Bethany Hagen: Landry Park

“Father, it’s Madeline,” I said, brushing the hair away from his forehead. “Jamie is going to help you, okay? He will be back any minute and he will fix you.”

Father’s eyes fluttered open. He reached up to touch my hair, and then closed his eyes again with a groan.

“A shame,” Jack said.

“He was about to do the same to Charlie,” Ewan reminded his father. “If we hadn’t stopped him, you’d be watching this happen to Charlie right now.” But even Ewan looked a little sick at the sight of my father’s ruined face.

Jamie came back not ten minutes later, hurrying in with his bag. “I have called the gentry hospital to arrange for home treatment,” he said breathlessly. “They should be here within the hour.” He set the bag on a nearby table and began pulling out syringes of morphine and vials of anti-microbial medicine. “We will need to clean the wounds as best as possible, and then cover them with a dry dressing. Necrosis of the tissue will set in within a few days, and we don’t want to risk sepsis. We will also need to order cellular scans to estimate the level of DNA damage and cancerous cells.”

“Will his mouth heal?” I asked. “Will he be able to talk with his tongue and throat burned like this?”

Jamie prepared a syringe of morphine and then eased it into Father’s thigh. After three or four minutes, his squirming stilled somewhat, and his breathing deepened. Jamie nodded, and began dousing cotton pads in anti-microbial fluid. “There is always a chance,” he replied finally. “But at this point, I think it doubtful that he will ever eat or speak or smile again.”

That night another snowstorm came like soft, soft music. When I woke, even the ice in the trees was covered with a thick blanket of white. Cold seeped in along the baseboards and through the frosted windows. The house was muffled and empty, bereft of the guests that had filled its rooms the day before. All the Uprisen had fled back to their homes, probably conspiring over their next move, searching for a new leader now that Father lay wordless and suffering, a prisoner in his own home.

I pulled on a warm dress of ivory angora and went downstairs, where I found Mother grimly contemplating a chunk of bread in the morning room.

“Your uncle has given the servants a holiday,” she said, poking at the bread with a knife. “When they come back, he wants to talk about a pay raise. Regular days off.”

“Mother…”

She burst into tears. “Your father, darling, your poor father. Your cousin says he doesn’t know if your father will ever heal properly and that he probably has cancer. What will those Rootless do to you or to me when they have the chance?”

“They had the chance with me,” I reminded her. “And they did nothing. It was only Father they wanted.”

“Here they are gloating and nattering about justice, when they are nothing more than violent criminals. It makes me sick. I can’t see how one brother would let that happen to another.”

If the brother in question was about to kill his son… But I agreed with her. I felt the same shaky nausea as I did after seeing the battle on the wall screen a few months ago. So much violence, so much destruction. “Where is he? Uncle Jack?”

“Back at his hovel, I suppose,” she said. She pushed her plate away. “Preparing to invade our home and kick us into the streets.”

“He promised me a place to stay,” I told her. “I am sure you can stay, too.”

“But who would want to? After what he let those animals do to your father? And with that awful journal of Jacob Landry’s circulating around? The Rootless are refusing to change the charges, the working poor and the middle class are in an up-roar, and now that awful man is in charge of Landry Park. Oh, Madeline, why couldn’t you have just left all this alone?” She put her face in her hands. Even despairing, she was beautiful.

I sat next to her and put my arms around her slender frame. She leaned her head on my shoulder.

“Everything was going so nicely,” she said sadly.

“For you. Everything was going so nicely for you and people like us. But it could not go on forever. Isn’t it better that Jack takes control now, rather than have the Empire help the Rootless overthrow the gentry?”

“I don’t trust a man who deals with the Empire,” she answered.

“Desperate people make desperate choices.”

“Then why didn’t he just stay?” Mother demanded. “Stay and inherit Landry Park and then administer whatever social changes he wanted to then? Why fake a death and then come back to claim his birthright?” She stood up. “I’m going to lie down. This day has already exhausted me.”

“Mother?”

She stopped and turned, her dark eyes and dark hair lovely in the pale winter light. I thought of the night of Charlie’s capture, of the flash of agreement I saw in her eyes. “Didn’t you ever feel that Father was unjust? Didn’t you ever wonder about the suffering of those around us?”

“Your father has always been just—it is what the Landrys pride themselves on.” She answered quickly enough, but I could see her hands balled in her skirt. I stood and went to her, staying silent.

She pulled me into a fierce embrace, pressing my cheek against hers. I could feel the lingering tears on her face.

“I hope you never know what it is like to love a man like your father,” she whispered. With a swift kiss, she left, the silk skirt of her dress making a pleasant swishing on the marble floor.

I stayed in the room, watching snow drift idly outside. That Mother loved Father, I had always known. But that she felt it a burden, I had never considered. Under her plum-colored dress, under the silk chemises and fragrant oils and lotions, beat a heart that I realized I barely knew.

Laughter echoed in the hallway—a girl’s laughter—and a shh! noise that was followed by scuffling feet. Curious, I got up and walked into the hallway to see Cara pressed against the wall, kissing someone with ferocious intensity. Someone who was decidedly not David.

I gasped, and she heard me, breaking apart from her paramour.

“Ewan?” I asked, flabbergasted. “Cara? Why are you here?”

“Oh, I spent the night last night,” she said, as if that answered all my questions.

“I should go,” Ewan told Cara, and pressed his lips to her cheek. “Bye, love.”

She smiled her stunning smile and moved her fingertips in a wave. “Good-bye.”

Grinning, Ewan walked past me. “Cousin,” he greeted me with a nod.

Shocked, I turned to Cara, waiting until Ewan was out of earshot before I erupted. “Cara, what on earth is going on? Ewan is Rootless! And you’re dating David!”

“That did not stop you from kissing him yesterday in the park.”

I blushed, ashamed and a little grateful that she didn’t know about the other kiss. “I didn’t mean for that to happen—we were scared and he was about to save Charlie and it took me by surprise,” I tried to explain.

“Like I care.” Cara started walking, and I scurried to walk beside her. “David told me himself after everything settled down. I can’t believe it took this long, either. I would have gone for it ages ago if I were you.”

“What?” I was so confused.

“Please. Did you think I was really dating David Dana?” she scoffed.

“Yes! You debuted with him. And at the Lodge, you kissed—”

“And other than that, how often did we kiss? Did we ever seem like we were madly in love?”

“While he was gone, you were so withdrawn. Everybody said you were heartbroken over David being in the mountains. I just assumed…”

“You assumed wrong.” We stopped at a window and looked out at the snow. Ewan was trudging down the driveway, already covered in white dust. “Look, David came to me, okay? Last spring. He knew. He knew .”