LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Stay!” I tell her.

      Outside, the early morning air is cold, and I hug my arms for warmth. Dewy grass clings to my bare feet as I move toward him. He smiles. “Ah, so she awakens,” he says. His voice disrupts the gray sky. A burst of blackbirds rushes past.

      I maintain my distance, keep my tone neutral when I ask, “Where’s Linden?”

      “Your husband had an early meeting with a potential contractor,” he says. “He sent me for you and Cecily.”

      “Sure he did,” I say, bracing one foot behind me to take a step back.

      “You’re still angry with me,” he says. “I understand. But, Rhine, darling, you’re such a fascinating creature. You should be flattered; before you came along, I was sure I’d seen everything. I couldn’t help but get carried away.”

      Carried away. I laugh humorlessly, a cloud bursting from my open mouth.

      “Let’s just be honest with each other. If it weren’t for me, you’d be dead,” he says.

      “Thanks to you, I almost was,” I say. “What will you do if I refuse to go along this time? Burn down this house?”

      “While I do think a fire would be an improvement, no. The choice is entirely your own,” he says, sounding sincere. “I thought you and I could put this sordid mess behind us. How does resuming first wife status sound?”

      I open my mouth, aghast, but no words come. How did he even find me here? The tracker has been removed from my leg. Did Linden really send him here after me? I know he’s angry, but I don’t believe he’d do anything so venomous.

      The screen door slams behind me, and then I realize it. Cecily. Vaughn can’t trace my steps anymore, but she is still his property. How does it work? Is there a computer somewhere that spells out our location on a digital map? Or some kind of beeping device that sounds an alarm when we’re nearby, like a metal detector hovering over coins? My parents used to have one of those; it was often how my father found scrap metal to build things with.

      She moves to stand beside me, coiling her arm around mine. “She isn’t going back,” she says.

      “You don’t want your sister wife to come home?” Vaughn says. “But you’ve been so lonely. So lonely, in fact, that you were sneaking down to visit her every time I left the house.”

      She draws a deep breath. She’s scared, though she’s trying not to let on.

      “Don’t go with him,” I say into her ear.

      The screen door slams again, and I catch a whiff of smoke. Reed has a cigar in his mouth. Grease and brown splotches stain his white shirt. “Nobody was going to invite me to the reunion?” he says to Vaughn. “You can’t have it both ways, Little Brother. If I can’t come onto your property, you can’t come onto mine.”

      “I’ve just come to collect something that belongs to me,” Vaughn says. “Put something decent on, Cecily. Run a brush through that hair, and let’s go.” She’s still wearing one of the nightgowns that Linden packed for me, the unbuttoned collar dipping over her shoulder.

      “I’ll leave when my husband gets here,” Cecily says. “Not before then.”

      “You heard the kid,” Reed says.

      Vaughn opens his mouth to say something, but the sound of a baby crying interrupts him. And the words he was going to say turn into a grin. Cecily stiffens.

      Vaughn opens the passenger door and says, “Come on out and talk some sense into your keeper.”

      Elle, Cecily’s domestic, steps out of the car. She’s holding Bowen to her chest, and his face is red and wet with tears. Cecily reaches for him immediately, but Vaughn steps in her way. “It’s chilly out here, darling,” he says. “And you’re pregnant. You don’t even have the sense to wear a coat. What makes you think you can get by without me to supervise your prenatal care? You’ve already missed your vitamins this morning.”

      “He’s right,” Elle says a bit too softly. She’s looking at the ground, and her words sound rehearsed. She’s smaller than Cecily—nine, maybe ten years old, and of all our domestics she’s always been the most timid. I’m sure it was no challenge for Vaughn to intimidate her.

      Cecily purses her lips together, composing herself. I think she’s trying not to cry. “You can’t keep my son from me.”

      Vaughn laughs, taps her nose the way he did when she was a newlywed, when she adored him because she didn’t know any better. “Of course not,” he says. “You’re the one who’s been away from him.”

      She steps past Vaughn, and he grips her forearm when she tries to reach for her son. I see the strain in his arm from the force of holding her. Her jaw swells with spite. He has never grabbed her before; he’s always been able to command her with his serpent’s charm. “Come home, or don’t,” he says. “But know that I won’t allow my grandson to stay here in this cesspool.”

      He looks at me and adds, “As always, the invitation is extended. It wouldn’t be home without you.”

      “Whose home?” I mutter. I take a step back, into the choking smog of Reed’s cigar. He says nothing, standing on the top porch step. This isn’t his battle.

      Cecily looks at me with the same regret as on the day I told her our father-in-law was responsible for Jenna’s death, when snow was falling between us. And my heart breaks the same way it did then. “I have to go,” she says.

      “I know,” I tell her, because I realize it too. She has Bowen and an unborn child to care for, and a husband to love. I have my brother and Gabriel to find. Cecily and I can’t keep each other safe. We have to let go.

      Vaughn releases her, and she comes at me, hugging me with so much force that I stumble. I wrap my arms around her. “Take care,” she murmurs into my ear. “Be brave, okay?”

      “You too,” I say.

      She lets go of me when Bowen’s cries jump up a few octaves. Vaughn escorts her to the car and waits until she has climbed inside, before instructing Elle to hand her the baby.

      Cecily clings to her son, but watches me over his wispy curls. Her lower eyelids have gone pink, a wavering line of tears tracing them. We know how unlikely it is that we’ll ever see each other again. If Linden had come to collect her, at least we’d have had time for a real good-bye.

      Vaughn climbs in beside her and closes the door, and I’m left staring at my own reflection in the darkened windows. Until even that is gone.

      Reed steps beside me, and together we watch the limo get swallowed by the horizon. He offers me a puff of his cigar, but I shake my head, letting the numbness take over my head, welcoming the pain into my bones. Waiting for this sadness to disappear like both of my sister wives.

      “Don’t feel bad, doll,” Reed says. “My mother never cared for Vaughn either. Though, bless her soul, she did try.” He claps my shoulder. “Better get washed up. There’s work to do.”

      The water trickles from the showerhead; it runs bleary and chunked with rust. But it’s not very much worse than what I was used to in Manhattan, and I’m able to get reasonably clean by not standing directly under it and splashing myself when it’s at its clearest. I take extra care with the gash that runs along my inner thigh, the skin pinched together with stitches.

      When I go through the suitcase Linden packed, I find that he left a roll of gauze and a bottle of antiseptic in one of the inner pouches by my toothbrush, where I’d be sure to see them. He was still thinking of me, caring for me in that passive way of his. Everything is neatly folded too. A lesser husband would be angry after what I put him through, would hope the wound became infected and the entire leg fell off.

      I dress the wound, and try to roll up the rest of the gauze as neatly as I found it, but I can’t duplicate Linden’s

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