Chapter 4: A Meal of Revelation
The staircase spiraled down into the heart of the mansion, each marble step cold and immense under my bare feet. My steps were silent, small, lost in the vastness. The terrycloth of Mark’s robe whispered against my calves, the collar constantly slipping off one slender shoulder. I followed the smell—garlic, toasted bread, rich tomato—a lifeline in the sensory chaos.
The dining room was a gallery of shadows and sharp edges. Moonlight bled through the floor-to-ceiling window, painting the long oak table in stripes of silver. Mark was a broad silhouette at the far end, dwarfing a chair. He’d lit only a few sconces, their light catching the glassy eyes of a stag’s head mounted on the wall. Its frozen gaze felt like an accusation.
On the table sat two plates, a bowl of salad, a bottle of red wine already breathing. Simple. Human.
“Took you long enough,” Mark said, not unkindly. He gestured to the chair beside him, not the one opposite. “Sit. Eat.”
I moved toward the chair, the robe belt cinched tight around my nonexistent waist. Sitting was an unlearning process. As Justin, I’d have dropped into a seat, sprawled my legs. Now, I gathered the voluminous fabric beneath me, lowered myself carefully, and felt the hard wood of the seat meet the soft, rounded flesh of my ass in a way that was distinctly, vulnerably new. My feet, dangling, didn’t touch the floor. I felt like a child at a grown-up’s table.
Mark served the pasta—linguine with a dark red clam sauce. He slid a plate in front of me. The steam rose, carrying a complex bouquet of the sea and herbs. My stomach, that tiny, demanding oracle, clenched.
I picked up the fork. It felt heavy in my delicate grip. I tried to twirl the pasta as I always had, but my wrists were weaker, the motion requiring a finer, more practiced flick. A strand slipped, splashing sauce onto the white plate. When I finally got a bite to my mouth, everything was wrong.
My lips were fuller. The fork felt wider against them. I put the pasta in, and my mouth—her mouth—was smaller. I had to chew differently, with a gentler, more lateral motion. And the taste… God, the taste. It wasn’t just garlic and clams. It was a symphony of separate, sharp notes: the briny sweetness of the shellfish, the acidic punch of the tomato, the grassy undertone of fresh basil, a hint of chili heat that danced on the tongue. As Justin, I would have shoveled it in, tasting a pleasing, unified "pasta." Now, it was an overload of distinct, vibrant signals. It was incredible. And it was horrifying.
I chewed slowly, watching Mark. He ate with the focused efficiency of a man used to solving problems.
“I did some digging while you were in the shower,” he said, wiping his mouth with a napkin. His voice was low, matter-of-fact. “Sabrina Parker. Eighteen. Graduated Lincoln High in May. No parents in the picture. Works part-time at a coffee shop called ‘The Grind.’ Lives alone in a studio apartment on Elmhurst. Monthly lease, paid up through the end of this month.”
He took a sip of wine. I watched the muscles in his throat work. My own throat felt tight.
“I called a bonded moving company. They’ll be at her—at your—apartment at eight a.m. tomorrow. They’ll pack everything. Clothes, toiletries, whatever personal effects are there. They’ll bring it all here, to the guest suite. We’ll sort it later.”
The finality of it stole my breath. My old apartment, my messy sanctuary with my oversized t-shirts and my gaming rig, was a crime scene. This girl’s studio was now my only tangible past. They were boxing it up. Bringing it here. Making it part of Mark’s world.
“Okay,” I said. My voice came out as a thin, reedy thread. I cleared my throat, but it didn’t deepen. It was just a feminine clearing. “What about… her? Sabrina? In my body?”
Mark’s gaze met mine, steady. “Nothing. No John Doe admissions at any area hospital matching your description. No cops finding a confused bearded guy in an alley. It’s like… like she vanished.”
A cold pit opened in my stomach. Had she just… ceased? Was I living in a corpse? I pushed the thought away, a swelling tide of panic.
“We need to make this believable,” Mark continued, his eyes holding mine. “You showing up here, staying here. People talk. My housekeeper, Maria, comes Tuesdays and Fridays. The groundskeepers. And Jasmine… she has a way of finding things out. If she hears Mark Mooers has a mysterious blonde living in his mansion, she’ll see it as a challenge. But if she hears he’s serious, that he’s moved his girlfriend in…” He let the sentence hang.
“I have to be your girlfriend.” The words tasted flat, worse than the pasta was good.
“You have to act the part. In front of others. When we’re alone, you can be… whatever this is.” He gestured vaguely at me, wrapped in his robe, drowning in fabric. “But out there, you’re Sabrina. You’re with me. You’re… affectionate. You listen, you smile, you touch my arm. You don’t talk about code or comic books. You call me ‘babe’ or ‘honey’ and you don’t flinch when I put my arm around you.”
A wave of nausea, hot and sour, rose up my esophagus. I took a gulp of wine to wash it down. The wine was cool, a blackberry tartness that was another startling clarity on my tongue. It also went straight to my head—this lighter body, this different metabolism. A faint, warm buzz started behind my eyes almost immediately.
“I’ll try,” I whispered. The promise felt like a betrayal of everything I was.
“You’ll have to do more than try,” he said, his voice softening a fraction. “Look, I know this is… it’s insane. But the alternative is you on the street, in that body, with no ID, no money, no way to explain who you are. This is the play, Justin. It’s the only one we’ve got.”
He reached across the table. His hand, tanned and large enough to eclipse my whole plate, covered mine. The warmth of his skin was a shock. His touch was careful, but it completely enveloped my fingers. I felt the rough calluses on his palms, the sheer scale of him. A jolt, chemical and unwelcome, shot up my arm. My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic bird in a bone cage.
I didn’t pull away. I made myself leave my hand there, small and pale under his, the chipped pink polish a glaring mark of a life I hadn’t lived.
“Okay,” I said again, the word barely audible.
He gave my hand a final, firm squeeze and withdrew. The absence of his weight felt like a loss, which was somehow more disturbing than the touch itself.
We finished eating in a silence punctuated by the ticking of a grandfather clock in the hall. Every bite was a lesson. Every sip was a reminder. The robe gaped as I leaned forward for my water glass, and I felt the cool air on the exposed top curves of my breasts, a teasing vulnerability that made my skin prickle.
Finally, I pushed my plate away, half the food still on it. This body got full fast.
Mark leaned back, studying me. “We should get you something to sleep in. Your stuff won’t be here ‘til afternoon tomorrow.” He stood, his chair scraping loudly. “I might have an old t-shirt that won’t completely swallow you.”
He left for the kitchen. I sat in the towering silence, my bare feet swinging inches above the polished floor. I looked out the window at the dark, sculpted gardens. My reflection, ghostly and superimposed on the night, stared back: a tiny blonde girl adrift in a sea of dark wood and crystal, wrapped in a man’s robe, waiting for him to bring her a shirt to wear.
The hum of the lawnmower had stopped. The only sound was the blood pounding in my ears, a high, quick rhythm that was nothing like my own.