In another time, in another place, I wonder who they might have been.
The attendants come to take our plates, and Linden frowns at how little I’ve eaten. “You’re going to make yourself sick,” he says.
“I’m just tired,” I say. “I think I’ll go to bed.”
Upstairs Cecily’s bedroom door is open, and I can hear Bowen gurgling softly, breathing in that cadenced, raspy, newborn way. The light is off, and perhaps he’s lying awake in his crib while Cecily sleeps. I know this routine. Left unattended, when he awakens from a nap, he will inevitably start to cry. And when he cries, he doesn’t stop.
My plan was to try to get some sleep, but it’s better to take Bowen from his crib before he wakes up my sister wives. But when I step into the bedroom, I find Jenna sitting on the edge of the bed, illuminated in a strip of light from the hallway. Her long hair cascades over one shoulder, and her face is tilted down toward the baby in her arms. Cecily is sleeping under the covers behind her in silence.
“Jenna?” I whisper. She smiles without raising her head.
“He looks like our husband,” she says softly. “But I can tell by his temper that he’s going to be like Cecily. It’s too bad none of us will get to see that.”
She looks so beautiful like this. The darkness hides her pale complexion, her purpling lips. Her nightgown is tiers and tiers of lace, her hair a perfect dark curtain. And I am struck with the painful realization that she looks like she could be somebody’s mother. The caregiver, deft and gentle, with long capable fingers tracing Bowen’s half-moon face. I wonder if she cared for her sisters this way before they were murdered, the way she has cared for Cecily. The way she has cared for me.
I swear I’ve just watched a tear roll from the corner of her eye, but she swipes it away before it gets far.
“How are you feeling?” I ask.
“All right,” she says. I force myself to believe her. She looks so strong right now, so young. “Here, take him for a minute, okay?” She stands, and when she walks toward me, I can see that her knees are trembling. She comes closer, and the light from the hallway shows me the beads of sweat on her face, the blue shadows under her eyes.
I let her ease the baby into my arms, and she walks by me with all the presence of a ghost, sweeping through the spot where she flirted with the baffled attendant, where hundreds of times she paced toward her room with her nose in a romance novel.
Her hand trails the wall as she makes her way to her bedroom and closes the door. Moments later I hear the mangled sounds of her coughing.
Bowen, unfazed by her absence, has fallen asleep. I envy his complacency. I envy his twenty-five remaining years.
Later, I close my bedroom door. I shut off the lights.
I bury my face in my pillow and I scream and scream until I’m so numb that I can’t feel my arms and legs, just like Jenna. And the silence throbs. Rowan, my parents, Rose, the Manhattan harbor. Things I miss. Things I love. Things that I have left behind, or that have fallen through my fingers. I want my mother to come and kiss me good night. I want my father to play the piano. I want my brother to keep watch while I sleep, to give me a swig of vodka when the pain is too bad. I miss him. I haven’t allowed myself to truly miss him in a long time, but now I can’t help it. A floodgate has opened. And I’m so tired and so lost, and I don’t know if I’ll ever truly be able to escape. I don’t know how I’ll be able to open the iron gate with its pointed flower. I wipe my tears on Gabriel’s handkerchief, which I’ve kept hidden in my pillowcase all this time. In the darkness I feel the embroidery, and I sob until my throat is raw, and I just hope, hope, hope that I’ll make it home.
I dream of being cast into the sea. I dream of drowning, but this time I don’t thrash or struggle. I succumb.
And after a while, in the quiet of the underwater, I can hear my father’s music, and it’s not so bad.
In the morning, Cecily wakes me in tears. “Jenna won’t open her eyes,” she says. “She’s burning up.”
Cecily tends to be dramatic, but when I stumble, still half-sleeping, to Jenna’s room, I can see that it’s even worse than she described. Our sister wife’s skin has paled and taken on a cruel yellow tinge. Bruises are spreading across her throat and arms. No, not bruises; they’re more like festering wounds. I touch her forehead, and she makes a pitiful croaking sound.
“Jenna?” I whisper.
Cecily paces, clenching and unclenching her fists. “I’m getting Housemaster Vaughn,” she says.
“No.” I get onto the mattress and bring Jenna’s head into my lap. “Go to the bathroom and get a wet cloth.”
“But—”
“There’s nothing he can do for her that we can’t do ourselves,” I say, forcing a calm tone.
Cecily obliges, and I hear her sobbing as she runs the water, but she has composed herself when she returns with the wet cloth. She pulls back the blankets and undoes the top buttons of Jenna’s nightgown to help cool the fever, and all the while I can see her struggling to contain the panic that’s filled up her eyes. Do my eyes look the same way? I’m sitting here, calmly running my fingers through Jenna’s hair, but my heart is pounding, my stomach is sick. This is so much worse than what I saw Rose go through. So, so much worse.