Sever (32 page)

That gets him to turn around. His eyes are dead. He looks as though he hasn’t slept at all while I’ve been away. “Is he? Cecily, you should return that dress and those things, then.”

Cecily knows she’s being dismissed, and for once she goes without incident.

Once she’s gone, he struggles to speak, but the words don’t come.

“I’ve learned some things about my parents too,” I say. “Things I don’t like very much.”

“I used to read about the twenty-first century when I was younger,” he says. “I wanted to know about things like cancer and muscular dystrophy and asthma. I wanted to know what could be so awful that we were so desperate to be rid of it. Did you know that the treatment for cancer was toxic? Parents would rather poison their children if it might save them than do nothing if it meant watching them die. I’ve been thinking about that, and I’ve been thinking about what you said about that poem and how hundreds of years ago people still must have questioned why they were here. I think humans have always been desperate. I think it has always been about doing something awful if it might help, when the only other option is death. Maybe that’s what being a parent is supposed to feel like.”

“Is that how you feel about Bowen?” I ask. “Would you hurt him if you thought it would help him?”

“I’ve never had to make a decision like that,” he says. “Somehow I can’t bring myself to imagine it.”

“Maybe it
is
desperation,” I say. “Maybe we can’t let things fall apart without trying. We can’t let go of the people we love.”

He looks at me, and in the sunlight his eyes come alive with greens and golds. “Sometimes we can,” he says.

Linden follows after Cecily, and I tell him I’ll be there soon. I know we won’t be coming back here, and there’s someone I need to see before we leave.

I find her in the green tent, elbow-deep in a barrel of orange dye. Cloths are dripping from a clothesline onto her hair.

“You know,” Lilac says, not looking up, “I’ve seen all kinds of foolish girls, but none so foolish they’d come back here if they got away.”

Her dark skin is victim to the green tint. Her eyes are heavy with silver dust to match her frosty lips.

“I never stay gone, it seems,” I say.

She laughs, holding up a square of tattered cloth and hanging it on the line. “So that boy is the tyrant you were trying to escape, huh?”

“It’s not as simple as all that,” I say. Her wry grin makes me uneasy. “He wouldn’t have hurt me, but that’s not enough of a reason to stay where I’m not meant to be.”

“You didn’t want to be a pretty thing on a shelf,” Lilac says, plunging a little girl’s dress into the barrel. Madame must be going through an orange phase. She
likes the children to match as they do her bidding. “I get it. My husband wasn’t a tyrant either. Not bad-looking, either, as first generations go.”

Lilac was married. This doesn’t surprise me as much as I’d have suspected. I knew that she was stolen off of the street, and like Claire and Silas I’d assumed she was sold into prostitution. But it would make sense that she was sold as a bride. She’s a work of art; her teeth are straight; her eyes are sultry; she’s intelligent. She’s a commodity in a sea of broken girls.

“I stuck around for years,” she says. “I didn’t think I’d have a chance running away. I would have stayed until the end if it wasn’t for Maddie. Something wasn’t right even when she was in the womb. My husband wanted to have her destroyed as soon as we found out; he thought we could start over right away, have a baby that wasn’t screwed up. So I left. Figured it was worth a shot.”

“You knew I’d get her back to New York,” I say. “Didn’t you?”

“I hoped.”

Hope, that risky, illustrious thing. It should have gone extinct by now, but we keep it alive. The girls who disappear but find themselves still breathing. The girls who will make it home. The girls who won’t. We hope for things we may not get to see, and we hold on with both hands because it’s one of the few things that can’t be stolen from us.

“She made a friend there,” I say. “I think she’s happy.”

Lilac wrings out the little dress, orange dye leaking like blood through her fingers. “I’m glad,” she says.

I want to suggest that Lilac leave here while Madame is showing some humanity, but I think better of it. Lilac gives no indication that she plans to leave. She’s rooted to that spot, dyeing cloths to set the atmosphere for Madame’s latest whim.

She doesn’t meet my eyes, and I suspect her skin is going sallow under all that makeup. I suspect her days are drawing to a close. So all I say is, “I spent some time with your family. They’d want you to know that you’re still very loved, Grace.”

At the mention of her real name, she pauses. Only for a moment, though, and then she kneads the fabric in the dye with vigor. “Thank you for seeing Maddie home,” she says. “I hope you find what it is you’re looking for. Take care of yourself, Rhine.”

Her eyes are misting. I can tell she doesn’t want me to see.

“Take care,” is all I say.

Cecily and Madame are standing by the gate, holding both of each other’s hands and talking in low voices. I find Linden standing at a distance, staring back at the Ferris wheel. “It is pretty spectacular, isn’t it?” he says. “You look at it and you can almost hear all the laughter from another time.”

“I think so too,” I say.

When Cecily sees Linden and me, she breaks away
from Madame and waves. The blue has been scrubbed from her eyelids, rendering them gray.

“What are they talking to each other about?” I say.

“They’ve become friends,” Linden says. Usually he’s protective of Cecily, but he hardly sounds interested. He hardly even sounds like he’s awake. His heart is broken, and only Rose would know how to mend it.

As we’re walking toward the limo, Cecily shows me the fuchsia silk purse Madame gave her; it’s fat with cosmetics. I don’t know what to make of her high spirits; maybe it has something to do with the anticipation of being reunited with Bowen. He’s all she can talk about on the drive home. She rests against Linden and dangles the purse over her head and checks off the things she misses the most about her son. His curls. His laughter. The colors in his hazel eyes that are different every day. She wonders if he has started to crawl while she was away.

Linden is watching my struggle to stay awake. I’ve disembarked from an airplane, discovered Gabriel in the place of nightmares, lied to my brother, and traveled from Florida to South Carolina. My mind is furious and awake, but my muscles will no longer oblige. The world is going in slow motion. Voices are muffled and far away. I hear Linden saying what sounds like “Come here,” and I feel my cheek settling against his knee, and then everything in the world is gone.

A bump in the road startles me awake. The limo is taking us down all the back roads I’ve come to recognize. When we stop in front of Reed’s house, the driver’s voice comes through an overhead speaker to tell us that Housemaster Vaughn has requested that we wait for him here. He’s tied up with an important project and cannot be disturbed until evening.

I wonder if the project is Rowan or Gabriel.

Cecily opens her door the moment it comes unlocked, and she’s running for the front door calling out for Elle and Reed.

My muscles are stiff, and Linden patiently waits for me to stumble outside before following suit. He closes the car door behind us and waits for the limo to drive away, before turning to me. “Feeling all right?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say.

“You’re lying.” He pushes the hair back behind my shoulder, his knuckles brush against my neck, and I don’t know how I’m still standing. I want to fall into his arms. I want to tell him everything. My body aches and my heart is sick, and yet I’m excited about what I’ve seen. I’m excited to think that there could be a world better than what has been promised to us, and at the same time I’m frightened.

I want to take him with me. I want him to see that there’s more to our lives than dying and being saved.

“Linden?”

“What is it?” he asks.

“There is something I’d like to show you, when I’m able. I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you about it now.” I look down at the grass drifting against our ankles, full of colorful weeds. “Until then you might think I’m crazy to say this, but I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier. I really am glad we were born. I can’t imagine anything more important than being alive.”

I venture to look at him, and he’s not quite smiling. “You need sleep,” he says.

He doesn’t believe me, but that’s okay.

You’ll see, Linden. You’ll see cities breathing and changing color at all the different times of day. You’ll see what the world used to be and what it will be. You’ll believe me then.

There’s a loud crack like a gunshot. We turn in the direction of the sound. Another crack, and another. “Come on,” Linden says, and we run after the sounds that lead us behind the house, where Reed is taking an axe to his giant shed.

“Uncle Reed?” Linden says.

Reed stops when he sees us, and waves. “Hey!” he says. “You’re back! Come over and help me with this.”

“What
is
this?” Linden asks.

“The plane is ready to fly,” I say, daring to feel excitement.

“Damn straight, doll. There are axes in the other shed.”

Cecily comes out of the house, Bowen straddled to her
hip. “What’s all the noise? What’s going on?” she says, handing the baby to Elle.

“We’re going to fly, kid,” Reed says, and hammers the axe into the shed again, causing it to shudder.

I can’t tell if Linden disapproves of what we’re doing, but he joins in anyway. It goes on for what feels like an hour, until we’re sweating and gasping, and it’s a wonder that it’s taking so long to destroy this thing, when it was hardly stable enough to stand on its own in the first place.

Reed says, “One more push and I think we’ve got it, kids. Make it count.”

With the last of our strength, we push our bodies against the same wall. Cecily’s feet are slipping in the grass, and she kicks to keep herself from falling.

I’ve seen plenty of destroyed buildings in my life, but I’ve never seen them actually coming down in such a way. It’s astounding the way the shed slants in one direction like a page that’s closing. Linden pulls Cecily and me away, and we watch as the walls crack and splinter around the shape of the plane. Pieces fall amid clouds of dirt and dust.

Reed busies himself clearing all of the debris from the plane. Cecily is bursting with giggles because it’s the greatest thing she’s ever seen; she didn’t quite believe Reed when he told her that he was hiding a plane in the shed.

By the time we’ve cleared away all of the shed debris
from the plane’s wings and body, the sun is starting to set. “There’s still enough light to fly it,” Reed says. He’s climbing into the open door that leads to the cockpit.

“Are you sure it will start?” Cecily asks.

“We’re about to find out,” Reed says. “Climb in.”

Cecily moves forward, but Linden grabs her arm and says, “No, love. It isn’t safe.”

She wrests away from him. “Stay down here if you want to,” she says. “But I’m tired of you always holding me back.”

“Love . . . ”

She sees that she’s hurt him, and she softens. “It’ll be fun,” she says. “A little adventure.”

He pulls her toward him and he stoops down, and she rises on tiptoes so their foreheads can touch. “I almost lost you once,” he says.

“Nothing will happen.” She kisses him. “When are we ever going to have another chance to do something like this?”

Reed is annoyed by their display. He starts the engine, and the little propeller at the nose of the plane starts to spin; the ground is vibrating, sending waves through my body. We’re all choking on the dirt plumes. “Cowards!” he says. Just as he’s closing the door by the pilot’s seat, I hoist myself through it.

“I’ll go,” I say. Boarding this dilapidated plane without a tarmac and being flown by Reed won’t be the craziest thing I’ve experienced this week.

“There isn’t a runway,” Linden protests, trying to appeal to my better senses. “And my uncle has never flown—”

Reed slams the door shut and pats the empty seat beside him. The cockpit is so cramped that I can’t stand at full height. There are more gauges than I can count, levers pointing in different directions, but the pedals look at least vaguely similar to the ones in cars.