here.
There’s no more talk of escape between Rose and me after that day. She favors me over the other wives, who have never spoken with her at all. Jenna speaks as little as possible, and Cecily has asked me more than once why I bother getting to know Linden’s dying wife. “She’s going to die, and then he’ll focus on us more,” she says, like it’s something to look forward to. It disgusts me that Rose’s life is so meaningless to her, but it’s not very different from the things my brother said about the orphan we found frozen to death on our porch last winter.
Tears welled in my eyes when I discovered the body, but my brother said we shouldn’t even move right away, that it could be a warning to anyone else trying to break into our home. “We did such a great job with the locks, they’ll die before they get in,” he said. Necessity. Survival. It was us or them. Days later, when I suggested we bury the body—a little girl in a threadbare plaid coat—he had me help him haul it to the Dumpster. “Your problem is that you’re too emotional,” he said. “And that’s the kind of thing that’ll make you an easy target.”
Well, maybe not this time, Rowan. Maybe this time being emotional can help, because Rose and I talk for hours, and I relish our conversations, certain I can use them as an opportunity to learn everything about Linden and earn his favor.
But as the days turn to weeks, I sense a genuine friendship blossoming between us, which should be the last thing I want from someone who is dying. Still, I enjoy her company. She tells me about her mother and father, who were first generations that died in some sort of accident when she was young; they were close friends of Linden’s father, which is how she came to live in this mansion and become his bride.
She tells me that Linden’s mother—Housemaster Vaughn’s younger, second wife—died in childbirth with Linden. And Vaughn was so immersed in his research, so obsessed with saving his son’s life from the start, that he never bothered to take on another wife. He might have been ridiculed for it, Rose says, if he weren’t such a capable doctor and so in love with his work. He owns a thriving hospital in the city and is one of the area’s leading genetic researchers. She tells me that the Housemaster’s first son lived a full twenty-five years and was gone and buried by the time Linden came along.
This, I suppose, is something I have in common with my new husband. Before my brother and I were born, my parents had two children, another set of twins, who were born blind and unable to speak. Their limbs were malformed and they didn’t live past five years. Genetic abnormalities like this are rare, given the perfection of the first generations, but they do happen. They’re called malformed. It seems my parents were incapable of making children without genetic oddities, though now I have cause to be grateful for my heterochromia. It may have spared me a gunshot to the brain in the back of that van.
Rose and I talk about happier things too, like cherry blossom trees. I even come to trust her enough to tell her about my father’s atlas and my disappointment at having missed the world in its prime. As she braids my hair, she tells me that if she could have lived anywhere in the world, she would have chosen India. She would have worn saris and positively covered herself in henna, and she would have paraded the streets on an elephant shrouded in jewels.
I paint her nails pink, and she arranges novelty jewels on my forehead from a sticker sheet.
Then one afternoon, as we’re lying beside each other on the bed, stuffing ourselves with colorful candies, I blurt out, “How can you stand it, Rose?”
She turns her head on the pillow to face me. Her tongue is deep purple. “What?”
“Doesn’t it bother you that he has remarried, while you’re still alive?”
She smiles, looks at the ceiling, and fiddles with a wrapper. “I asked him to.
There’s no more talk of escape between Rose and me after that day. She favors me over the other wives, who have never spoken with her at all. Jenna speaks as little as possible, and Cecily has asked me more than once why I bother getting to know Linden’s dying wife. “She’s going to die, and then he’ll focus on us more,” she says, like it’s something to look forward to. It disgusts me that Rose’s life is so meaningless to her, but it’s not very different from the things my brother said about the orphan we found frozen to death on our porch last winter.
Tears welled in my eyes when I discovered the body, but my brother said we shouldn’t even move right away, that it could be a warning to anyone else trying to break into our home. “We did such a great job with the locks, they’ll die before they get in,” he said. Necessity. Survival. It was us or them. Days later, when I suggested we bury the body—a little girl in a threadbare plaid coat—he had me help him haul it to the Dumpster. “Your problem is that you’re too emotional,” he said. “And that’s the kind of thing that’ll make you an easy target.”
Well, maybe not this time, Rowan. Maybe this time being emotional can help, because Rose and I talk for hours, and I relish our conversations, certain I can use them as an opportunity to learn everything about Linden and earn his favor.
But as the days turn to weeks, I sense a genuine friendship blossoming between us, which should be the last thing I want from someone who is dying. Still, I enjoy her company. She tells me about her mother and father, who were first generations that died in some sort of accident when she was young; they were close friends of Linden’s father, which is how she came to live in this mansion and become his bride.
She tells me that Linden’s mother—Housemaster Vaughn’s younger, second wife—died in childbirth with Linden. And Vaughn was so immersed in his research, so obsessed with saving his son’s life from the start, that he never bothered to take on another wife. He might have been ridiculed for it, Rose says, if he weren’t such a capable doctor and so in love with his work. He owns a thriving hospital in the city and is one of the area’s leading genetic researchers. She tells me that the Housemaster’s first son lived a full twenty-five years and was gone and buried by the time Linden came along.
This, I suppose, is something I have in common with my new husband. Before my brother and I were born, my parents had two children, another set of twins, who were born blind and unable to speak. Their limbs were malformed and they didn’t live past five years. Genetic abnormalities like this are rare, given the perfection of the first generations, but they do happen. They’re called malformed. It seems my parents were incapable of making children without genetic oddities, though now I have cause to be grateful for my heterochromia. It may have spared me a gunshot to the brain in the back of that van.
Rose and I talk about happier things too, like cherry blossom trees. I even come to trust her enough to tell her about my father’s atlas and my disappointment at having missed the world in its prime. As she braids my hair, she tells me that if she could have lived anywhere in the world, she would have chosen India. She would have worn saris and positively covered herself in henna, and she would have paraded the streets on an elephant shrouded in jewels.
I paint her nails pink, and she arranges novelty jewels on my forehead from a sticker sheet.
Then one afternoon, as we’re lying beside each other on the bed, stuffing ourselves with colorful candies, I blurt out, “How can you stand it, Rose?”
She turns her head on the pillow to face me. Her tongue is deep purple. “What?”
“Doesn’t it bother you that he has remarried, while you’re still alive?”
She smiles, looks at the ceiling, and fiddles with a wrapper. “I asked him to.
Similar Books
