Wither (The Chemical Garden #1)(43)
Author: Lauren DeStefano

“Ready to get out?” she says.

“Yes,” I say. As I change into my nightgown, she begins to turn down the covers on my bed, but I sit on the ottoman and say, “Can you do my makeup?”

“Now?” she says.

I nod.

And one last time, she works her magic.

I page one of the attendants and ask him to find Linden. A few minutes later Linden shows up in my doorway. “You were looking for me?” he says. He’s going to say more, but he stops when he sees me, all made-up with my hair falling naturally, unsprayed or primped, the way it’s supposed to. I’m wearing one of Deirdre’s cabled sweaters that’s as fluffy as a cloud, and a billowing black skirt that glitters with black diamonds.

“You look very nice,” he says.

“I was just thinking how I’ve never seen the verandah,” I say.

He holds out his arm for me. “Come on, then,” he says.

The verandah is on the ground floor, off of a dancing hall that doesn’t get much use. All the tables and chairs in the hall are covered in sheets, as though ghosts have fallen asleep after a spectacular party. We navigate through the darkness of it, arm in arm, and stop before the sliding glass doors. Against a deep black sky, snow is falling in a dizzying fury like millions of pieces of broken stars.

“Maybe it’s too cold to go out,” he says.

“What are you talking about?” I say. “It’s a beautiful night.”

The verandah is a simple porch with a love seat and wicker chairs that face the orange groves. Linden dusts away the snow, and we sit on the love seat together. The snow falls around us, and for the longest time we don’t talk.

“It’s okay that you miss her,” I say. “She was the love of your life.”

“Not the only love,” he says, and wraps his arms around me. I can smell the cold wool of his coat. We watch the snow fall for a while. And then he says, “It feels wrong to think about her as often as I do.”

“You should think about her,” I say. “Every day. You shouldn’t try to look for her anywhere else, because you’ll never find her. You’ll see her walking away in a crowded street, and when you reach for her, she’ll turn around and be somebody else.”

I did this for months and months after my parents died. Linden is looking at me intently, and I tap my finger over his heart. “Just keep her here, okay? It’s the only place you’ll always be able to find her.”

He smiles at me, and for a moment I see the glint of gold in his teeth. When I first met him, thought they were a symbol of power and status. But they are just scars, the result of a fragile little boy whose teeth succumbed to an infection. He’s not menacing at all.

“You seem to know a lot about loss,” he says.

“I know a thing or two,” I say, and rest my head against his shoulder. There’s warmth radiating from his neck, and the distant clean scent of soap.

“I still don’t know where you came from,” he says.

“Some days it’s like you just fell from the sky.”

“Some days I feel like I did,” I say.

He weaves his fingers through mine. Through our matching white gloves I think I can feel his pulse. Our hands are so deceptive, and yet not. They look like they belong to a husband and wife; you can see the line of my wedding ring. And the way our hands fit together, it’s like he can’t have me close enough.

There is nothing in those hands to indicate the finality of this moment. Soon we will never touch each other again. We will never attend another party, or have a baby, or die together in the same anguish.

Will we die at the same time, at our own places along the coast? I hope Cecily will be there to hold his head in her lap. I hope she’ll read to him, and say nice things. I hope that by then I will be far from his mind and he’ll be able to find peace.

I hope Vaughn is not as heartless as I think, and that he’ll commit his son’s body to ashes unmarred, whole, and that Linden will be scattered in the orange grove.

As for myself, I try not to give my own death a lot of thought. I just know I want to spend my final years at home, in Manhattan, with my brother, in the house that our parents left us. And with Gabriel, maybe. I’ll try to teach him as much as I can about the world, so he’s able to find a job, maybe at the harbor; so he’ll have something to do with himself after I’m dead.

“Sweetheart, what is it?” Linden says, and I realize there are tears in my eyes. It’s so cold that I don’t know how they haven’t frozen.

“It’s nothing,” I say. “I was just thinking about how little time there is.”

He’s looking at me the way he does when he asks for my thoughts on his building designs. Like he wants to cast himself into my mind. He wants to understand, and be understood.

In another time, in another place, I wonder who we would have been to each other.

And then I realize how ridiculous that is. In another time and place I wouldn’t have been kidnapped to be his bride. And he wouldn’t be trapped in this mansion. He would be a famous architect, and maybe I would live in one of his houses, and have a real marriage, and children who would live a good, long time.

I laugh, trying to be reassuring, and squeeze his hand.

“I was thinking how little time people will spend in your beautiful houses.”

He presses his forehead to my temple, closes his eyes.

“When the weather gets nicer, I’ll show you some of them,” he says. “It’s nice to see the changes people make, the pets and swing sets and evidence of life. It’s enough to make you forget sometimes.”

“I’d like that, Linden,” I say.

We don’t talk after that. I let him squeeze his arms around me. The snow and the cold get to be too much for him after a while, and he brings me back to my room. We kiss, his frozen nose touching mine, one last time.

“Good night, sweetheart,” he says.

“Good-bye, sweetheart,” I say. And it’s so casual, so innocent, that he doesn’t suspect a thing. The elevator doors close between us, and he’s gone from my world forever.

The door to Cecily’s bedroom is ajar, and I see her on the rocker in her bedroom. She’s got her nightgown open and she’s offering her bare breast to Bowen, but he’s thrashing and whining. “Please, please take it,” she’s sobbing in a hushed tone. But he won’t. Vaughn was lying about there being a wet nurse. I saw him giving Bowen a bottle, and once a baby has the sweet taste of formula, it never returns to the breast. This is something I remember my parents telling me, when they worked in the lab. But Cecily has no idea. Vaughn is taking her son away slowly, beginning to control him the way he controls his own son. Vaughn wants Cecily to think her own child doesn’t love her.

I stand in the hallway for a long time, watching her.

This excited little bride who has become so haggard and pale. I remember the day she tumbled from the diving board, and we swam through the tropics and reached for imaginary starfish. That’s my best memory of her, and it’s an illusion.

No, maybe that’s not the best memory. When I was bedridden she brought the lilies to my room.

I can’t think of a way to say good-bye to her. Eventually I walk away, as quietly as I came, and leave her to the life she was so eager to have. I know that some-day I’ll stop hating her. I know that she’s only a child, a silly, naïve little girl who fell victim to Vaughn’s lies. But when I look at her, all I see is Jenna’s cold body in the basement, under a sheet and awaiting the knife. And that is Cecily’s fault. And I do not forgive her.

My last stop is Jenna’s room. I stand in her doorway for a long, long time. I look at the placement of things.

The brush on the dresser could belong to anyone; her paperback romance is gone. Only the lighter she stole from the attendant remains of her, in plain sight, because nobody paid enough attention to even know it was there.

I take it now, put it in my pocket. This one small piece of her I’ll keep. There’s nothing left of any sentimental value. The bed has been stripped, cleaned, made up as though it expects her to come and rest her head on its pillows. She won’t, but maybe another girl will soon.

There’s nothing here to say good-bye to. There’s no dancing girl. No mischievous smile. She’s gone, off with her sisters, broken free, escaped. And if she were here now, she would say, “Go.”

The clock on her night table is showing me the time—9:50. It’s like she’s pushing me out the door.

I don’t say good-bye. I’m just gone.

Chapter 26

I take the elevator to the ground floor and cross through the kitchen, expecting it to be empty. But as I’m putting my hand on the doorknob, a voice stops me with, “Bit cold for a stroll, isn’t it?”

I spin around, and the head cook is emerging from the hallway, brushing the greasy hair from her face.

“It’s just going to be a short walk,” I say. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Be careful out there, blondie,” she says. “In this kind of snow, you go out for a short walk and you might just get lost and never return.” A sly smile creeps across her face. “Nobody wants that, right?”

“Of course not,” I say cautiously. What does she know?

“Well, just in case, here’s something to keep you warm.” As she approaches, I see that she’s carrying a thermos. It’s so warm that I can feel it through my gloves when she presses it into my hands.

“Thank you,” I say.

She opens the door for me, and slaps me on the shoulder. “Careful,” she says. “It’s cold out there.”

I step outside, and by the time I’ve turned around to thank her again, she’s closed the door.

The snow has gotten heavier. It takes me a long time to trek through the drifts because I’m trying to cover my tracks. When I’m far enough from the house, I start whispering Gabriel’s name, but the wind is stealing my voice. It’s like the hurricane all over again, but full of snow. I stumble into a tree, and I feel my way along the edge of the woods as I go, calling his name a little louder and a little louder. Eventually I find the hologram. I reach for a tree and fall right through it. I’m far enough from the house now that I can call his name loudly.

“Gabriel! Gabriel!”

But he doesn’t come, and he doesn’t come. And I know that soon I’ll have a decision to make. I can run to the ocean without him, or I can go back into the maelstrom of snow and look for him. Either way I am leaving this mansion tonight. Even if Gabriel has never sailed a boat, he knows more about boats than anyone else I know, and I know next to nothing. And, more importantly, I fear what Vaughn will do if Gabriel is left behind. Vaughn will know that Gabriel helped me escape. That settles it.