Sever

“You weren’t here when I woke up,” she says. “I was worried about you.”



Linden laughs shakily. “You were worried?” he says. “You gave me the scare of my life last night.”



“Did I?” She’s trying to blink the lethargy from her eyes. The doctor told us she wouldn’t be very alert and that she wouldn’t be talking much, but he clearly underestimated her resolve. “Where’s Bowen?”



“Bowen is all right,” Linden says, and puts another quick kiss on her lips. “My uncle took him back to the house.”



“He’ll be hungry,” she says. She tries to push herself upright, but Linden holds her shoulders down.



“Bowen is being taken care of, Cecily.” His voice is stern. “You’ll see him later. Right now you need to rest.”



“Don’t order me around like I’m a child,” she says.



“I’m sorry,” he says, taking her hands. “You’re not a child.”



A child is exactly what she is, but she hides it so well sometimes that even I forget.



But it’s no matter what I think. Husband and wife are in their own universe right now, and I’m not a part of their conversation. For the first time I feel the full effect of the annulment.



She looks at me with cloudy eyes. “You were right about everything.”



“Shh.” I touch her arm. “You should be asleep.”



“Who do we think we are,” she says to Linden, “to have children when we can’t cure our own curse?”



Though her voice is calm, her lip is quivering.



“We’ll talk later, love,” Linden coos. “You aren’t thinking clearly.”



“It’s as clear as crystal,” she says. Her voice is eerie and hoarse. Tears are streaking down her temples.



There’s pain in Linden’s eyes, though I’m not sure if it’s because he’s worried or because he believes what she’s saying. He says something into her ear in a low voice, and it calms her. She lets him dab at her runny nose with his sleeve. And she has put up a good fight, but the fever and the exhaustion and the drugs are overpowering her.



“I can go back to the house and check on Bowen,” I offer lamely.



“No.” Her voice is fading as she closes her eyes. “No, no, no. Stay where I can see you. It isn’t safe out there.”



She’s delirious, but there might be some truth to that still.



“That’s enough now.” Linden draws the outline of her eyelids with his finger. There’s a nearly imperceptible tremor in his biceps. “Get some rest. We’ll be right here.”



Her eyebrows raise, but her eyelids stay down. She mumbles, “Promise?”



“Yes,” he tells her, desperation in the word. Of course he won’t leave her. After all this, I don’t believe he’ll ever let her out of his sight again. She knows that; she only needed to hear him say it.



True to his word, he doesn’t leave after she falls asleep. He just sits there, smoothing back her hair and frowning.



I stay in a chair on the opposite side of the bed, invisible. I don’t belong here, but I have no place else to go tonight. I don’t want her to wake in the night and realize I’m gone and go into a panic.



As though Linden has been reading my mind, he says, “Thank you for staying.” He doesn’t take his eyes off Cecily.



“I’ll leave when she’s stronger,” I say.



“I meant what I said before. I want you to be safe.”



“I know,” I say. “You don’t need to worry about me.”



“Just the same, I’d appreciate a good-bye this time.”



He ventures a glance at me, and he smiles the way he did the morning after Rose’s death. That morning the smile faded the instant he realized I wasn’t her. It stays now. He understands that I’m not a ghost. I’m a girl, and one who hasn’t always been especially kind to him.



“I promise I’ll say good-bye this time,” I say. I feel certain I’ll cry if I say anything more.



I listen to the monitor steadily relaying my sister wife’s pulse, and I think of how far away Gabriel is. I don’t know that I could ever love him the way that Linden and Cecily are in love, or the way Linden and Rose were. I never saw the point in exhausting so much emotion on something there are so few years to enjoy. I never planned on getting married, though in weak and foolish moments I let myself pretend there would be time for such things.



But this surge of longing that comes to me now—is it love? I’ve never felt so alone.



We can change so many times in our lives. We’re born into a family, and it’s the only life we can imagine, but it changes. Buildings collapse. Fires burn. And the next second we’re someplace else entirely, going through different motions and trying to keep up with this new person we’ve become.



I was somebody’s daughter once, and then I was somebody’s wife. I’m neither of those things now. This sullen boy sitting before me is not my husband, and the girl he’s fretting over isn’t me, will never be me.



Chapter 8



LINDEN LOOKS at the clock mounted over the door.



“Maybe you should go to the cafeteria,” he tells me.



“Do you need me to get you something?” I ask.



He shakes his head, watches the motion of Cecily’s chest as she draws a troubled breath. She’s been asleep for hours. “My father will be here soon,” he says. “It’s best if he doesn’t see you. He’s rushing over from a conference in Clearwater. He said it would take him a couple of hours, but that was this morning.”



My blood goes cold. “You called your father?”



“Of course.” He says this louder than he perhaps meant to, because Cecily’s eyes open. She stares at us through a haze, and I’m not sure if she’s awake. Linden pushes the hair from her forehead and leans close and says, “You’re getting the best possible care. My father will see to it.”



At that her pupils dilate. I can see her immediate fight to regain awareness. It’s like watching a person that has fallen through the ice and has nothing to grab for. “No,” she says. The acceleration of her heart makes the beeping on the monitor intensify. “Linden, no. Please, no.” She looks to me for help, and I grip her hand.



“What’s the matter, love?” Linden says. “Nobody is going to hurt you. I’m right here.”



She shakes her head wildly. “I don’t want your father. I don’t want him.”



But it’s too late. Her nightmare has arrived. I can hear his voice in the hallway, calling her name.



And then he’s here.



Vaughn brings with him the smell of spring rain and earth. It has always been a smell I associated with life, but right now it’s choking. His hair is wet and windswept, his coat dripping, his boots muddying the tiles. “Oh, Cecily,” he says, “I’m so sorry about the baby. Perhaps if you listened to me about staying in bed, it wouldn’t have happened. You always were too reckless for your own good.”



Of course he’s blaming her for this.



She’s kicking her legs, propelling herself away from him. I’ve never seen her so frightened. The girl who has spent the last several hours asleep is now squeezing my hand with enough brute strength, I’m certain, to bruise bone.



“Please, love, you have to lie back down,” Linden urges. “You’re not well.”



But Cecily doesn’t even hear him. “You did this,” she tells Vaughn. “You’ll bury me alive the first chance you get.”



The faraway stare in her eyes terrifies me. She’s sitting up now, speaking in whole sentences, but she’s muddled by delirium.



Vaughn brushes past me and leans over her bed. I think he’s going to grab her arm like that morning outside of Reed’s house, but he only touches the IV bag hanging over her and checks the writing on it. “They shouldn’t have you on something this strong,” he says. “I’ll get this sorted out.”



“No,” Cecily says. “No.” She turns to Linden, pleading. “You have to make him leave. He wanted me dead. Me and our baby.”



The hurt in Linden’s eyes is immediate. He blinks several times before he can speak. “Cecily, no . . . ”



“Just get him out of here, Linden,” I say through gritted teeth.



Vaughn looks at me with dead eyes before regarding Cecily with a surge of affection. “Darling, you don’t have a clear head,” he says. “We’ll get you set up with something milder, and you’ll feel better.” Then, to Linden, “You and I should talk outside.”



Once they’re gone, I manage to calm Cecily enough that she lies down. “Don’t worry,” I tell her. “He isn’t coming back.”



“He’ll try to take Bowen,” she says, tears brimming in her eyes.



“That’s not going to happen. Have you seen Reed’s gun collection? He won’t let anyone touch Bowen.”



I wipe at her cheeks with the cuff of my green sweater because it’s the softest thing I can think of. It catches her tears without absorbing them, and they hang between the fibers like stars.



“I feel strange,” she says, “like I’m underwater.”



I tuck the bedsheet up to her chin and press the back of my hand to her forehead. “That’s the fever.”



“Are you sure?”



“Yes,” I say. “I know the feeling.”



“I was never sick a day in my life before I got pregnant with Bowen,” she says. “I never even had a runny nose.”



“You’ll be better soon,” I say, willing it to be true.



“I dreamt Housemaster Vaughn pushed me into the dirt and I started sinking,” she says. “His eyes turned into Jenna’s eyes. I tried to scream, and my mouth filled up with mud.”



It doesn’t matter if I keep constant vigil; I can never protect her from what’s happening in her dreams.



“That wasn’t real.” I pull the flimsy hospital blanket over the sheet. “Close your eyes,” I whisper, and she does.



I weave small sections of her hair into braids, untangle them and start again. It’s something Jenna used to do to our hair when she was bored, which was often, and doing it now makes me feel like Cecily and I are still a part of that trio.



“Don’t leave me by myself,” she says. “Please.”



“Of course not. I’m right here,” I say.



“He tried to murder me,” she says.