have worked, since she left, leaving me to ponder what she'd told me.

"Okay?" Raphael whispered in my ear, his warm breath tickling my neck.

"Yeah," I said back. "You know, you're doing an amazing job of attracting customers."

"I've been bred for it all my life," Raphael said. "It might as well go into something that I care about."

I made a face at him. "Are you having fun, despite the labor we're making you do?"

"You're here. Why wouldn't I be?"

I shrugged. "We're going back soon." And we were. Tomorrow. Both of us knew we couldn't put our lives on hold for much longer. As much as a catharsis that this trip had been, it had to end sometime. Especially since we had no luggage to speak of, which meant Raphael had been borrowing my father's clothes, which were all too small for him and stretched too appealingly across his shoulders.

"Come on," I said, tugging his arm. "We should take a look at all the stuff out here. We're on break."

Raphael dutifully followed me as we tried out the ring toss, threw balls at milk bottles. After I went on the simulated bull ride, which forced me to use my hips in unspeakable ways, he said hoarsely, "Don't do that again. It's not safe for my sanity."

Holding his hand, I led him towards the Wall. "You'll love this," I said excitedly. The Wall had always been a favorite of mine, and Buck ran it every year because he knew how much we all appreciated how it showcased the artistic talent or sentimentality of the people of Ackley. Every year, there would be a huge plaster wall placed downtown with ladders so people could reach the top and arrays of spray paint cans to choose from.

Buck grinned at the two of us. "Here to make some art for your lady?" he said to Raphael. "She's a hard one to please, but I'm sure you'll step up to the task."

Raphael raised an eyebrow at me. "Hard to please?"

I lifted a shoulder. "Surprise me."

He approached the bottles with mock solemnity. Buck gave him a pouch to carry them all in, and Raphael climbed up the ladder to the very top. I held my breath, amazed at how gorgeous and uninhibited he looked in that moment. It was a long time since I'd had any contact with Raphael's art, and as I watched him work, the familiar feeling of wonder rendered me speechless again. A crowd began gathering to watch the way he slashed neon lines across the wall, but this moment felt private as I saw what Raphael was working towards.

A girl whose eyes were locked windows, her hair a river of stars. And around her neck, a fountain pen that contained one word: freed.

When Raphael finished and jumped down, everyone burst into applause. He looked disoriented, but when I wound my arms around his neck and whispered "thank you," the kiss he gave me was anything but.

Buck slowly shook his head. "Just when I thought I was too old to be surprised," he drawled. I looked at the drawing for a minute longer, drinking in the poetic beauty behind the picture before we headed back.

"Raphael! Ariadne!" My mom waved us over to her. The moment Raphael got close, she shoved a stick into his hand. "Try it."

Raphael looked at the golden bar in his hand. "Uh…"

"My famous deep-fried butter on a stick. Oh, wait!" Ma snatched the stick out of his hand and dunked it halfway into a jar of sauerkraut. "There you go," she said proudly, handing it to him. A huge dollop of sauerkraut fell on the ground, and I saw Raphael flinch.

"Um…" He looked to me for help, but I wasn't offering any.

"Try it," I urged.

"Traitor," he said to me before taking a bite from the butter.

The euphoria spread over his face slowly. He took another bite.

Ma jumped and clapped her hands. "There isn't a red-blooded man in the county who doesn't like my deep-fried butter."

Raphael ate his way through half the butter before he shoved it at me. "I want to keep eating, but I can feel it traveling to my arteries," he said. "You take it."

"I'll get fat," I complained.

He stole a greasy kiss to my cheek. "And you aren't concerned about my health?"

"Argh, get it away!" I flailed around, trying to get away from the butter and its deliciously appealing smell as Raphael grabbed me around the waist with his free hand.

It took us a while to hear the screeching of tires over the bumpy road and the silence that fell over the fair as we all stopped and stared at the glossy black Lincoln town car, much too eye-catching to be seen in some random town in Iowa.

Raphael's teasing smile fell away. "Shit on a stick," he muttered, tossing the butter into the nearest trashcan.

One look at the red heel that appeared from inside, and I knew that the worst was here.

"Damn, little miss," Buck whispered. "You really have a habit of drawing all the attention, don't you?"

I could only ignore him and watch what was sure to be a slow motion train wreck.

Raphael's mom, while the first to get out of the car, her fashionable navy blue suit surely sticking to her in the hot weather, was not the first to reach us. A tall man with black hair cut extremely short stomped towards Raphael, his boots crunching the pebbles underneath.

"Little brother," he said, just before he punched Raphael in the face.

Raphael staggered back, rubbing his jaw. Then he reeled his arm back and smashed his brother in the face.

His brother took the hit but bounced right back up. "This is how you greet me?" he asked Raphael. "This is how you greet a brother back from war?"

"Where's Malcolm?" Raphael asked, his voice full of something that I'd never heard before. Condescension and hatred. Such strong, strong hatred. I knew he had brothers, but I hadn't realized it was like this. "With me, you, and him, we can have another happy reunion like we did last time."

They seemed to realize that they'd attracted a crowd, but then my dad shoved his way to the front. "Nothing to see here," he grunted at everyone, although clearly something big was about to happen. He slapped a gawping boy in the back of the head. "What are you, idiots? You never seen rich folk before? Get the hell back to work."

Slowly, the crowd petered out. My dad turned to Raphael. "You got business to take care of, don't do it here. Unless you want it in the papers tomorrow. Take Ariadne with you, or else she'll be worried sick."

Raphael glared at his brother, then at his mother. She had watched everything unfold with the same cool disinterest that she'd emanated when I'd first met her. "I'll meet you at the park," he said to both of them.

His brother swaggered back to the car, and Raphael let the tension leave his shoulders the moment the car pulled out. I looped my arm around his. "Let's first put some ice to that," I suggested. "My house is on the way."

He nodded absently, allowing me to lead him away.

"You didn't tell me that your brothers were in the military," I said.

"You never asked." He rubbed his jaw again. "My family has a history with the military. My grandfather fought in World War II. Lazarus Corp is actually originally from my mother's side. When my parents realized they couldn't control me by training me to be in the army, they decided to control me by forcing me into a job. I'm guessing Samson told them I was here after all." He smiled ruefully. "At least my brothers taught me how to throw a good punch, even if that's all the good they ever did."

We reached my house and I went inside to get a bag of frozen peas for his hand. "Don't come with me, Ariadne," he said, his voice soft. "It's not going to be pretty, and I don't want you to see."

I touched his face, tracing the mark on his face that his brother had left. He exhaled slowly. "I'm weak too," he whispered. "I was weak, and then I tried to fight back, and then I was weak again."

"You came here with me," I said. "You came and found me. I don't think that's weak, Raphael."

He closed his eyes, turning his face into my palm when I cupped his cheek. "You make me strong."

"Then remember that. Remember that when you face them."

Raphael's mother was the same as she always was. Imposing, dressed to kill, that impassive yet permanently condescending look on her face.

"Raphael," she said, holding her arms out.

"Mother." Stiffly, he kissed her on each cheek.

She backed up and looked at me. "My dear, you're still consorting with this girl? What about Chelsea? Such a nice girl, and her mother is the most agreeable woman—"

"She's my girlfriend, Mother."

His brother, whose name I still didn't know, eyed me up and down. "She obviously hasn't had better, or else she wouldn't still be with you." He winked at me, and I resisted the urge to gag.

"Shut the hell up and don't look at her, Lucas," Raphael snapped. "Why are you both here anyway?"

"You must come back, Raphael," his mother said, examining her nails. "We need you at the company."

"If you miss me, Mother, you should just say so," Raphael said. "I know the company is fine now. And since Lucas and Malcolm are both home again, and you always tell me how much more invested in Lazarus Corp they are, maybe they can take it over."

His mother's lipsticked mouth pursed. "Come home and stop being ridiculous, Raphael. We didn't raise you and pay for a world-class education so you could run off and pursue something as libertine as street art."

I nearly snorted. It wasn't my place to mess with Raphael and his family, but the way he was being treated was unbearable. His mother made it sound like he'd run off into the streets to live off of alms, but I was pretty sure doing art part-time with business was better than going in search of enlightenment á la Siddhartha.

"Plenty of people," I said loudly, "make livings off of this. Can you really blame him for wanting some independence from you? Because the way I see it, your behavior could smother the most tolerant of people."

Mrs. Lazarus's mouth opened and closed before she huffed in a way that nearly resembled my mother. "I cannot pretend to know your life, Raphael. But I'm trying to give you a shortcut. A way to avoid suffering."

"I'm not looking for a cushioned life, Mother," Raphael said resignedly. "I'm not going to sign up at the military and goof off there because of my lineage—" He stared at Lucas then, and to his benefit, he shuffled his feet guiltily. "—and I'm not looking for a job that'll give me more money than I can spend. I just want to be happy, and working at Lazarus isn't doing that for me. I tried, and you should give me the luxury of making a choice after respecting what you wanted."

Mrs. Lazarus fingered the strap of her purse and sighed. "You can't be expecting that I or your father can look at you the same after this."

"I'm not asking you to," Raphael said. "But if you want to be parents instead of business partners, it would be something that you'd do."

Mrs. Lazarus cocked her head to the side, as if he had suggested something she'd never considered. "I make no guarantees, but I want my son back. I want all of them back." She considered him. "I wish you didn't have to grow without me."

"Mother, there's a time when everyone's life when control must be relinquished and freedom must be given."

A phone rang, insistent and shrewd. Mrs. Lazarus's hand went into her purse and she pressed the phone to her ear. "In a minute, please," she said coolly before she put it back in her bag.

"Then this is where I can do nothing else for you, Raphael." Her voice softened. "Maybe one day you will let me take care of you again."

Raphael tugged me to him. "I don't think so. Not anymore."

Mrs. Lazarus's face closed up, signaling the end of the conversation. "Well, I must take a call." Mrs. Lazarus took her phone out. "Come, Lucas."

Lucas came closer to us, sizing Raphael up. Then he clapped him on the shoulder, probably harder than he should have, and said, "You're going to fuck up one of these days, you know. And Mom and Dad won't be there to pick up the pieces because you asked them not to."

Raphael only nodded. "I know," he said.

And then the town car was rolling away again, and though nothing momentous had happened with that meeting, Raphael was relieved.

"You might not believe it, Ariadne, but a lot of things have changed."

"Oh, I do. Believe it, I mean."

"I think I will do business," Raphael mused. "Expand Abbey Bookstore."

"Oh, will you?" I said teasingly.

"Yeah. Maybe one day, we'll topple Barnes & Noble."

"Already thinking big," I said, kissing the bruise on his jaw. "I like it."

"Well, if you're going to keep giving me kisses like that, you're going to see some very, very big things indeed."

"Ugh."

He grinned, his charming self back as he nudged me. "What do you say we go back and settle your business with Ethan?"