I think my former father-in-law just wants to be rid of us for a while, and although I’m in no hurry to reenter those walls anyway, there’s something I have to deal with. “Wait here,” I tell Rowan, and I run into the kitchen after Vaughn.
Vaughn stops walking when he reaches the hallway. With his back turned to me, he says, “How nice it must be, darling, that the boy you ran off with is still alive.”
My heart is in my throat. “Gabriel has nothing to do with all this,” I say. “And I’ve done everything you’ve asked.”
“Yes,” he says. “I suppose you have. Though you could allow a little time to pretend to grieve before replacing my son with the hired help.”
The word “pretend” hits me in the chest. So much of my time with Linden was just that, but surely Vaughn can recognize that this pain I’m feeling is real. I’ve been angry with Vaughn before, but now I want very much to take a swing at him, and I really think that I could. But the moment of satisfaction wouldn’t be worth the repercussions.
“Gabriel is not a replacement,” I say, in a measured tone. “He’s a person, and he’s done nothing to deserve what you’re doing to him.”
Vaughn’s shoulders tense. I think he’s going to turn around and face me, but he doesn’t. “It isn’t wise to make me angry with you right now,” he says. “I intend to hold up my end of the bargain, but there’s a certain etiquette to this matter.”
The elevator doors open, and he’s gone.
“Etiquette,” I say under my breath.
I return to my brother, furious and sad and drained.
“Are you feeling sick?” he asks. “Your eyes are a little glassy.”
“Let me give you the grand tour,” I say.
Things are buzzing in the gardens. I wonder if Rose and Linden have found each other in the orange grove, if they’re the ones rustling the leaves, if the orange that falls from its branch and rolls along the dirt is part of a game they’re playing. It taps my shoe.
“Hi,” I tell it.
“Who are you talking to?” Rowan says.
“I don’t know. Come on; I’ll show you the golf course.”
I lead my brother through the loveliest avenues of my prison, which will now be shared with him. It seems silly that I ever thought I could be free. If this cure really does what it’s supposed to, maybe I’ll outlive Vaughn. Maybe I’ll be free then.
And what will happen to Gabriel? How long is he going to remain in that state, gradually growing closer to his twenty-fifth birthday?
When we get to the pool, I turn on the hologram machine. The still water comes alive with guppies weaving anxiously through corals.
We sit at the water’s edge and watch them go.
“They look so real,” my brother says. I try to imagine how the two of us would look from Reed’s plane. Two little forms with blond hair. The color of our eyes wouldn’t matter. Whatever Vaughn has put into our blood wouldn’t matter. We’d be nothing but a moment flashing by.
I’d like very much to fly again. I close my eyes, try to remember that dizzying moment of weightlessness when I first felt myself lifting off the ground.
It’s quiet for a while, and then Rowan says, “We could talk now. We’re alone out here. No walls.”
“There are always walls,” I say.
Shortly before dinner Rowan uses his own key card to access the elevator. Once he’s made it to the guest floor, I ride the rest of the way to my own floor.
“Cecily?” I call as I step out of the elevator.
There’s no answer. I find her bedroom empty, one of Bowen’s bottles lying in her unmade bed. A sick feeling begins to form in my stomach. I hurry down the hall, and I check all the aisles in the library and the sitting room. The keyboard is on, its keys lighting up one by one as it waits for hands to play it. I check Jenna’s room, which remains pristine and untouched.
When I open the door to my own room, I’m greeted with the familiar smell of baby powder, and I find Cecily sleeping on my bed. Bowen is napping under her small, protective arm.
She’s wearing one of Linden’s button-up shirts; the open collar falls over her shoulder; the hem just about reaches her knees.
“Cecily,” I whisper, and sit on the edge of the bed.
She flinches and opens her eyes.
“Rhine?” Her voice is scratchy. “Rhine!” She sits upright. “Where have you been? Nobody would tell me anything. They wouldn’t even talk to me.”
“We can talk about it downstairs at dinner.” I frown and clear some of the tangled hair from her face. She doesn’t look well; if I hadn’t found her napping in my bed just now, I would think she hadn’t slept at all since I left.
“Dinner?” she says. “Downstairs?” She looks as though she’s just tasted something sour. “Then that means Housemaster Vaughn is back?”
“Come on,” I say, guiding her off the bed. “Let’s get you cleaned up. We don’t want Housemaster Vaughn to see you in Linden’s clothes.” I don’t know how it’s possible, but she smells like Linden and Jenna and Bowen, and nothing at all like herself.
She stumbles as I guide her to my bathroom. She sits on the edge of the tub, staring through me while I take a warm, damp towel to her face. She doesn’t seem to mind when I brush the knots from her hair, and there are a lot of them.
“Do you want your hair up or down?” I say.
“Is he very mad at me?” Cecily asks.
“Who?”
“Housemaster Vaughn. Does he blame me for what happened?”
I unwind the hair elastic from the handle of my brush. “I think he blames Reed, and himself.”
“He should blame me,” she says.
“Shh.” I tie her hair back and wind it into a bun. “Dinner is in a few minutes. We need to figure out what to wear.”
She nods, but there are tears in her eyes as I hustle her out the door. “You can wear one of my dresses if you’d like,” I tell her.
“I’m not filled out enough,” she says. “I want my yellow dress. The one with the lacy sleeves.”
“Concentrate on getting Bowen dressed, then, and I’ll find your dress.”
We each help with the other’s zippers, and I tuck a silk flower into her hair for a bit of color. She looks half-asleep, but when I smooth the arches of her eyebrows with my thumbs, she makes an effort to smile.
“Ready to head downstairs?” I say.
She holds her breath for a few seconds, nods, and smoothes out her dress. She wore it the night of the party in the orange grove, the night she and Linden stole away to be alone for the first time. It’s shorter on her than it used to be, and it’s getting tight at the chest and the waist. She’s outgrowing her memories. We both are.
I catch our reflection in the elevator doors on our way downstairs; husbandless brides in sundresses, hair upswept, eyes determined. We are stronger than we’ve credited ourselves to be. We have been the victims and the witnesses. We have said a lifetime of good-byes.
She holds Bowen to her hip, doesn’t stop him from reaching for the fake flower in her hair.
“You’ll get to meet my brother,” I say.
“What’s he like?” she asks.
“Condescending, mostly.”
That gets a little laugh out of her, but it turns into a sharp breath, and she rests her head against my shoulder.
“I love you, Rhine,” she says.
“I know,” I say. “I love you, too.”
She has composed herself by the time we make it to the dining room, where Rowan and Vaughn have already been seated. Vaughn’s eyes brighten as soon as he sees us, and he breaks his own decorum to leave the table, arms outstretched, to take Bowen from Cecily. I see a moment of resistance before she relinquishes him.
Vaughn keeps Bowen in his lap through the first two courses, marveling at the way he can keep himself seated upright with minimal assistance, spooning him bits of applesauce and strained carrots, applauding every swallow.
Cecily says nothing, but her ears are turning red.
“Cecily,” Vaughn says as our plates are being cleared away, food hardly touched. “Must you bring that eyesore of a purse to the dinner table?” He doesn’t even want to allow her the small comfort it provides.
She raises her head for the first time all through the meal and smiles sweetly at him. “Bowen will be crawling soon,” she says.
“Will you?” Vaughn asks Bowen. “No doubt you’ll be walking before we know it.”
“I’ll teach him to walk,” Cecily mutters under her breath. “Far, far away from you.”
“Say something, darling?” Vaughn asks.
“I was wondering what the occasion was,” she says. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had a family dinner.”
The word “family” is a staggeringly flawed way to describe us.
“Yes, it has, hasn’t it?” Vaughn says. “I was hoping to have a talk with all of you last week, but certain events caused the evening to go differently than I had planned.”
Linden’s death, he means.
“I wanted to announce that I, along with a team of respected colleagues, have developed a cure,” he says.
“A cure?” Cecily says.
“For the virus,” he says. “Rhine and Rowan here are among the first participants. It’s still experimental, but I’m confident that it’ll take.”
She looks at me, not understanding. “You’re cured?” she says. “Right now?”
“Supposedly,” I say. Maybe my brother is right to think I’m too empathetic or too sad to appreciate this, because I don’t feel a drop of excitement. I still haven’t decided if I believe it. Vaughn is something of a master at ulterior motives and catches.
“Dr. Ashby has been working on it for the past year,” Rowan says. He’s trying to help; I don’t know what Vaughn has told him about my sister wife, if he’s mentioned her at all, but I think Rowan feels sorry for her. Cecily looks at him like he’s a strange creature that somehow found its way into her home. And I suppose that’s all he is to her. A stranger who looks something like me.
“It’s best not to overcomplicate it for our Cecily,” Vaughn tells Rowan. “She never has been very good with the how and the why of things.”
Cecily stares with disenchantment at the slab of chocolate cake that’s been set before her. She hasn’t eaten a thing all evening. I can see that she has questions, but she’s too afraid to ask them. And she is still in the thick smog of grief, where everything, even the promise of a cure, means nothing to her. The husband who spoke sweetly to her is gone, and she’s left at the mercy of a father-in-law who no longer makes his disgust with her a secret.