CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“We should get be-hind the screen,” I said even-tu-ally. “In case Dr-ever shows up.”
Davina climbed to her feet, pale and dazed, as though see-ing the por-trait first-hand had made the loss of her eye real. Her move-ments seemed sud-denly clum-sier, more la-bored, like her body too had fi-nally caught up with the change in depth, in space, in pe-riph-eral de-tail. I of-fered her a fore-arm to grab on to, and she looked at it as though she’d never been so pa-tron-ized in her life.
Once we were be-hind the fab-ric screen, she leaned against the back wall of the gallery with her legs stretched out in front of her. Her palm rested over her empty eye socket, fin-ger-nails dig-ging into the white skin on her fore-head and cheek. As though the eye were still there, hang-ing by a thread, and she were try-ing to hold it in place.
The si-lence be-tween us was jit-tery, un-easy.
“You know what you said ear-lier,” she mut-tered at last. “No-body’s ever said that to me be-fore.”
I frowned, not fol-low-ing her train of thought. “Said what?”
“That it’s not my fault my fos-ter par-ents aban-doned me.” Her chest rose and fell with pre-cise breaths. “And since we hate each other, I don’t think you have any rea-son to lie to make me feel bet-ter.”
“I meant it.”
More si-lence, in which I felt the op-pres-sive weight of the icy lake press down on us from above. There was a dis-tant drip-ping noise, and the fren-zied scut-tle of nearby rats, but no foot-steps echo-ing down the cor-ri-dor to-ward us.
“Have you ever … spo-ken to any-one about it?” Davina asked. “Pro-fes-sion-ally, I mean. The fa-mous par-ent shit.”
“No. Mum wouldn’t al-low it. Too para-noid. She didn’t trust the client priv-i-lege.” I swal-lowed. I’d al-ways thought her para-noia was to-tally ir-ra-tional, but she had her skele-tons to con-ceal. Her ar-cane beauty. The mur-der of my fa-ther. “And I had no way to pay for it dis-creetly. We might be rich, but she’s very con-trol-ling of how I spend money. She wouldn’t bat an eye-lid at a five-grand hand-bag on the credit card bill, but a sin-gle ther-apy ses-sion would make her cut it up in front of me.”
A rat-tling scoff. “And it was be-neath you to get a job, right?”
Her tone was a scalpel against ex-posed skin, but it was also hasty, au-to-matic. The barbed wire she’d will-in-gly wrapped her-self in.
“I think part of me doesn’t want to get help,” I con-tin-ued, as if she hadn’t spo-ken. “All the trauma is wo-ven into the fab-ric of my iden-tity at this point. I don’t think I’d be who I am with-out it. Some-times I worry my whole per-son-al-ity is just ‘messed-up daugh-ter of an icon.’”
The con-fes-sion sat be-tween us like a dead body propped up-right—cold and tragic and ab-surd.
Davina half smiled, half gri-maced. I ex-pected her to mock me, but in-stead she said, “It’s like the ship of The-seus para-dox. If a ship has all of its com-po-nent parts re-placed one at a time, is it still the same ship as be-fore? If I fix all the parts of me that are bro-ken—if I re-place them with some-thing shiny and new—am I still the same per-son as be-fore?”
I pic-tured my-self as a car-avel bat-tered by a storm. I imag-ined a cap-tain gaz-ing up from the har-bor, de-cid-ing not to try and mend the bro-ken parts, just out of some vague sense of iden-tity. How mad-den-ing that would be to the crew.
The para-dox might not have di-rectly of-fered an an-swer—such was the na-ture of para-doxes—but at least the metaphor showed me the in-san-ity of my own flawed rea-son-ing.
Of course I was worth fix-ing.
“I’m sorry for what I did,” I said evenly, pic-tur-ing my-self lift-ing up the clos-est shat-tered plank to as-sess the dam-age. “Black-mail-ing you with that pic-ture. If I could take it back, I would.”
“Well, ob-vi-ously,” she snarked. “Look where it’s got you.”
An epiphany came to me like a phys-i-cal blow.
That’s where it all started: the word RE-CAST printed on a damn-ing photo.
If I hadn’t made that ter-ri-ble de-ci-sion, I would never have en-tered into Cam-ran’s men-tor-ship. And I would never have had my por-trait painted. And there was a good chance that Cam-ran, Van Der Beek and Barr would still be alive. That Davina would still have her eye.
Be-cause if Dr-ever re-ally was the per-pe-tra-tor … he was driven by ha-tred of me, and lat-terly of Davina. With-out that ini-tial black-mail, he wouldn’t hate me at all.
The idea was so pro-foundly ter-ri-fy-ing—that one bad de-ci-sion from one scared girl could un-ravel so much of the world around her.
Tears be-gan to spill silently down my cheeks; the guilt, the shame, the self-ha-tred be-came too much to con-tain. Davina didn’t no-tice, at first, but when my shoul-ders shook and I sniffed fiercely, she turned to look at me.
“Oh, for god’s sake.” She gave an elab-o-rate, ex-ag-ger-ated sigh. “What’s wrong?”
“All of this is my fault.” I ges-tured to the ru-ined por-traits.
She looked at me like I was an un-be-liev-able nar-cis-sist. “How?”
“If I hadn’t done what I did to you, none of this would’ve hap-pened. You’d still have your eye.”
She snorted. “Un-less you took Dr-ever by the hand and forced him to lift the blade, no, it isn’t your fault.”
“You don’t have to try and make me feel bet-ter.” A fat, salty tear trick-led over my Cu-pid’s bow and over my chapped lips; a hot sting. Next to Davina’s de-lib-er-ate com-po-sure, I felt like a child sob-bing over a lost teddy.
“I prom-ise I don’t care about you enough to do that.” She kicked one an-kle over the other. “Look, this is a thought ex-per-i-ment, right? How far back does blame re-ally stretch? How strong is the link be-tween cause and ef-fect and cul-pa-bil-ity? You say it’s your fault for push-ing Dr-ever to-ward a cer-tain ac-tion, but what pushed you to-ward that ac-tion? Your mother’s shit-ti-ness? Okay, so what pushed her into be-ing shitty?”
“The Masked Painter.” I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes in an at-tempt to stem the flow. “Her por-trait an-chored her to the worst men-tal and emo-tional break-down of her life.”
Davina shook her head. “You’re mis-un-der-stand-ing. Maybe it was the Masked Painter’s brush who cre-ated that an-chor, but what pushed your mother to-ward that de-ci-sion in the first place? Her own mother? So-ci-ety?”
I let this seed of an idea sow it-self into my mind, and af-ter a few beats, it be-gan to flower. “When you put it like that, is any-thing re-ally our fault?”
The thought filled me with a kind of ex-is-ten-tial re-lief.
“Not wholly, any-way.” Davina wrapped her arms around her-self. “Of course we have to be-lieve that our ac-tions mat-ter, and we should take re-spon-si-bil-ity for them. But evil deeds are not cre-ated in a vac-uum.”
There was a hawk-ish keen-ness to her in-tel-li-gence that I hadn’t ex-pected. It made me want to rise to meet it, and yet I found I had noth-ing of equal in-tel-lect to say. It was the same feel-ing I’d had back in Cam-ran’s of-fice—awe min-gled with an acute self-ha-tred.
But maybe it wasn’t self-ha-tred. Maybe it was re-gret. At the things I had wrongly pri-or-i-tized. I’d put so much value on my ex-te-rior that the in-te-rior had been sorely ne-glected. My thoughts had never been given enough space to broaden, to deepen, to de-velop long ten-drils of cu-rios-ity.
I was too busy just be-ing hun-gry.
When I thought about how I felt play-ing chess—the thrill of it, see-ing the per-fect move, a glit-ter-ing rush through my body that felt al-most like self-re-spect—that’s what I wanted more of. It felt re-ward-ing in a far deeper, more tex-tured way than thin-ness did. And when I was fenc-ing … it was so dif-fer-ent from run-ning, which felt like mo-not-o-nous pun-ish-ment. Fenc-ing was all adren-a-line: the eu-pho-ria of win-ning and los-ing. Joy for joy’s sake.
Things would be dif-fer-ent, I promised my-self.
If I got out of this alive, I would be dif-fer-ent.
“I guess we’ve both given each other some-thing tonight,” I said, voice rough with emo-tion.
“What’s that?” She sounded al-most bored by com-par-i-son.
“Per-mis-sion to for-give our-selves.”
She made a pfft noise. “Def-i-nitely not. I’d like you to keep beat-ing your-self up.” Yet there was some-thing lighter than usual in her voice—a kind of joc-u-lar-ity to her nor-mally acer-bic wit. A clown with a sad face painted on.
When I didn’t re-spond, she added hastily, “I’m kid-ding. You de-serve a bet-ter mum.” A long, taut beat; a drum-stick hov-er-ing over a cym-bal. “You de-serve to be loved.”
It was as though all the oxy-gen had been sucked from the room; as though my heart had been plucked from my chest by a di-vine hand. Some-thing dark and mor-bid in-side my-self mo-men-tar-ily healed.
Be-cause she had no rea-son to lie.
She had no rea-son to say some-thing like that to me.
And yet she had.
She had vo-cal-ized the one thing I had never truly be-lieved, be-cause the per-son who was sup-posed to love me with the fire of a thou-sand suns sim-ply did not care about my ex-is-tence ei-ther way. I’d al-ways felt like I’d failed some mys-te-ri-ous test as a child, and that the uni-verse would there-fore with-hold love from me for all eter-nity. A pun-ish-ment sim-ply for be-ing who I was. Be-yond all hope or re-demp-tion—un-less I could be per-fect.
And yet here was Davina, the girl who hated me more than any-one else had ever hated me be-fore, who had been on the re-ceiv-ing end of my great-est im-per-fec-tions, say-ing some-thing like that to me.
You de-serve to be loved.
The idea was dizzy-ing, in-tox-i-cat-ing, heady with pos-si-bil-ity.
Be-fore I could re-spond—al-though how could I ever re-spond to that?—she cra-dled my chin be-tween her thumb and fore-fin-ger, tugged my face gen-tly to-ward hers, and brushed her lips over mine.
What—?
Ev-ery-thing in me jolted. I was stunned by it, like a flash-bang had just gone off. Blind-ing light, ring-ing ears, a sense of dis-ori-en-ta-tion.
Pure, raw shock.
And then the ex-hil-a-ra-tion flooded in.