Thanks to Rowan, anyone who watches the national news knows that of the two of us, I am the one who was stupid enough to hope.
But am I still hoping? I don’t know.
“Don’t tell Linden I told you,” she says.
“I won’t.”
By late afternoon the heat has escalated. The sun is burning my skin clean. The light has made hostages of Cecily and Reed, who stand a few feet away, their bodies reduced to shadow except for the strip of color that is Cecily’s ponytail.
He’s explaining his .22 caliber rifle to her. He’s telling her about loading the chamber, and the gunpowder in the bullets, and the recoil. But she only has one question: “Can it kill?”
“It’s a gun, isn’t it?” Reed says.
He opens the chamber, and one at a time the gold shells fall into her waiting palm.
“But this isn’t the one you carry around with you all the time,” she says.
“That’s because this one isn’t as dangerous. It can catch dinner well enough, though.”
I’m leaning on my elbows in the tall grass, and I close my eyes and roll my head back to catch the heat of the sun before it’s swallowed by a wandering cloud.
I know a little bit about guns. My brother and I kept a shotgun for protection. Rowan greased the barrel because he said it made the shots louder. He wanted them to be a warning to intruders. He wanted everyone to think we were dangerous. It took months for me to stop being so afraid of that gun. The heaviness of it. The things it implied. I felt as though just being near it could kill me.
Cecily shows no such fear. She’s never seen anything like Reed’s arsenal, and after days of admiring it she’s finally asking him questions. He’s all too happy to teach her. He’s patient; his answers are wise, detailed. Despite what he said about preferring dogs to children, I think he would have been a good father. A better one than Vaughn, for sure.
Reed puts the gun into Cecily’s hands, and he shows her how to aim it at a dying dogwood tree several yards in the distance. “You always treat a gun like it’s loaded, even if it’s empty,” he instructs. There’s a pop as she pulls the trigger, draws back the hammer, pulls the trigger again.
“Keep practicing and maybe I’ll let you shoot it for real,” he says.
“Do you mean that?” she asks.
“Maybe I’ll even show you the airplane I’m hiding.”
“Now you’re just messing with me,” she says. “You do not have an airplane.”
“I do so. And I’ll have you know that with a few very minor tweaks, it’ll be ready to fly. Put your eyes back on the target.”
The screen door slams shut. Linden is running down the porch steps and toward us. “No, no, no,” he’s saying. “Absolutely no!”
“It’s not loaded,” Cecily and Reed say in unison.
Linden looks at me as though I am somehow responsible for this. I say nothing, and he bristles at Reed. “What are you thinking, letting her play with guns?”
“I’m not playing,” Cecily says. “I’m learning.”
I can see that Linden wants to tear the gun from her hands, but he’s too afraid. Not just of the weapon but of this startling vision of the wife he’s always coddled. His fingers stretch and clench. If we were married, I would try to reason with him.
“I don’t know what’s going on with you anymore,” he says. “It’s like you’ve completely lost your mind.”
Cecily, remembering Reed’s advice to always treat a gun as if it were loaded, takes her finger from the trigger as she lowers it. She regards him with resignation, maybe even annoyance.
“You could be killed. That thing could kill you,” Linden says.
“It isn’t loaded,” Reed interjects. “We said that.”
“And you! You should know better,” Linden says. He looks like he wants to cry. When he’s very frustrated, his eyes take on that sort of sheen. I want to comfort him. And I want to defend Cecily’s actions, because I understand. I do. She’s small, and she never had the opportunity of an education, and she just wants a little control. She wants to be taken seriously.
But this isn’t my marriage. This isn’t my battle.
“Let’s get one thing straight, kiddo,” Reed tells Linden. “I’ve never done a damn thing to hurt a soul in my life, and I wasn’t going to let anything happen. You don’t come out here barking orders at me.”
“Linden just wants to protect her,” is what I want to say. She’s all he has. I left him. I’m at arm’s reach, but I’ve left him.
I flatten my back against the earth and hope the grass will hide me. I hope I’ll disappear.
I hear them arguing. I close my eyes. Let the sun wash them away.
A loud crack jolts me back to earth. I sit up. Everyone has gone silent. Reed is holding his .45 caliber pistol skyward. Even without a bullet, the shot was loud. I think he meant to stop the argument, but the next moment Linden is calling him an insane old man, saying his father was right, which throws Cecily into hysterics and how-dare-yous and how-can-you-say-thats, because Vaughn is her sworn enemy now. I’ve never seen Linden and Cecily argue like this, and it makes me feel like the world is coming undone. I thought the world had already come undone, but now I realize that I still had faith in some things.
One thing at a time everything is falling apart.
My legs can’t carry me to the house fast enough.
I find Elle sitting at the kitchen table, holding Bowen and staring at one of Reed’s shelves of oddities. Her eyes are bleary. Bowen is lolling. He must have finally exhausted himself; he’s been hyper all day, reaching for things, squealing, throwing anything he gets his hands on.
I think of what Jenna said about how he would grow to have Cecily’s temper, and that it’s a shame none of us would live to see it. I think she’d be surprised how happy he is, how excited to be alive.
Elle must be exhausted.
“I can take him,” I offer.
“Huh?” She looks away from the shelf and blinks owlishly at me.
“I can watch Bowen, if you want to rest,” I say.
“It’s all right,” she says. Her voice is wispy. “I like holding him.”
I’m staring at her. I don’t realize it until I notice her nervous intermittent glances back at me.
It’s just that, with the light from the window in her hair, she somehow reminds me of Deirdre. She reminds me of the Once Upon a Time fairy-tale beauty of the mansion, and how that mansion sat atop its own parallel universe of horrors.
I pull out the chair opposite Elle’s and take a seat. She flinches and stares into Bowen’s coppery curls. She never used to be this nervous. At the mansion she was quiet and obedient, enduring Cecily’s demands, but she wasn’t frightened. I’m certain she rolled her eyes and told Cecily to sit still while she was trying to curl her hair or alter her skirts.
Elle is still wearing her uniform—a white button-down blouse and a black tiered skirt. She still calls us by our proper titles too—if she speaks at all. I think the routine gives her a sense of normalcy to cling to.
“Is it that you don’t feel safe here?” The careless question just comes out of me. It’s been too exhausting a morning to skirt around things politely. “Reed is a little eccentric, but he isn’t like Housemaster Vaughn. He wouldn’t hurt you.”
Elle purses her lips, stares at Bowen for a long time before saying, “Nowhere is safe, Lady Rhine. Especially not for you.”
“And you aren’t comfortable around me? Because you’re afraid you’ll get caught in the cross fire of the trouble I attract?”
She hesitates.
She nods.
“I never wanted any of it to turn out like this,” I say. It’s a flimsy excuse, but it’s the truth. “I only wanted to go home again.”
Bowen makes a sound, and Elle kisses his head.
“I didn’t want anything to happen to Deirdre.” I stop myself from saying anything more, because Deirdre exists as two people in my mind—my child domestic, and the ruined girl I met in the basement. I am still trying to tell myself that the latter was some nightmare, a trick. It’s the only way I can move forward. I don’t have many years left, and I have to choose which mysteries remain unsolved.
“Deirdre is gone,” Elle says, standing and heading for the doorway. “She isn’t coming back. I need to put Bowen down for his nap.”
She can’t get away from me quickly enough.
I can’t very well blame her for that.
Down the hall the storm door opens, and footsteps pound down the hallway and toward the kitchen. Cecily is small, but she can rattle an entire house when she’s mad.
Only, when she gets to the kitchen, she doesn’t look angry at all. She looks frightened. “You have to hide,” she says. “He’s here. Housemaster Vaughn is here.”
I’m huddled in the closet of the upstairs hall, buried haphazardly in Reed’s coats, trying to breathe quietly despite the panic in my chest. I hate small dark spaces.
Vaughn’s boots echo throughout the house, and when he stops walking, I feel certain that he’s right beneath me, that any move I make will set off a creaky floorboard that will give me away.
“Before you ask, Rhine isn’t here,” Cecily snaps. Despite the authority in her tone, I know she’s terrified of Vaughn, and she’s facing him to protect me. “I didn’t want her around my husband anymore,” she says. “It wasn’t right.”
“She’s gone,” Linden says, with none of his wife’s ire. “She left after Cecily was released from the hospital. She said something about going to Manhattan.”
“Didn’t it ever occur to you that your ex-wife isn’t the one I care about?” Vaughn says. “I’ve been deeply concerned for your health, Cecily, and I miss my grandson. I’ve let this charade go on all this time because I wanted you to get the rest that you needed. I even allowed your domestic to come to your aid. But I see that you’re back to your usual spirited self now.”
“Nobody leaves this house by force,” Reed interjects. “Except for maybe you, Little Brother.”
“Who said anything about force?” Vaughn says. “Cecily. Linden. Be realistic. You can’t stay here forever. This imaginary grudge you’re holding against me has gone on for long enough. I’d like to put this whole mess behind us. I’d like to see my grandson again. I know he’s here.”
“He’s napping,” Linden says.