The Wolves of Midwinter (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 2)

But that was the least of his problems.

The signing of the papers with Simon Oliver went smoothly, but Celeste was in a paroxysm of rage, which showed itself in unending resentful sarcastic comments as she signed over the baby to Reuben. Reuben inwardly gasped when he saw the amounts of money that were being transferred, but of course he said nothing.

He didn’t know what it meant to carry a child and he never would, and he couldn’t grasp what it meant to give one up. He was happy for Celeste that she’d walk away with enough cash to keep her secure for the rest of her life if she planned things right.

But after the lawyers had gone away, and the dinner had been endured in silence, then Celeste exploded in a tirade of rushing words, accusing Reuben of being one of the most worthless and uninteresting human beings ever born on the planet.

This wasn’t easy at all for Grace or Phil to hear, but they remained at the table, Grace gesturing covertly to Reuben for patience. As for Jim, his expression was compassionate, but oddly fixed, as though this were a willful attitude rather than a reflective one. He was as always neatly dressed in his black clerical suit and shirtfront with his Roman collar, and every bit the movie star priest in Reuben’s opinion, with his neat dark brown wavy hair and his extremely agreeable and engaging eyes. He was a handsome man, Jim, but nobody ever talked about it, not when they could talk about Reuben’s looks instead.

Reuben said little or nothing for the first twenty minutes as Celeste castigated him as lazy, a pretty boy, a time waster, a ne’er-do-well, a glorified bum, the vapid airhead boy who dated the cheerleaders of the world, and an ambitionless brat to whom everything came so easy he had not the slightest moral fiber. Born beautiful and rich, he’d wasted his life.

After a while, Reuben looked away. Had her face not been red and knotted with anger and tears, he might have become angry himself. As it was he felt pity and a certain contempt for her.

He’d never been lazy in his life, and he knew this. And he’d never been the “vapid airhead boy who dated the cheerleaders of the world” but he had no intention of saying so. He began to feel a cool detachment, even a little sadness. Celeste had never known him at all, and maybe he’d never known her, and thank God this was a temporary marriage. What if they’d attempted to marry in earnest?

And each time she mentioned his “looks,” he came to realize something ever more deeply. She despised him personally; she despised him physically. This woman with whom he’d been intimate countless times couldn’t stand him physically. And this caused the tiny hairs to rise on his neck when he thought about it, and how ghastly a real marriage with Celeste might have been.

“And so the world just gives you a baby, the way the world’s given you everything else,” she said finally, apparently wrapping up, her fury spent, her lips quivering. “I’ll hate you to my dying day,” she added.

She was about to go on when he turned and looked at her. He no longer felt pity. He felt hurt and he eyed her without a word. She went silent looking into his eyes, and then for the first time, for the first time in months, she seemed slightly afraid. Indeed she looked afraid of him the way she had when he’d first experienced the influence of the Chrism, and when he’d begun to change in so many subtle ways before the wolf transformation. He hadn’t understood then, and, of course, she’d never understood it. But she’d been afraid.

It seemed the others had sensed some deepening of the collective misery, and Grace started to speak, but Phil urged her to be quiet.

Suddenly, in a low tortured voice, Celeste said, “I’ve had to work all my life. I had to work hard when I was a kid. My father and mother left a small estate. I worked for everything.” She sighed, obviously exhausted. “Maybe it’s not your fault that you don’t know what that means.”

“That’s right,” said Reuben, the low sharp tone of his voice surprising him, but not stopping him. He was trembling but he struggled to hide it. “Maybe none of this is my fault. Maybe nothing in our relationship has ever been my fault except that I didn’t acknowledge your blatant contempt for me sooner. But it takes courage to be unkind, doesn’t it?”

The others were clearly stunned.

“Doesn’t it?” he repeated. His pulse throbbed in his temple.

Celeste looked down for a moment and then up at him again. She seemed very small and vulnerable in her chair, face white and drawn, her pretty hair mussed. Her eyes softened. “Well, you do have a voice, after all,” she said bitterly. “If you’d found it a little sooner, maybe none of this would have happened.”

“Oh, lies and rubbish!” Reuben said. His face was hot. “Self-serving rubbish. If there’s nothing further you want to say, I have things to do.”

“Aren’t you even going to say you’re sorry?” she asked with exaggerated sincerity. She was on the edge of tears again. She was whitening before his eyes and shaking.

“Sorry for what? That you forgot to take a pill? Or that the pills didn’t work? Sorry that a new life is coming into this world, and that I want that life and you don’t? What is there to be sorry for?”

Jim gestured for him to slow down.

He looked steadily at Jim for a moment and then at Celeste. “I’m grateful to you that you’re willing to have this baby,” he said. “I’m grateful to you that you’re willing to give it to me. Very grateful. But I’m sorry for absolutely nothing.”

Nobody spoke, including Celeste.

“As for all the lies and foolishness you’ve spewed for the last hour, I’ve endured it as I’ve always endured your unkindness and your nastiness—to keep the peace. And if you don’t mind, I’d like a little of that peace right now. I’m finished here.”

“Reuben,” said Phil softly. “Take it easy, son. She’s just a kid the same as you are.”

“Thanks, but I don’t need your pity!” Celeste said to Phil, eyes flaming as she glared at him. “And I’m most certainly not a ‘kid.’ ”

There was a collective gasp at the vehemence of it.

“If you’d ever taught your son one practical thing in this world about being an adult,” Celeste went on, “things might be different now. People can’t afford your tiresome poetry.”

Reuben was furious. He didn’t trust himself to speak further. But Phil didn’t even flinch.

Grace rose abruptly and awkwardly from the table, and came around to Celeste and helped her out of the chair, though this was hardly physically necessary. “You’re tired, really tired,” Grace said in a soft solicitous voice. “In a way the exhaustion is one of the worst things.”