Wither (23 page)

I say, “My parents.”

And Linden looks startled, like my having parents never even occurred to him, much less that I might have known them.

“Well, you sure are gorgeous,” the man persists, too drunk to see the concern on Linden’s face. “Better keep this one close to you. Don’t know where she comes from, but I bet there’s not another like her.”

Linden answers with a subdued, stunned, “No, there isn’t . . .”

What’s more, I think his surprise is genuine. “Come on, sweetheart,” I say, searching for a term of endearment that doesn’t belong to Vaughn or Cecily. I tug his arm. “I want to look at that house over there.” I smile at the man, who is cackling, lost in his inebriation. “Excuse us.”

We linger for a while. We flatter architects. I leave Linden’s side for a while because he’s started to talk sales with one of them. He finds me a few minutes later as I’m nibbling on a strawberry and trying to recover from the commotion.

“Ready to go?” he says. I take his arm, and we manage to escape unnoticed.

Once outside, I can see that the snow has faded away. I realize that the sunny afternoon inside the building was not reality. The cold air hits me with a force. We move toward the limousine, and I think,
I could run
. The security guards are inside, not outside. There’s only Linden to overpower, and he’s so frail that I could just push him and he’d be out of my way. I could do it. I could go. I would never see the inside of that iron gate again.

But when Linden opens the door, I climb inside the limousine, where there’s warmth and light. It’s offering to take me back home.
Back home
, I think, and it feels strange but not that strange. I slump tiredly and begin unbuckling my painful black heels. It’s more difficult than I remember. The limo starts to move, and I lurch forward, and Linden catches me, and for some reason I laugh.

He takes my shoes off for me, and I sigh in gratitude.

“How did I do?” I ask.

“You were beautiful,” he says. His nose and cheeks are a little red. He traces my cheek with the back of his finger.

I smile. It’s the first smile I haven’t forced since the expo began.

It’s late when we make it back to the mansion. The kitchen and all the hallways are empty. Linden goes off to check on Cecily, whose light is still on. She’ll be waiting for him. I wonder if she’ll notice that he’s a little bit drunk, which I guess is my fault, because he was following my lead. I wonder if Rose used to take the glasses from his hand and tell him when he’d had too much. I wonder how she endured these things with her sobriety in check.

I retire to my bedroom and unpeel the sweaty red dress from my body. I put on my nightgown and sweep my hair—still durably curled—into a clumsy ponytail and open my window and take gulps of the cold air. The window is still open when I climb into bed and begin to drift off, my eyelids full of spinning houses and pregnant bellies and glasses of wine floating to me on trays.

Sometime in the night the air gets warmer. I hear the sound of the window being closed, and whisper-quiet footsteps on the lush carpet, and Linden’s voice saying,

“Asleep, sweetheart?”

He remembers what I called him at the expo. Sweetheart. It sounds nice. Soft. I allow it.

“Mhm,” I answer. The darkness is swimming with glittery fish and spreading ivy. The room is also spinning a little.

I think he asks if he can get into bed with me. I think I mumble in the affirmative. I feel his slight weight beside me, and I’m an orbiting little planet and he’s the warm sun. I can smell the wine and the party on him. He gets close to me, and my head rolls right toward his.

It’s silent and dark and warm. I feel the tendrils of ivy leading me into a lavish dream, and then Linden says,

“Please don’t go.”

“Mm?” I say.

He’s breathing against my neck, putting little kisses there. “Please don’t run away from me.”

I’m back from my dream, but barely. He tilts my chin with his finger, and I open my eyes. I can see a strange glaze in his eyes, and a small droplet hits my cheek. He’s just said something, something important, but I’m so tired and I can’t remember. I can’t remember anything, and he’s waiting for my response, so I say, “What is it? What’s wrong?”

And he kisses me. It isn’t a forceful kiss. It’s soft, his lower lip gathering mine with a gentle lapping motion.

His taste fills my mouth, and for a moment it’s not so bad. Just like everything else about this night was not so bad. In a drunken, hallucinogenic kind of way. A small noise escapes my throat, like a baby gurgling into its bottle. He draws back and looks at me. I’m blinking wildly.

“Linden . . .”

“Yes, yes, I’m here,” he says, and tries to kiss me again, but I draw back.

I put my hands on his shoulders to push him away, but I can see the strange pain in his eyes that makes me think he was dreaming of Rose for a minute before I materialized back into Rhine.

“I’m not her,” I say. “Linden, she’s gone, she’s dead.”

“I know,” he says. He makes no more advances so I release his shoulders and he lies beside me. “It’s just, sometimes, you—”

“But I’m not her,” I say. “And we’re both a little drunk.”

“I know you’re not her,” he says. “But I don’t know who you are. I don’t know where you came from.”

“Didn’t you order that van full of girls?” I say.

“My father did,” he says. “But before that, what made you want to be a bride?”

I choke on my next breath. What made me
want
to be a bride? And then I think of the surprise in his eyes tonight when that man asked where I’d gotten my eyes from.

He really doesn’t know.

And I know who does. Vaughn. What did he tell his son? That there are bride schools where eager women devote their childhoods to learning to please a man?

That he’s saving us from a destitute orphanage? That may be true for Cecily, but even she is so dangerously unprepared for what’s to come when this baby is born.

I could tell him right now. I could tell him that Jenna’s sisters were executed in that van, and that the last thing I’d ever wanted to be was a bride. But would he believe me?

And if he believed me, would he let me go?

I ask, “What do you think happened to the girls you didn’t choose? The others.”

“I suppose they went back to their orphanages and homes,” he says.

I stare at the ceiling, stunned, a little nauseous. Linden puts his hand on my shoulder. “What is it? Are you sick?” I shake my head.

Vaughn is more powerful than I thought. He keeps his son in this mansion, away from the world, and he makes up a reality for him. He gives Linden ashes to scatter while he hoards the bodies in the basement. Of course I would want to run away. Anyone who’s been free can understand wanting to be free again. But Linden has never been free. He doesn’t even know freedom exists, so how could he want it?

And Gabriel has been captive for so long that even he is beginning to forget how much better it is out there than in here.

It is better out there, isn’t it? I lie still for a while, comparing the New York harbor to the voluminous ocean within the pool. I compare a city park to these infinite golf courses and tennis courts. I compare my Manhattan lighthouse to the one at the ninth hole amidst giant gumdrops. I compare my blood sibling, Rowan, to Jenna and Cecily, who have become my sisters. And in this blurry, somewhat inebriated state, I can almost see what Gabriel meant when he asked
What has the free world got
that you can’t get here?

Almost.

I give Linden a small kiss, my lips tightly closed until I withdraw. “I’ve been thinking, sweetheart,” I say. “I haven’t been a very good wife, have I? I’ll try to be better.”

“Then you weren’t running away from me that night, with the hurricane?”

“Don’t be silly. Of course not,” I say.

He sighs happily, and puts his arm around my waist and drifts off to sleep.

Freedom, Gabriel. That’s what you can’t get here.

I don’t see Gabriel the next morning. My breakfast is waiting for me when I wake up, but there are no June Beans, no evidence that he’s been here.

I page the attendants for permission to use the elevators, and Gabriel is not standing in the elevator to escort me when the doors open.

Vaughn is.

“Good afternoon, darling,” says, and he smiles. “You’re looking a bit rumpled, but lovely as ever. Late night last night?”

I put on my charming smile, and Rose is right, it does make my cheeks hurt. So much for Linden convincing his father to give us more freedom. Vaughn has the final word around here, even if he lets his son pretend otherwise. “It was incredible,” I say. “I don’t see how Linden can call these expos dry and boring at all.”

I get into the elevator beside him, and the doors close, and I try not to choke. He smells like the basement, and I wonder who he was dissecting this morning.

“So where would you like to go today?” he asks.

I’m wearing my coat because, although none of the snow stuck to the ground, I remember how cold it was last night. And I can’t afford pneumonia now. “It just seems like a nice day for a walk,” I say.

“Have you seen the repairs done to the mini-golf course?” Vaughn says, pressing the button that sends us down. “You really should. The crew did a marvelous job.”

He makes words like “marvelous” sound ominous. But I smile. I am charming. I am fearless. I am Linden Ashby’s first wife, the one he comes to in the night, the one he wants on his arm at parties. And I adore my father-in-law.

“I haven’t seen it,” I say. “I’m just getting my bearings back after my accident. I’m afraid I’m not very up to date.”

“Well, then.” Vaughn hooks his arm around mine, and it’s so much more invasive than the way Linden does it.

“How about a game, then?”

“I’m not very good,” I say. I am demure, coy.

“A bright girl like yourself ? I don’t believe you for a minute.”

And for once, I think he’s telling the truth.

We play the entire course, and Vaughn keeps score. He praises my swing when I get a hole in one, and patiently helps me when I botch a shot. I hate the feel of his papery hands over mine as he guides my golf club. I hate his hot breath against my neck.

And I hate that he’s standing beside me when we come to the lighthouse—the final hole in the course—which is still casting rays to freedom. While Vaughn goes on about the beautiful new Astroturf, I look for the path to the iron gate. I’m sure the limo drove through a path in the trees somewhere around here.

Just after I’ve taken my swing, Vaughn says, “So tell me what you thought of the city last night.”

“I was really impressed by all the designs. There’s real talent—”

“I’m not asking about the designs, darling.” He’s standing too close to me. “The city, how did you like your first glimpse of the city?”

“I didn’t get a very good look,” I say, a little stiffly.

What’s he driving at?

“But you will.” He gives his geriatric smile and taps my nose with his finger. “Linden is already talking about all the upcoming parties. You’re really doing it, darling.”

I blow warmth into my hands, watch him land a perfect hole in one. “What have I done, exactly?”

“Brought my son back from the dead.” He puts his arm around me, kisses my temple right where Linden kissed me last night. But while Linden’s lips had been warm, and his gesture one of comfort, Vaughn’s lips send millions of insects crawling along my spine. This father and son look so eerily alike, and yet I can’t imagine two different people.

But I’m a good wife, a good daughter-in-law, and I blush. “I just want for him to be happy,” I say.

“You should,” Vaughn says. “Make that boy happy, and he’ll give you the world on a string.”

“On a string” being the operative words.

Vaughn wins the game, but my score isn’t much worse than his. I wasn’t letting him win. He did that on his own. “You’re a much better player than you give yourself credit for,” he laughs as we walk back to the mansion.

“Not good enough to best me. But good.”

I look everywhere for the path the limo took, but it’s nowhere to be found.

It’s very clear that I won’t be allowed outside unless I’m accompanied by Vaughn. At least not today. So I find Jenna, who’s curled up in my favorite overstuffed chair, her nose in a paperback with young seminude lovers on the cover; the man is saving the woman from drowning.

“I haven’t seen Gabriel,” she tells me before I’ve even opened my mouth.

“Do you think that’s strange?” I ask, taking the chair next to her.

She purses her lips and looks at me over the top of her book. She nods sympathetically. She has never been one to sugarcoat things.

I say, “Has lunch come yet?”

“Maybe we’ll see him then.” Gabriel is the only one who brings meals to our floor, unless Cecily throws a tantrum that requires more than one attendant to cater to her.

But we don’t see him. An attendant we’ve never seen—a first generation—brings us our lunch, and he doesn’t even know to look for us in the library. He has to ask Cecily where we are, and she’s in such a lousy mood after being woken from her nap that we hear her yelling at the poor man from down the hall.