Wither (28 page)

I can’t help but think Vaughn allowed me the key card so his staff could smother me with kindness. Maybe he even hid Gabriel away just to mock me.

And for all the places I can go, none of them lead to Gabriel. I know I should have looked for him when there was the distraction of Cecily’s labor. Jenna has told me as much since. But I couldn’t bring myself to leave her.

I’m still worried about her. She and her son survived the labor, but she’s been weary since then. Her room is kept dark and warm, smelling of medications and, faintly, of Vaughn’s basement. In her sleep she murmurs about music and kites and hurricanes. She’s lost too much blood. That’s Vaughn’s diagnosis, and I agree, but I’m still uneasy when she’s given the transfusion. I lay beside her as she recovers, as the color slowly returns to her cheeks, and I wonder whose blood is coursing through her. Maybe Rose’s. Or some unwilling attendant’s. I wonder if Vaughn, who I believe is capable of such darkness and destruction, ever truly uses his abilities to heal.

But as the days pass, Cecily begins to improve.

When the baby cries, Linden carries him to her bedside. Sleepily she unbuttons her nightgown and holds her son to her breast. From the hallway I look into her bedroom and see Linden helping her stay awake. He speaks softly to her, pushing the straggly red hair from her face, and his words make her smile. They’re perfect for each other, I think, so wide-eyed and sheltered, so content with this little life they’ve built with each other.

Maybe I should stop telling my twin stories; maybe it’s better for both of them to forget there are better things beyond this mansion. Things that don’t dissolve, things more tangible than the sharks and dolphins in the pool, the spinning houses at Linden’s expos. And it’s better that their son never knows there’s a world out there at all, because he’ll never get to see it.

Cecily turns and notices me standing in the doorway. She waves me over, but I fade back into the hallway, pretending there’s some way I can be useful elsewhere.

I do not want to intrude on their marriage. Sharing a husband with two other wives isn’t complicated; being married to Linden means something different for each of us. For Jenna, Linden’s mansion is nothing but a luxurious place to die. For Cecily, her marriage is some kind of partnership of ‘I love yous’ and children. For me, it’s a lie. And as long as I can separate the three marriages and stick to my plan, it will be easier to leave. Easier to tell myself that they’ll be okay once I’m gone.

I’m happy when Cecily is well enough to get out of bed. I follow her to the sitting room and watch as she sets a slide into place on the keyboard and begins to play.

Her music brings the hologram to life, like a floating television screen. A green field dotted with poppies, and a cobblestone-like blue sky with moving white clouds. I am sure this is a replica of a painting I’ve seen in one of the library books, something impressionistic as the artist began the slow descent into madness.

The baby lies on the floor, staring up, the lights from the illusion flickering about his face. The winds thrash the grass and the poppies and the faraway bushes this way and that, until everything is one grayed-over tangle of color. A delirium. Smears of wet paint.

Cecily has lost herself. Her eyes are closed. The music streams out of her fingers. I concentrate on her young face, her small slightly parted mouth, her thin eyelashes.

The colors of her song do not reach her where she sits poised over the keys, and I do not think the illusion matters to her. She’s the most real thing in this room.

Her son makes uncertain faces and wriggles in place, unsure what to do with all this splendor. As he grows, he will see many illusions. He will watch paintings come to life as music plays for him, and he’ll see his father’s houses spin, and he’ll dive into schools of guppies and great whites in the swimming pool. But I don’t suppose he will ever know the ocean lapping up around his ankles, or will ever cast a fishing line, or have a house of his own.

The music fades; the winds calm; the illusion folds in on itself and dies.

Cecily says, “I wish we could have a real piano. Even the dumpy orphanage had a real piano.”

Jenna, standing in the doorway with her mouth and hand full of shelled pistachios, says, “‘Real’ is a dirty word in this place.”

On the morning of the winter solstice, Jenna manages to steal the lighter from an attendant after he lights the incense in the hall. She pretends to flirt with him, and when she drops her stack of risqué romance novels, he’s eager to pick them up, and she manages to swipe the lighter right out of his hand. He’s so enamored by her smile that he doesn’t realize it’s gone.

“Bye, bye.” She smiles as he leaves, and he nearly catches his tie in the elevator doors as they close. The second he’s gone the seduction leaves her gray eyes and she becomes just a girl again. In my doorway, I applaud, and she makes a curtsy with her skirt.

She’s sweating a little, as though the effort exhausted her. But she holds the lighter like it’s a trophy.

“What are you going to do with that?” I ask.

“Give me one of your candles. I’m going to set the sitting room on fire,” she says matter-of-factly.

“Excuse me?”

“When Governor Linden and the Housemaster and the attendants hear the alarm, they’ll come rushing to find out what the commotion is. And that’s when you go to the basement.”

It’s not the craziest plan one could come up with, as Jenna points out, recalling my brush with death on the mini-golf course. But I make her wait until I’ve put the green contacts into my eyes. “Maybe then I won’t be recognized,” I say. Even the attendants who have never met me have heard about me. Rhine. The nice one who doesn’t complain, who has the unusual eyes.

Jenna is impressed by my cunning. “Look for a biohazard suit,” she says. “Then nobody will recognize you for sure. They should be in one of the labs.” I don’t tell her that the thought of venturing into one of those dark rooms terrifies me. I only nod and give her one of the lavender candles that’s supposed to help me fall asleep at night. “You stay in here,” she says. “And when the alarm goes off, just try to be invisible.” She smiles at me, and then she’s gone with a little skip in her step. I think she has wanted to set fire to this place for a long time.

A few seconds later the fire alarm is blaring. The ceiling lights are flashing. Across the hall the baby starts screaming, and Cecily runs into the hallway with her hands over her ears. The elevator opens, and attendants flood out, but Linden and Vaughn don’t show up until the car comes back a second time, and by then you can see the smoke billowing out of the sitting room. There’s no stairwell leading to the wives floor, and I’ve always wondered what would happen if there were ever a fire, but knowing Vaughn, he would let Linden’s wives die and replace us later.

It’s easy for me to escape. The key card, of course, won’t grant access to the basement, and so I have to push the panic button. But in all this commotion and with all these alarms already wailing, it doesn’t make a difference.

The doors open and I’m in the windowless basement. It’s eerily calm down here. There’s no indication that there are any sirens, and the ceiling lights lazily flicker.

Green-eyed and anonymous, I stumble along the wall, whispering Gabriel’s name and looking for a biohazard suit. I find a closet of them and quickly adjust one over my clothes. There’s a harsh plastic smell inside, like being slowly suffocated. I take deep breaths that fog the face covering. It’s like being in a nightmare. It’s like being buried alive.

“Gabriel!” My whispers are becoming increasingly desperate. I am hoping he will just crash into me, or I’ll turn a corner and there he’ll be, mopping the floor or organizing storm supplies. And as I’m hoping I won’t have to open a door, I won’t have to open a door, I won’t have to open a door, I hear his voice. At least I think it’s his voice. It’s so hard to hear in this thing, and my own breathing is amplified in the confined space.

Something touches my shoulder, and I start. “Rhine?”

He spins me around, and there he is. Gabriel. In one piece. Not etherized on a table. Not bruised. Not dead.

Dead. The word trills through my head like the fire and the hurricane alarms, and I realize that’s what I’d feared underneath everything else. I throw my arms around him, and it’s awkward, with the helmet in the way, but I don’t care. I can feel his sturdy arms around me and I don’t care about anything else.

He eases the helmet off of my head, and sounds of the world outside my own breathing enter my ears. He’s laughing a little. The helmet falls. He squeezes me, says, “What are you doing?”

“I thought you were dead,” I say into his shirt. “I thought you were dead, I thought you were dead.”

It feels good to say the words. To relieve myself of them. To know they’re not the truth. He can hear the fear coming out of me. And his hand runs up my back, along my spine, and it crashes into my hair and holds the base of my skull. Holds me steady. And it’s like that for a while.

When we draw apart, he pushes the hair out of my eyes and stares at me. “What’s happened to you?” he says.

“What? I’m fine.”

“Your eyes.”

“Contacts. I didn’t want to be recognized, in case I ran into someone, and—What about you!” I cry, remembering the situation. “I haven’t seen you for days!”

He presses his finger to my lips to quiet me, and then leads me into one of the horrifyingly dark rooms. One of the places I most fear. But he’s with me and I know it will be all right. He doesn’t turn on a light, and I can smell cold metal, hear water dripping against a hard surface. In the perfect darkness I hold both of his hands and try to decipher his outline.

“Listen,” he whispers. “You can’t be down here. The Housemaster knows everything. He knows about the kiss. He knows you tried to run away. If he catches us together, I’m out of here.”

“He’ll kick you out?”

“I don’t know. But I have a feeling a body bag will be involved.”

Of course. How stupid of me. Nobody leaves this place alive. In fact, I’m not even convinced anyone leaves this place once they’re dead. More bodies for Vaughn to dissect. Is that what Jenna was trying to warn me about?

I imagine my eyes in a jar in one of Vaughn’s medical rooms, and I purse my lips against a wave of nausea.

There’s a good chance this is all one of Vaughn’s traps—the key card, putting Gabriel into the basement where he knew I’d look for him. He could be lurking around a corner, waiting to lock me in one of these rooms. The thought causes my pulse to hammer against my temples, but Gabriel’s presence overpowers my fear. I would never have been able to live with myself if I hadn’t tried to find him.

“How?” I say. “How does he know?”

“I don’t know, but he can’t see us together. Rhine, it isn’t safe.”

“Run away with me,” I say.

“Rhine, listen, we can’t—”

“I’ve found a way out,” I say, and I grab his hand and bring it to the key card hanging around my neck. “Linden gave me permission to use the elevator. And I found a way out. There’s a glitch in the trees that border the property. Some of them aren’t real. They’re a hologram.”

He’s quiet, and in the darkness it’s the same as disappearing, and I grab at his shirt. “Still there?”

“I’m here,” he says. He’s silent again, and I listen for his breathing. I hear his lips part, and he utters a fraction of a syllable, and I know, just know, that he’s going to use logic against me, and that will never do if I want to get out of this place at all before I die, so I kiss him.

The door is already closed, and in this isolated darkness, it’s almost like we’re not in the basement at all.

We’re in the infinite ocean with no continents in sight, and there’s nobody to catch us. We’re free. His hands are in my hair, behind my head, traveling the length of me.

The biohazard suit crinkles, making audible record of his movements.

He tries to break away every so often, getting out a “But—” or “Listen to me—” or “Rhine—” But I stop him every time, and he gives up, and I will this moment to last forever. I will the wedding band off my finger. I will us both to be free.

Until one time when we draw apart and I feel his forehead press against mine, and he says, “Rhine. It’s too dangerous. The Housemaster will do anything to protect his son. If he catches you running away, he’ll murder you and make it look like an accident.”

“That’s far-fetched even for him,” I say.

“I wouldn’t put it past him,” he says. “His son is all he has. He had you and your sister wives brought here just to console him while Lady Rose was dying. Don’t think he wouldn’t destroy you before he lets you hurt him again.”

If you value your life, you won’t run again.
That’s what Vaughn said to me after my botched escape attempt. But he also said I was more special than I realized, that Linden’s spirit would be destroyed if he lost me. And despite all the horrible things I think of Vaughn, I do believe he cares about his son. There’s no accident he could stage that would make Linden accept my demise. Linden would never forgive his father if something were to happen to me on Vaughn’s watch.