Sever

“If he tries again, I’ll murder him first,” I tell her.



“Not necessary.” Her voice is slurring. “I’ll do it myself.”



I keep up the braiding, and eventually the drugs and the exhaustion pull her back under. Her mouth falls open, letting out steady breaths.



She’s grown so much since I ran away. Her pert chin has elongated just enough for her face to lose its permanent pout and give her an air of assuredness instead. Her bratty sense of superiority has matured into a cool, practical certainty, which is perhaps why Vaughn grabbed her arm that morning, why he seems to fear he has lost control of her. Her ferocity is palpable now; it’s the very strength that brought her spluttering and gasping from death itself, as if to say she were promised twenty good years and she’s going to have them.



“Jenna would be proud of you,” I whisper. Her eyebrows knit for a moment and then relax.



When Linden returns, his arms are folded across his stomach. There are streaks from tears on his skin. He looks small, rattled. I’ve only known him to be this way late at night, when he was first mourning Rose; the darkness hid the worst of it then. His shaking breaths make my arms remember the shape of him beneath the blankets. Something deep within me wants to pull him close.



“How is she?” he asks. His voice is congested.



I open my mouth to say that she’s okay, but what comes out is, “She’s terrified, Linden.”



I expect him to argue that she’s perfectly safe, but he only nods as he takes his place in the chair by her bed. “My father agreed to leave for now, so she can rest. But he wanted to take her home tonight. He thought she’d get the best care in her own bed, with the doctors we have at home.” He watches her eyes roving busily as she dreams. Her eyelids break apart, revealing a sliver of white. “I said it wouldn’t be a good idea.”



I’m impressed. It’s the first time he has overridden one of his father’s decisions.



I think about how he spent last night awake, waiting for the moment when he could see Cecily again. I drifted to sleep a few times in the waiting room, leaning against him, and every time I awoke, his face had changed into a different kind of grief. “Linden,” I say softly now, “you should at least try to get some sleep.”



He shakes his head, watching as I gather Cecily’s hair for a new braid.



“My father warned me that you’re an interloper. He told me I should make you leave, since we’re no longer married and you’re not my concern,” he says. The thought gives me a chill. Yes, I’m sure Vaughn would love for his son to abandon me, so that Vaughn can swoop in and reclaim me the second I’m alone.



But Linden adds, “I told him that wouldn’t be a good idea either.”



By evening Linden has succumbed to sleep. He sits hunched over the bed, his head resting beside Cecily’s on the pillow, his hand gripping her arm as though she might float away from him. I listen to the rain and the thunder, and I think I hear Jenna’s voice in them, sounding out a warning. She’s been gone for months now. But sometimes it feels like she’s more alive than ever. She’s one of the indecipherable things that make sounds in the wind, and she’s in every kind of dream—the good and the awful.



I go into a fitful half sleep. Coasting along, I hear Cecily’s voice, high and operatic and lovely when she sings. I dream of Jenna braiding her own long dark hair as music notes fill the room. We’re safe here. Safer than we’ll ever be when we’re awake.



But with morning comes reality. The rumble of gurneys and trays in the hallway replaces the danger of last night’s storm.



“I brought you some tea,” Linden says when I open my eyes. He nods to the paper cup on the night table. “It’s gone cold.”



“Thanks,” I say.



“Sure,” he says, looking at Cecily, whose face is more relaxed in sleep.



“I think she’s doing better,” Linden says, miserable, drained, “now that my father’s gone.” His next breath looks like it hurts. “I thought she loved my father. I thought my father loved her. He has told me that she’s like a daughter to him.”



I decide that right now is not the time to say anything awful about his father. Linden’s having a hard enough time. I sip my tea. It is cold, but I feel it immediately in my stomach, stirring things, waking my organs and making me alert.



Whatever Linden is thinking, he doesn’t say it. He only stares at Cecily.



“She’ll be all right,” I say, resolute. “We’ll get her a little bell to ring when she needs anything, and by the second day we’ll want to throw it out the window.”



That gets a smile out of him. I hear the scrape of stubble when he rubs his chin. He opens his mouth like he wants to say something, but then he looks away.



“What is it?” I ask.



“Do you think—” He swallows something painful. “Do you think my father had something to do with this?”



Linden. The thought is sinister for him. Even I didn’t want to entertain the possibility. But now that the fear and the shock are subsiding, I know it’s the best explanation. Vaughn is so good at his wicked craft that he can ruin his daughters-in-law without even being under the same roof, without even being in the same city. He finds a way into our blood, as deadly as the virus that kills us.



The anger is so much and so sharp that I can’t bear it. “It’s a sound theory,” I say.



Linden doesn’t seem to hear me, though. He’s staring ahead when he says, “It would’ve destroyed me if I’d lost her. My father knows that, doesn’t he?”



“He does,” I say cautiously. I can see the doubt coming to his face, the way he’s piecing things together. Vaughn never told Linden much about his late brother, or his mother. He didn’t want Linden to feel a shred of love for them. But Linden can love his wives if he wants to, because if they die, Vaughn knows that his son will return to him, broken and vulnerable and so easy to control.



He looks so haggard. I move my chair beside his and force the cup of cold tea into his hands, hold my palm under it, and guide it to his lips. He takes small obligatory sips, but then I have to take the cup away because his hands are shaking so much that the tea is splashing onto his thighs.



I put my arms around him, and he grabs my shirt in his fists and pulls me close.



“Hey,” I say into his ear. “She’s going to be okay. That’s the important thing. We’ll figure the rest out later.”



Linden nods and says nothing more, but I can feel his rage. This is where it starts. This is the spark that will eventually consume him.



Chapter 9



I WRING OUT the sponge, and the water in the bucket goes pink with my sister wife’s blood.



Reed makes his own soap—these crude oatmeal-based rectangles that leave a beige film on everything. But it’s doing wonders for the upholstery in his car. The big bloody stain becomes a dull orange, and then gray. By now it looks like it could be a grease stain, or cooking oil. But I want it gone completely, and so I scrub until my shoulders ache and the upholstery starts to look thinner. After this I’ll mop up the red streaks in the hallway, launder the bedsheets, burn them if washing them doesn’t take care of it. Bad enough she had to lose the baby in that hospital room all alone. I’ll be damned if she has to come home to the evidence, too.



“I think you got all of it, doll,” Reed says. His hands are dirty up to the elbows. He said he’d be in his shed. I don’t know how long he’s been standing there. I don’t look up. Keep scrubbing.



“Not all of it,” I say.



“Really. It was pretty dirty before, anyway. You can’t make it perfect.”



“Yes, I can.”



“Doll . . . ”



I wring out the sponge again. Pink suds drip from my fingers and onto the stain. This is getting counterproductive. I need fresh water. When I pick up the bucket, it slips in my wet hands and spills across the floor of the car. And suddenly I can’t move. I can only watch the water get absorbed into the carpet. I’m breathing hard. My muscles ache. My head is pounding. And all I want is for this stupid car to be clean, but it’s not going to happen. It’s not ever going to happen.



Did I bring this on? In warning Cecily about Vaughn, did I only fuel her defiance against him and put her in his warpath? How bad would it have been to let her carry on in blissful ignorance? She would have been safer under Vaughn’s thumb, maybe, and she wouldn’t have lost this baby.



I feel sick, and I purse my lips to fight against a dry heave.



Reed climbs into the driver’s seat, reaches across and opens the front passenger door. “Come on,” he says, and numbly I step out of the car, walk around it and sit in the passenger side. I close the door with a slam that makes everything shudder, and the tears just come. I can’t stop them. I’m too tired to even try. I’ve been sleeping hunched over in a plastic chair, my dreams pervaded by a sharp, rhythmic beeping. My back is sore and I’ve definitely pulled something in my neck, but how can I possibly fixate on that? I can’t, not when Linden’s eyes are so puffy, and not while there’s so much cleaning to do.



Reed slides his hands around the steering wheel like he’s pretending to drive. “Rough week, huh?” he finally says.



I snort and wipe my eyes with my wrist. “Yeah.”



“They’re letting her out tonight, aren’t they? Linden’s youngest wife.”



“Cecily,” I remind him. Names aren’t his strong suit. “And she’s his only wife now.”



“Well, then, that’s a bit of good news, isn’t it? It means she’ll be okay.”



When I last saw her, she was in a hospital bed, rocking her son and whispering into his hair. Linden was trying to say something to her, but she kept moving her head away.



I was astounded by how young and how very old she looked at the same time. And then I thought of Jenna—strong, steely, beautiful Jenna, who turned sallow and died in our hands while we just watched. Vaughn can do what he wants with us. He can make us sick, and make us well again, and keep us alive for months after our expiration date if he has a mind to. He can deliver our babies, or kill them in the womb, or smother them if they’re malformed.



And I can’t stop him. All I can do is clean up.



“I have to get fresh water,” I say.



“You should stop now,” Reed says. “You’re about to drop.”



My legs are shaking from the inactivity. Tears are heavy in my eyes. “Until that happens, I have work to do.”



“You’re of no use to any of us unconscious,” he says. “Sit for a while.”