Lauren DeStefano - Sever

“Rhine?”

I lean back on my arms, tilt my head all the way to see the figure standing behind me.

“Hi,” I say.

The moon is full and beaming like a halo behind his head. His curls are his dark crown. He could be a sort of prince.

“Hi,” Linden says. “Can I sit?”

I collapse onto my back, liking the way the cold earth feels against my skull. I nod.

He sits next to me, careful to avoid my hair that’s splayed around my head like blood. A bullet to the forehead, boom, blond waves everywhere.

“Didn’t think you were coming back,” I say, focusing on the kite in the stars. I look for other kites, or people to fly them.

Linden lies beside me. All I can think is that he’s going to get grass stains on his white shirt. He’s going to dirty that lovely hair. I feel like he’s trying to prove a point that he can be like me—not so neat and perfect.

“I didn’t send my father, the other day,” he says. “I didn’t know he was going to do that.”

What he doesn’t say is that his father probably tracked my whereabouts using whatever device he implanted in Cecily. Linden saw for himself the one that had been implanted in me.

“Thought you said you knew him so well,” I mumble. Without looking back, I can feel his stare.

“He was trying to spare me,” Linden says. “He knew how difficult it would be for me to see you.”

“So you were spared,” I say. “Why did you come back?”

“My uncle called me this afternoon,” he says.

“I didn’t know you even had a phone,” I say. Somehow this feels like a violation, a reminder that while Linden treated me as an equal during our marriage, that was only part of the illusion. I was always a prisoner.

“He told me you were leaving,” Linden says. “He said you just planned to walk off and leave everything to chance.”

“Something like that,” I say.

“That’s not much of a plan,” he says. “What are you going to do for money? Transportation? Food? Where will you sleep?”

I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters.”

“This is why Reed was stalling, isn’t it? He wanted to talk to you before I left.” I suppress a cry of frustration. “Please just let this be my problem,” I say. “Not yours.”

He’s silent after that. The silence adds a foreign element to the air, polluting the moonlight, making my throat tight, the crickets extra loud. Planets are leaning in to listen. And finally I can’t take it anymore. “Just say it,” I tell him.

“Say what?”

“Whatever it is you want to say to me. There’s something ugly in there you’ve been wanting to let out. I can tell.”

“It’s not ugly,” he says gently. “Or angry at all, really. It’s more of a question.”

I prop myself on one elbow to look at him, and he does the same. There’s no hostility in his eyes. There’s no kindness, either. There’s nothing but green. “That night, at the New Year’s party, you said you loved me. Did you mean that?”

I stare at him a long time. Until his face disappears, and he’s just a shadow.

“I don’t know,” I tell him. “If I did, it wasn’t enough to make me stay.”

He nods. Then he gets up, dusts the backs of his legs, and offers his hand to me. I let him pull me to my feet.

“Don’t leave tomorrow,” he says. “Please. Give me a chance to figure something out. If I just let you go, Cecily will be livid.”

“She’ll be okay,” I say. “You don’t owe me anything.”

“Then think of it as doing me a favor,” he says. “I’d like for Cecily to not be angry with me.”

I hesitate. “How long?”

“A couple of days, maybe less.”

“All right,” I say. “A couple of days. Maybe less.”

His lips waver, and I think he’s going to smile, but he doesn’t. The last time I saw him, he was brimming with words and thoughts, anger and intensity. I could feel them humming inside him. But now they’re all gone. I wonder where he put them. I wonder if he shouted them into the orange grove with the supposed ashes of his dead wife and child. When he opens his mouth, all he says is, “If you’re going to be out here, you should really wear a sweater. I packed one for you.”

Then he turns to leave. The limo is idling in the distance.

“It wasn’t all a lie, Linden,” I burst out when he’s a few yards away. My voice is weak, getting smaller with each word. “Not everything. Not all of it.”

He climbs into the backseat, giving no indication that he believes me.

REED SITS across the kitchen table, watching me as I turn the apple in my fingers. Maybe he’s right about my never needing to eat. I can’t remember the last time I had a real appetite. Even the delicacies served to me on the wives’ floor wouldn’t appeal to me right now.

I keep my eyes down. I don’t want Reed to see my defeat. I don’t want him to see that Vaughn has had a victory over me, because almost all of my misfortunes can be traced to that man. Being separated from my brother. Losing Jenna. Watching Cecily go with tears in her eyes. Leaving Gabriel to fear the worst. Linden’s coldness toward me. I keep staggering forward because I have to, but what Linden said last night is true: It’s not much of a plan.

“Are you going to eat that, or submit it for fingerprint analysis?” Reed says.

I set the apple down neatly, and tuck my hands under the table.

He tilts his head, watching me. He’s eating some sort of deep-fried stew. The smell is repulsive; some of it drips onto his plaid shirt.

“Okay, then,” he says. “No food today either. So what will sustain you?”

“Oxygen,” I say softly.

“You need to spice it up with something,” he says. This is his way of making conversation. I think he feels sorry for me.

“A question, then,” I say.

He sets his spoon into the bowl with authority. “All right. Go for it.”

I look aside, thinking of how I want to word this. “You and Vaughn don’t seem anything alike,” I begin. “I guess my question is—was he always this way? You said your mother didn’t really care for him.”

Reed laughs gruffly. “He was quiet all the time. I don’t mean like he was being polite or solemn. I mean like he was planning something.”

“He’s still like that,” I say. I try to imagine Vaughn as a child or even as a young man, but I can’t. All I see is a version of a young Linden with blackness where his eyes should be.

“But he didn’t have much purpose until his boy died,” Reed says. “That’s when he reprogrammed the elevators so that only he could access the basement. I never knew what was going on down there.”

“Did he used to let you visit?” I ask, thinking of what Reed said a few days ago about Vaughn not allowing Reed onto his property.

“I used to live there,” Reed says. “When our parents died, they left that house to both of us. Our father was an architect, and it was an old boarding school he’d reconstructed. That’s why it’s so enormous. You’d think, with all that space, there’d be room for both of us. But we seemed to get in each other’s way. We both like things just so.”

“Linden’s grandfather was an architect,” I say quietly, more to myself than to Reed. It makes me happy to know Linden inherited that brilliance. It skipped his father and buried itself in him, like it knew he would do better things with it.

“Linden takes after him in a lot of ways,” Reed agrees. “Vaughn hates when I point that out. He likes to pretend he’s the only family that boy’s got. Won’t even talk about Linden’s mother, or Linden’s brother that died before he was born. It’s one of the things we butted heads about. My brother and I were already walking a fine line with each other, but I suppose the last straw was when Linden fell ill.”