Lunch

Calden White

The original offer was sincere, if offhand, and issued some months past. It's been long enough that Calden figured Eva might never take him up on it. It may even have been long enough that he's all but forgotten about it, right up until that phone call or text message or email in his inbox: would he mind playing host to a small murder of Shadow Lord kin over the long weekend?

His answer was quick and warm: no, no he would not.

And so: it's the Friday before Labor Day. Calden is the very definition of home business, so there's no need to arrange a day off or the like. He lets his father know, and he lets the ranchhands know, that they'll be having guests. That he'll be taking some time off to show them around.

Around ten in the morning is when they arrive, Eva and her three kids and possibly her mother-in-law; all of them pulling up to the ranch house in whatever vehicle Eva has chosen for the outing. Calden meets them out front, the door to his home wide open behind him. It's a fairly impressive structure, rustic and grand at once, cresting a low bluff. The front is imposing, all roughhewn stone and exposed timbers, while the back opens up to enormous south-facing windows and a wrap-around deck. A master suite and a study share the upper floor; the lower floor, which is a basement in the front and a ground floor in the back, contains the guest suite where Eva is settled. Also, an impressively stocked wine cellar, a game room, a small gym with a pool(!).

The main floor, sandwiched between the upper and lower, is wide-open, spacious. The furnishings and appliances and fixtures are startlingly modern; lots of brushed steel and glass amidst the earthier elements that make up the bones of the house. A great room with a yawning hearth anchors the house; kitchen and dining room through open archways to one side, bedrooms to the other. One of those bedrooms is occupied by Calden's irascible father, who -- today, at least -- can't be bothered putting on a charming facade. Eva's kids are put up in the other, far enough from their mother that they're free to stay up all night if they wish.

The small party is disbanded to settle in. By the time they've explored their rooms, set their bags down, unpacked as much as they're going to for their weekend-long stay, and grabbed a quick handwash or facewash or outright shower -- they can smell hickory smoke and searing meat. Up on the sunbeaten deck, Calden is making lunch the best way he knows how: steaks carved thick off the primal cut, salted and peppered, tossed on the grill with a fat chunk of butter melting over each one. They can hear him through the house -- some more distantly than others -- as he opens the sliding door to the great room and bellows:

"LUNCH."

Éva Illésházy

The invitation started with a text message, sent just after mid-day on Monday, August 26. Brief and remarkably to the point.

Is the offer still open?

Perhaps so precisely to the point that Calden had required clarification, which Éva supplied with equal efficiency perhaps an hour later, during a break in the afternoon's sentencing hearing.

--

Four days later, the entirety of the brood has been piled into a black Lexus SUV - carseats permanently embedded in the back seat, but not a single Cheerio lost in the upholstery except for those spilled during this morning's drive - and relocated to the White ranch. Ellie in the middle of the expansive back seat slid out from between the car seats and charged out the SUV and onto the driveway and straight for Calden while her mother and grandmother worked the complex array of buckles and restraints necessary to remove the younger boys from the car.

Ellie and Calden are not close enough that she might throw herself at him for a hug, and there is something withheld, restrained about the girl. Some gravity to her dark and steady eyes that can never be erased but still: she favored him with a pleased smile and showed off her cowboy boots wordlessly. Dark brown leather, fine, with a subtle floral tooling to them and proper heels to keep her feet in the stirrups.

Then she started telling Calden all about her new adventures as a fourth grader, trailing behind him as Calden and perhaps one of his ranch hands gave their guests a hand with the array of luggage necessary for carting children around the state. Ellie volunteered to carry her Trunkee while assuring Calden that she was now too old for it and too big to ride on it but she did not want to make a fuss. Somehow, through all of this he was able to glean a sense of how thoroughly the children's lives have been interrupted.

No more riding lessons. No ballet. No soccer. No tee-ball. No swim-team. No after school programs. How are they safer at home than they might be in a public park with a dozen child-sized goals and a dozen child-sized teams except: how can life simply go on in the face of horrors such as the city of Denver has experienced?

--

Ellie is the first to answer the summons to lunch and she takes a place at Calden's right hand watching him cook and peppering him with occasional and rather thoughtful questions. About the origin of the steaks, or why the butter, or how he knows to turn. Rosja follows, herding five-year-old Andris, who is fair as Éva and Rosja are fair, in distinct contrast to Ellie's dusky skin, and Éva is the last to arrive, with her toddler, Jozsef, in her arms.

She is dressed down, the Shadow Lord, in jeans and a sleeveless white blouse and hiking boots. Sunglasses on her dark head that the two-year-old reaches for repeatedly and which she keeps out of his hands with a deft lift of her chin before she sets him down to explore the deck while Calden finishes grilling the steaks.

It's noon, the sun is bright overhead so outside she pulls the glasses down to shield her eyes from the sun. Despite dressing down, she still looks - sharp, expensive, perhaps a little bit removed - but she circles to the grill, watching the Fiann grill the steaks she assumes came from cows he raised and cows he butchered, and urges Ellie to go decide whom will sit where.

Ellie obliges, because Ellie likes to tell people what to do.

"You have a lovely home, Calden." From the way she looks out over the sweep of the bluff, she means not merely the home but the land. "Thank you for sharing it with us."

Calden White

Cows that he raised, yes. Not cows that he butchered. He sends them elsewhere to be slain, to be quartered, to be carved. It's a small indulgence he allows himself and the part of his heart that is soft. Eva's tribe would likely disapprove; would find it weak and somehow dishonorable. Good thing, then, Calden is not of Thunder.

He is of Stag. That is never more apparent than when he is home, and at home in his surroundings: the stone, the wood, the antlers racked over the hearth. The broad open scrubland, hard land that he nonetheless loves and tends. The cattle, the herd, the dogs, the trucks, the boots, the hats, the red-checked shirts, the horses.

They should go riding later, he'd suggested to Ellie as he showed her when to turn the steaks. If her mother allows. If her mother and grandmother know how to ride, they can come too. Maybe her five-year-old brother too, but the toddler: he's too little.

The planning is interrupted when Eva sends Ellie to decide the seating and, perhaps, place the silverware. Calden looks up from the grill, smiling, the sun bringing out the subtle red-tones in his hair; the subtle glints of green in his eyes. Of Stag. "Thank you," he says, leaning down to pull a cold bottled microbrew out of the ice chest near, sort-of-under the grill. He extends it to Eva, still dripping from melted ice. "And it's my pleasure. I swear Ellie's grown since I last saw her."

He gives the steaks another nudge to judge done-ness, then grabs the platter and starts taking them off the fire.

"Haven't seen either of you in a while, though. How've you been? Sounds like you and your crew have been a little cabinbound."

Éva Illésházy

"Perhaps it's the boots," the Shadow Lord returns, with a lilting curve of her hooked brows above her oversized dark glasses and a certain wry hook to her mouth as she accepts the microbrew with wordless curve of thanks to her mouth, and reaches up open the bottletop. "I was informed that the heels are utilitarian rather than decorative. Functional, for more than adding an inch or two of height." There is an undertone of bemusement in her voice - Ellie brings it out in her more than the boys - and while Calden tends the steaks Éva watches her eldest daughter dart around the patio table, laying out silverware with a remarkable precision, talking to herself quietly as she plans who should go where.

Naturally, Ellie places herself at Calden's right hand. And Calden at the head of the table.

"Oh, we've been well," Éva continues, in the breezy tone of someone long-accustomed to small talk. To the intersectional and superficial nature of it. Give them just enough, and never too much.

She's inhaling to continue that light assurance with some grounding fact, perhaps about summer's end or the first week of school or or or - when she stops herself quite abruptly. The glasses hide her dark eyes from view, but nevertheless Calden can feel the weight of her gaze on him from behind the smoked glass.

"Actually, no. I suppose you've heard?

"I knew all of the Guardians by sight. Some of them by name. Even called one of them my friend. We had lunch every week I was in town.

"I keep wondering," and her attention has shifted again, to her children on the deck, the boys playing together, a bit rough but they are Shadow Lords. Ellie adjusting the forks and knives so that they are equidistant on every placesetting. " - if I should send them elsewhere. I have relatives in upstate New York."

Calden White

Calden knows that tone. He doesn't employ it often himself, but he's not thoroughly naive. He goes to the Big City twice a month, at least. He has standing arrangements with humane slaughterhouses there, and he has contracts and deals and exclusivity clauses with several high-end restaurants. One upscale grocer. Though he doesn't consider himself one of them, he rubs elbows often with the elite -- and, to be perfectly truthful, his bank account probably puts him into that coveted one percent. Or close, at least.

So, yes: he knows that tone, Small Talk (tm), the sort of tone you affect when you're talking with acquaintances and associates because true friends are rare in your echelon. He doesn't point it out. He wouldn't. Still -- when it shifts, when Eva abruptly drops it, Calden glances at her.

And furrows his brow, suddenly, achingly. His chest rises on an inhale as he sets the last steak on the platter, lifts it in one hand as he puts down his tongs and lowers the cover on the grill.

"I'm sorry," he says, simply. "I can't begin to imagine your loss."

That is the truth. Not just because of the Guardians, one of them her friend, but also: those children. Their father. Their fathers, because Ellie was different enough from the rest that Calden intuits that small piece of history; two men that she felt enough for, at least, to bear children by. Both gone now. He can't begin to imagine. His mind flashes on someone else entirely; that half-moon of the royal tribe, that laughing, sundrenched, life-loving woman he's dallied with so often and so pleasantly. He doesn't want to imagine.

"I think your kids will do better close to you, though," he adds, just as quietly. "There's danger everywhere. That's something they'll have to get used to. Growing up without their only parent, though -- even temporarily -- that's not something they should have to get used to."

Éva Illésházy

"It's strange," to him, quietly, with a ribbon of speculation woven into the tone. Speaking to him, her face cheated towards him but her eyes still so clearly stuck on the view of her small family in the midday sun. There is a brief flare-up of contention between the boys that another parent might interrupt. But they are Shadow Lords, and the dispute is small enough that neither mother nor grandmother steps in. "I don't much think about my losses.

"So much as theirs, past, present. Future. That's what makes me angry," There is anger in her then. Controlled and sourced and somehow just quietly allowed anger that does not have the heat of rage, but nevertheless feels just as deep and just as old and almost as worldchanging as rage. " - about it all."

Éva is clenching that microbrew in her right hand, and has formed a fist with her left - both thoughtlessly - but now she registers the tension in her body and forces herself to relax. To pull back from that moment and glance at Calden and listen to his advice.

This time he has her full attention, is a moving reflection in the oversized discs of her sunglasses.

"I appreciate the advice," she returns then, and it is the truth. There is a reflective sincerity. "Truth is, I've been spinning my wheels thinking about this every since they returned. Every since they returned. Ever since They returned.

"You're right, of course. There's danger everywhere and no way to know if things are worse there than they are here. Just saying it aloud helps.

"Thank you."

Calden White

"If you keep thanking me," Calden says with a quirk of a smile, "I'm going to start keeping tabs."

He angles his head toward the table, then. Not the long, glossy mahogany one in the dining room, nor the semicircular breakfast bar where he eats most of his meals. The one outside: the heavy teak one that sits under a canting umbrella, a little dusty from exposure.

"Let's have lunch and forget about the war, just for a few hours or days," he says. "I was going to take Ellie riding in the afternoon, and maybe your older boy if he can handle it. Do you want to come along? I'll teach you if you don't know how."

Éva Illésházy

The quip earns him a half-voiced laugh, which is wry and open mouthed. But listen: she does not thank him again. And will not, throughout the whole of the lunch. Not when he passes the salt. Not when he passes the peas. Not even when they are finished, sitting back in the warm afternoon light.

The meal was lovely, she will tell him.

Without a single thank you.

"A pony in the paddock," a glance at the children, "might be more appropriate for Andris, if you have ponies and/or paddocks. As for myself, I can't say that I've ridden before. But if you think you can teach me, I'd like to come along."