Sever (The Chemical Garden #3)(8)
Author: Lauren DeStefano

The plane is a lot bigger than it looks from the outside. The ceiling is high enough that Reed, who’s taller than me, can nearly stand up straight. There’s some room to walk around. The seats are red, mounted to the wall. There are four of them, in pairs of two, facing each other. The carpet is beige and stained, like the walls.

What Reed calls a supply room is actually a closet. Opening its door reduces the passenger cabin by half. “Needs to be organized,” Reed says, standing at the curtain that separates the cockpit from the passenger cabin. He watches as I open one of the cabinets. Shoe boxes tumble out at me and spill their contents onto my shoes. “I was thinking that’d be your job.”

It’s easy, repetitive work. Sorting medical equipment apart from the dehydrated snacks and labeling their boxes. Reed works on the outside of the plane. I hear him banging parts into place and smoothing them down, trying to blend all the pieces together. He says he’s going to paint it when he’s done. He says it’ll be beautiful. I think it already is.

I open another box, and it’s full of cloth handkerchiefs. I recognize them immediately. They’re exactly like the ones at the mansion: plain white, with a single red sharp-leafed flower embroidered onto them. Gabriel gave me a handkerchief with this pattern, and I kept it for the remainder of my time at the mansion. The same flower that marks the iron gate.

“Oh, those?” Reed says when I ask him about them. He doesn’t look away from his work. He’s sitting on one of the wings, pressing down a sheet of copper and using a screwdriver to mark where the screws will go. “I thought they’d make good bandages; put them with the first aid stuff.”

“Where did they come from?” I ask.

“They used to belong to the boarding school,” he says. “A ton of things were left behind when my parents bought the building—handkerchiefs, blankets, things like that.”

“But what kind of flower is it?” I say.

“It’s a lotus,” he says. “Doesn’t look exactly like one, if you ask me, but that’s the only logical thing it could be. The school was called the Charles Lotus Academy for Girls.”

“Charles Lotus? As in, his name was Lotus?”

“Yep. Now get back to work making things sparkle. I’m not letting you live here eating up all the apples and oxygen for free, you know.”

The rest of the day is a malaise of chores. I pack the handkerchiefs away and bury them at the bottom of all the medical supplies. I don’t want to ever see them again. It’s my fault for hoping they symbolized something important. For believing anything that comes from the mansion could mean anything good.

I take a shower and go to bed early. The sky is still pink, undercooked. I bury myself beneath the blanket. It isn’t very thick; I shiver most nights, but right now the blanket feels like the heaviest thing in the world. It comforts me. I don’t just want to sleep; I want to be crushed down until I disappear.

In the morning there are voices. Something hissing and spitting on the griddle. Footsteps are pounding up the steps, and a voice calls after them, “Wait!” but the footsteps don’t comply. My door is pushed open, and there’s Cecily. The sunlight touches every part of her, making her into an overexposed photograph. Her smile floats ahead of her, a double bright line. “Surprise,” she says.

I sit up, trying to force consciousness back into my brain. “What are you—How did you get here?”

She hops onto the edge of my bed, jostling me. “We took a cab,” she says excitedly. “I’d never been in one before. It smelled like frozen garbage, and it cost a ton of money.”

I rub my eyes, trying to comprehend what she’s saying. “You took a cab?”

“Housemaster Vaughn has the limo,” she says. “He’s at some conference for the weekend. So we came to see you.”

“We?”

“Me and Linden.” She frowns at me. “You don’t look well,” she says. “You didn’t contract sepsis from this place, did you? It’s so filthy.”

“I like it here,” I say, collapsing back onto the pillow, pretending not to notice that it reeks of mustiness. I wonder who slept here before me. They probably died last century.

“It’s worse than the orphanage was,” Cecily says. She pats my leg as she stands, and heads for the door. “Anyway, get up, come downstairs. We brought you things.”

I take my time about getting dressed after she goes. I’m in no hurry to see the emptiness in Linden’s eyes when he looks at me.

I guess I’ve forgotten to brush my hair, judging by the way everyone looks at me when I enter the kitchen. And Cecily kindly informs me that my shirt is inside out.

“She hasn’t been eating,” Reed says apologetically. “I tried waving the fork around her head and everything.”

I drop into a chair opposite Linden. He’s holding Bowen, who is reaching for the things on the shelves. He wants the jars that have caught the morning light; I think he believes they hold little pieces of the sun.

“Of course she hasn’t been eating,” Cecily says. She stands behind me and gently works the tangles from my hair. “She doesn’t want to die.”

Reed lights his cigar and bumps Linden’s shoulder with his fist. “I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to be blessed by the presence of your wives.”

Cecily drops my hair. She reaches across the table and snatches the cigar right out of Reed’s teeth and squishes the ignited tip into the table.

“What the hell!” Reed snaps. The house rattles. Bowen stops reaching.

“I’m pregnant, you moron,” Cecily says. “Don’t you know anything about gestation? And in case you’re blind, there is also a five-month-old baby sitting right next to you.”

Reed stares at her, aghast. And then he narrows his eyes as he stands and leans forward across the table, until his nose is an inch from hers. And I really think he’s about to strangle her—Linden tenses, ready to stop him—but Reed only growls and says, “I don’t like you, kid.”

She presses her hand to her chest. “Break my heart,” she says, spins around, and makes her exit.

Reed rescues the smoldering cigar and tries to relight it, grunting with each failed spark. “Will never know what you see in that one,” he says to Linden.

“I’m sorry,” I say, standing and scooping the ashes into my hand, and then dumping them into the sink. “She’s just sort of an acquired taste.”

Reed bellows with laughter. “Acquired taste,” he says, clapping his arm around Linden. “See now, this one, I like. You’re letting the wrong one get away.”

Linden’s cheeks go pink.

Cecily returns with a backpack slung over her arm. It also bears the lotus embroidery on one of the front pockets. She grabs my shoulders and guides me back into a chair, then sets a foil container in front of me and opens the lid. I’m hit with a blast of sweet-smelling steam. The head cook’s berry cobbler, topped with giant crumbles of sugar. Cecily presses a plastic fork into my hand and says, “Eat.”

Linden says, “Let her be. She can take care of herself.”

“Obviously she can’t,” Cecily says. “Look at her.”

“I’m fine,” I say, and to prove it I take a forkful of cobbler. Some small, distant part of me acknowledges that it’s delicious, rich with fat and nutrients I’ve been in need of. But a more frontal, prominent part of me is having a hard time just getting it down my throat.

Cecily resumes working on my tangles.

The silence is tense, and Reed breaks it by saying, “Well, I hate to leave a party. But I’ve got work to get to.” He makes a production of sticking a fresh cigar between his teeth as he heads for the door. “Help yourself to anything you’d like.” He eyes the cobbler and then looks at me with his eyebrows raised. “Though, it looks like you’ve brought your own supplies.”

Floorboards creak under his feet as he walks down the hall. As soon as he’s gone outside, Linden says, “Cecily, that was incredibly rude.”

She ignores him, humming and setting my hair neatly against my shoulders like she’s laying down an expensive dress. I’m glad my sister wife is here. She’s a chore sometimes, but she comforts me. I want to lean against her and let the weight I’ve been carrying fall away. But a part of me is angry that she has returned. I already said good-bye to her, accepted that we had no choice but to part ways. I don’t want to have to say good-bye again.

I can feel Linden frowning at me. I can’t bring myself to look at him.

“You’re not eating,” Cecily fusses.

“Leave her alone,” Linden says.

The tension is too much. Too tight. I feel myself bursting, but somehow my voice is very soft when I say, “Yes, why don’t you? Why don’t you both leave me alone?”

I look up at Linden, then Cecily. “Why did you come back?”

Cecily tries to touch my forehead, but I lean away from her. I stand up and walk backward toward the sink. Their stares are strangling me somehow.

Cecily looks at Linden and says, “Do you see?”

“See what?” I say, and this time my voice is a little louder.

Linden swallows something hard in his throat, composing himself, readying that diplomatic tone of his. “Cecily,” he says, “why don’t you take Bowen outside? It’s a warm day. Show him the wildflowers.”

It unnerves me that she agrees easily to this. She gives me a frown as she goes, and then sings something to Bowen about daffodils.

“I’m sorry,” Linden says after she has left us alone. “I warned her not to smother you. She’s just been worried about your well-being.”

I know this. Cecily worries. It’s her way. She’s the youngest of all Linden’s wives, yet she has always loved to play mother hen. But Linden is the practical diplomat in this marriage. He should be reminding her that I’ll be gone for good. And sure, she’d argue with him. She’d slam a few doors and refuse to speak to him for a while. But how long could that really go on? Locked up on that wives’ floor by herself, the loneliness would make her forgive him soon enough.

“You shouldn’t have brought her here,” I say. “You shouldn’t be here either. We both know there’s nothing to figure out. You’re only prolonging our good-byes.” And I don’t add that every day he keeps me here is another day my brother thinks I’m dead and is capable of destruction. And still I can’t bring myself to escape in the night, behind his back. Not again, especially after all he’s done to help me.