LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

worked for the freedom I wanted.

      He seems to understand. His fingers close into his palm, and he lowers his hand from my side.

      “I can’t,” I say again, with more certainty.

      He steps closer to me, and my nerves bristle like the long grass outside. Everything is rustling with expectancy.

      “We never consummated our marriage,” he says softly. “At first I thought you only needed time. I was patient.” He presses his lips together for a moment, thinking. “But then it didn’t matter so much. I liked just being with you. I liked the way you breathed when you were asleep. I liked when you took the champagne glass from my hand. I liked how your fingers were always too long for your gloves.”

      A smile tugs at one side of my mouth, and I allow it.

      “Looking back, those feel like the most important parts. They were real, weren’t they?”

      “Yes,” I answer, and it’s the truth.

      He touches my left hand and looks at my eyes, asking permission. I nod, and he holds my palm flat against his and then holds my hand between us. His other hand traces the slope of my wedding ring and pinches either side of it between his thumb and index finger. When I realize what’s happening, my pulse quickens, my mouth goes dry.

      He slides the ring down my finger, and it hitches on my knuckle, like part of me is still trying to hang on. My body lilts forward, tethered to the ring for only an instant more before letting go.

      This was it. This was why I kept wearing my wedding ring, why it never felt right to remove it myself. There was only one person who could set me free.

      “Let’s call this an official annulment,” he says.

      I can’t help it. I throw my arms around him and pull him tight against me. He tenses, startled, but then he puts his arms around me too. I can feel his closed fist where he holds the ring.

      “Thank you,” I whisper.

      Minutes later I’m lying on the divan, watching my ankle swing back and forth over the edge like a guillotine. Linden paces the length of the room, tracing the book spines.

      I look for the moon through the open window, but it’s hiding behind clouds.

      Linden says, “What’s your brother like?”

      I blink. It’s the first time he’s asked me about Rowan. Maybe he’s trying to get to know me, now that he knows I’ll give him the truth.

      “He’s smarter than me,” I say. “And practical.”

      “Is he older? Younger?”

      “About ninety seconds younger,” I say. “We’re twins.”

      “Twins?” he says.

      I hang my head over the arm of the divan, looking at him upside down. “You sound surprised.”

      “It’s just—twins,” he says, leaning against a row of paisley cloth-bound books. “That changes the entire way I look at you.” He keeps his mouth open, struggling for the right words.

      “Like I’m half of a whole?” I say, trying to help him.

      “I wouldn’t put it like that,” he says. “You’re a whole person by yourself.”

      I look out the window again. “You know what scares me?” I say. “I’m starting to feel like you’re right.”

      Linden is quiet for a long time. I hear his clothes rustling, the chair creaking under his weight. “I think I understand,” he says. “When I lost Rose, I kept going, I still do, but I’ll never be what I was when she was alive. It’ll always feel like something’s … not right, without her here.”

      “That’s sort of what it’s like,” I agree. Even though my brother and I are both still alive, the longer we’re apart, the more I feel myself changing. It’s like I’m evolving into something that doesn’t include him. I don’t think I can ever be the person I was before all this.

      It’s quiet again after that. It’s a comfortable quiet, though. Peaceful. I feel unburdened, and after a while I start to imagine that the divan is a boat moving over the ocean. Sunken cities play music beneath the waves. The ghosts are stirring.

      Someone turns on the light, and my thoughts scatter away as I blink at the brightness. This is one of the few rooms with functioning lightbulbs, though they flicker.

      “Linden?” Cecily says.

      She’s standing in the doorway, her knuckles white from clutching the frame. Everything about her is white: her face, the quivering misshapen O of her lips, the nightgown that she’s got bunched up to her hips as though she’s unveiling her body to us.

      But sliding down her thighs is an abundance of red. It’s pooling at her feet, from the trail of blood that followed her into the room.

      Linden moves fast. He scoops her up by the backs of her knees and shoulders. She comes alive with a scream so awful that he has to brace his hand on the wall to keep from falling. She’s whimpering while he’s rushing her down the stairs.

      I hurry after them down the long hallway, making footprints in the red puddles and thinking about how small she is, about how much blood it takes to keep a girl her size going, how much of it she can stand to lose. Redness is leaking rivers over Linden’s arms like veins atop his skin.

      He says my name, and I realize what he wants. I push ahead of him and open the door.

      Outside, the night is warm, sprinkled with stars. The grass sighs in indignation as we crush it with our bare feet. Wings and insect legs make music, which moments before had been lovely through the open window in the room full of books.

      In the backseat of the car, which reeks of cigars and mold, I take Cecily’s head in my lap while Linden runs off to find his uncle to drive us.

      “I lost the baby,” Cecily chokes.

      “No,” I say. “No, you didn’t.”

      She closes her eyes, shudders with a sob.

      “They’ll know what to do at the hospital,” I tell her, though I don’t believe a word of it. I’m only trying to calm her, and maybe myself. I hold her hand in both of mine. It’s clammy, ice-cold. I can’t reconcile this pale, trembling girl with the one who stood before the mirror hardly an hour ago, fussing over her stomach.

      Thankfully, Linden is back soon.

      The drive to the hospital is rocky, thanks to Reed’s reckless driving and the lack of a paved road. Linden holds Bowen, whose eyes are wide and curious, and shushes him even though he doesn’t cry. I’ve always thought Bowen was intuitive. He just might be the only child of Linden’s to live.

      I feel a gentle pressure around my finger, and I look down to realize Cecily is touching the place where my ring used to be. But she doesn’t ask about it, the bride who has always made it her mission to know everything about everyone in her marriage. She has been eerily silent this whole ride.

      “Open your eyes,” Linden tells her when she closes them. “Love? Cecily. Look at me.”

      With effort she does.

      “Tell me where it hurts,” he says.

      “It’s like contractions,” she says, cringing as we hit a pothole.

      “It’s only another minute from here,” Linden says. “Just keep your eyes open.” The gentleness is gone from his voice, and I know he’s trying to stay in control, but he looks so frightened.

      Cecily is fading. Her breaths are labored and slow. Her eyes are dull.

      “‘There will come soft rain,’” I blurt out in a panic. She looks up at me, and we recite the words in unison, “‘And the smell of the ground, And swallows circling with their shimmering sound.’”

Скачать книгу