Wither

Page 31

“It’s called This Maddened World,” Jenna says, making room on the couch. Cecily gets between us and retrieves the spoon I stuck in the mound of ice cream. “See, this guy here—Matt—he’s in love with the nurse, so he broke his arm on purpose. But she’s about to tell him that the X-ray is showing he has a tumor.”
“What’s a tumor?” Cecily licks the spoon and dips it back into the carton for more.
“It’s what used to cause cancer,” Jenna says. “This is supposed to be the twentieth century.”
“Are they going to have sex on that operating table?”
Cecily says, incredulous.
“Gross,” I say.
“I think it’s sweet,” Jenna gushes.
“It’s dangerous.” Cecily gestures wildly with the spoon. “There’s a tray of needles, like, right there.”
“He’s just been given a death sentence. What better time to make a move on the love of his life?” Jenna says.
The couple on the screen does, in fact, begin having sex on the operating table. It’s censored by strategically placed props and close-ups of the actors’ faces, but I still look away. I dig a spoon into the ice cream and wait for the romantic music to stop.
Cecily catches me and says, “You’re such a prude.”
“I’m not,” I say.
“You haven’t even consummated with Linden,” she says. “What are you waiting for, our golden anniver-sary?” Cecily is the only one who believes Vaughn will find his miracle antidote, and that we’ll live to see old age.
“What goes on in my bedroom is none of your business, Cecily,” I say.
“It’s just sex. It’s no big deal,” she says. “Linden and I do it practically every day. Sometimes twice.”
“Oh, you do not,” Jenna says. “Please. He thinks you’re going to miscarry if he even looks at you funny.”
Cecily bristles. “Well, we will, once this stupid pregnancy is over. And if you think I’m having all the babies, you’re crazy.” She waves her spoon between Jenna and me. “One of you is doing this next. You have no excuse, Jenna. I see how often you two shut the door.” Cecily may not be the most observant of us, but she always seems to know what goes on in our bedrooms—or, in my case, what doesn’t go on.
Jenna looks uneasy, suddenly, putting a spoonful of ice cream into her mouth. “We’ve tried. It just hasn’t happened.”
“Well, try harder.”
“Drop it, okay?”
They continue to argue, but I turn my attention back to the television, where there’s a much safer scene of two people talking in a garden. I want no part of this conversation. I am more of a sister wife to Cecily and Jenna than I am a wife to Linden. And I can’t bring myself to think of him in the way they’re discussing. I can’t bring myself to think of anyone that way.
Gabriel once again enters my mind. Our kiss after the hurricane, the eager warmth that filled my body, quelling my pain. If we ever manage to escape this mansion, will our connection develop into something more? I don’t know, but the beauty of running away with Gabriel is that I’ll have the freedom to decide for myself.
A wave of heat rushes up between my thighs. The ice cream in my mouth tastes twice as sweet. And for no reason at all, I sigh.
Chapter 18
Linden says, “You and Jenna get along well, don’t you?”
He and I are hand in hand through the sleepy winter wonderland that the orange grove has become. Everything around us is white and deeper white, and a path has been carved for us through snowdrifts as high as my head. I didn’t know winter could be so extreme this far south.
“She’s my sister,” I say, and nod into a cloud of my own breath. Linden looks at our joined hands, mine in Deirdre’s cable-knit gloves. He brings my hand to his lips for a kiss, and as we press forward, I say, “She doesn’t speak to you much, does she?” In the ten months we’ve been here, Jenna has held on to her resentment for her imprisonment and the murder of her sisters. I can’t blame her. And if Cecily has noticed the strain between our sister wife and husband at all, she’s probably just glad not to have the competition. If Jenna wanted to, she could become my rival to be Linden’s first wife easily.
She’s beautiful and graceful, and she is very compassionate and loyal when you aren’t responsible for the murder of her family.
“Usually, no,” he says. “Last night she asked me up to her room, and we spent time together, as you know.” He blushes a little. “And we talked.”
I furrow my brows. “Talked? About what?”
“You,” he says. “She’s worried about you. With the stress of the baby coming and everything.”
“Linden,” I say, “that’s not even my baby.”
“No,” he agrees, “but Jenna says that my father has kept the three of you on a tight lockdown, and that it’s been especially difficult for you to try to care for Cecily the way she is, without being able to have a few moments to yourself.”
“It does get a little crowded with three wives on one floor all day,” I agree, but I’m confused. What was Jenna trying to do?
Linden smiles at me. He looks like a little boy, his nose and cheeks bright red, his dark curls coming out of his knit hat in tangles. He’s the child in Rose’s photograph.
“I think we should change that, then,” he says. “I spoke with my father, and—well, here.” We stop walking and he reaches into the pocket of his wool coat and extracts a small colorfully wrapped box. “The solstice isn’t for another week yet, but I think you deserve this now.”
I remove my gloves so I can untie the beautiful bow, and I work fast because my fingers are already going numb. There’s a small box under all the paper, and I lift the lid, expecting something impractical like diamonds or gold, but it’s something else. A plastic card strung on a silver necklace. I’ve seen them around the necks of all the attendants.
It’s a key card to use the elevators.
It’s happening. I’m becoming first wife! And I’m being given the trust that comes with it. I can’t help the squeak that escapes my throat. I cover my mouth, and the excitement just fills my eyes. Freedom. Just being handed to me in a little box. “Linden!” I say.
“Now, it won’t take you to every floor. It will allow you to access the ground floor so you can go outside, and—”
I launch myself into his arms, and he stops talking, takes a deep breath into my hair.
“Thank you,” I say, even though he has no idea what this means, and he never can.
“Do you like it?” he whispers, a little stunned.
“Of course,” I say, and draw back. He smiles at me in that little boy way that makes him so much different from his father. The cold makes his lips especially red, and I think he is exactly the type of portrait Deirdre’s father would have painted. So soft and lovely and sweet.
He takes my face in his hands, and for the second time in our ten-month marriage, we kiss. And for the first time, I don’t draw back.
Back on the wives’ floor, I run down the hallway calling Jenna’s name, the key card swinging around my neck.
Linden’s slight taste is still on the tip of my tongue, and it clashes with the incense smell of the hallway flooding my senses, like I’m returning home after a trip to outer space.
I can’t find Jenna, and Cecily is sleeping. I can hear her snoring through the closed bedroom door. I page Deirdre, who tells me that Adair hasn’t heard from Jenna either, but don’t worry, she couldn’t have gone far. And it’s true, she couldn’t have. So I wait in the library, looking for more information on the Rhine River or rowan berries, but there’s nothing, of course. Instead I read about the life cycle of hummingbirds until Linden calls me to dinner.
Cecily, heavy and burdened in her eighth month, slumps against me in the elevator, complaining about back pain. The attendant offers to bring a dinner tray to her in bed, but she says, “Don’t be stupid. I’m having dinner with my husband like everybody else.”
When we enter the dining hall, I see Jenna already seated at the table with Vaughn. She looks pale, and she barely raises her eyes when Cecily and I take our places beside her, according to age. Jenna turned nineteen quietly last month. She told me. One year left. And I asked her to run away with me when I formulate a plan, but she declined. Even if her body becomes one of Vaughn’s experiments, she doesn’t care. She’ll be far away from here by then, far beyond, with the family she lost.
I sit beside her now, wondering whose ashes Linden will be given to scatter when Jenna’s gone. I’ve already promised myself I won’t be here for that funeral.
Linden joins us, and the meal is very subdued. Cecily isn’t feeling well, and she must be out of it, because she hasn’t even complained about my having a key card around my neck. Instead she squirms uncomfortably until one of the attendants is asked to bring her a pillow for her back, and she doesn’t even yell at him when he props it behind her.
I keep hoping to see Gabriel, but he isn’t among the attendants bringing us dinner. I still carry the June Bean in my pocket, and keep his handkerchief in my pillowcase, hoping he’s okay, hoping I’ll hear from him soon.
My concern must be obvious, because Vaughn asks me, “Is everything all right, darling?” and I say I’m just a little tired, and Cecily says she’s willing to bet she’s more tired, and Jenna says nothing at all, which only makes me worry even more.
I try to keep up a pleasant conversation with Linden, though, because that’s the least I can do. And Cecily pipes in occasionally, and Jenna knocks the boiled carrots around with her fork. Vaughn tells her to eat something, and his voice is so frightening despite his smile that she does.
After dessert we’re escorted back up to our floor. Cecily goes to bed, and without speaking, Jenna and I retreat to a remote aisle of the library. “You got a key card,” she says.
“Thanks to you,” I say, thinking back to early this morning when I walked in on her and Linden. “How did you convince him?”
“I didn’t really have to,” she says, idly tracing her finger over the spines of some books. “He already seemed to want to. I think he just needed a push. It’s obvious that I don’t want to be first wife, and I’m going to die in a year anyway”—she says this so casually it breaks my heart—“and Cecily may outlast us all, but she could never handle the responsibility. And that leaves you, which is what I told him. Rhine, it should be you. You’ve already got him convinced you adore him. You do such a good job that I’m almost convinced myself.”