Chapter 25
“What kind of meat is this?” Sloane felt herself reaching behind her for her purse, unsure what exactly the move would be from here.
Did she really believe Caroline was dangerous?
Yes, actually, she did, though it seemed sillier and sillier, feeling threatened by this girl in a white linen dress.
White! Did she actually cook in white linen? Was that somehow the most insane part?
Never mind, Sloane thought as Caroline reached down with the opulent pitchfork, selecting a particularly moist-looking slice of meat. She nudged it, letting the liquid ooze out, candy-colored, as Sloane took another step in retreat. Caroline herself was definitely the most insane part.
“Just tell me,” Sloane felt herself plead, and Caroline laughed, raising the pitchfork to her lips.
“Do you really think I get clear skin from a water bottle?” Caroline asked. “That my hair’s this fucking shiny because of some shampoo that anyone can buy on ?”
“What the fuck did you give me?” Sloane felt sure she was going to vomit. She gagged again, this time on the sense that whatever still lived in her throat might vengefully resurrect.
“It’s a common historical ritual, you know,” said Caroline, swirling the wine in her glass as Sloane retched dangerously into her palm.
“The ancient Egyptians believed blood was an elixir. The Germans believed drinking blood from a wise person meant ingesting their wisdom—not to mention the myriad health benefits of the organs themselves. And surely you’ve heard of women who eat their own placenta?
Lots of mammals do it,” Caroline said sweetly.
“It’s because the body naturally offers you exactly what you need. ”
“Stop,” Sloane said into her hand, retching perilously again as the door behind them opened and slammed shut. “Oh god—”
“Caroline.” The sudden materialization of another voice in the room was so shocking to Sloane she managed to swallow her forthcoming vomit. “For fuck’s sake.”
“Oh, Alex!” Caroline exclaimed, with a gleeful, put-on voice of girlish innocence. “I suppose you decided to join us after all. Wine?” she offered pleasantly.
Sloane looked up to find Alex standing beside the door of Caroline’s farmhouse with her arms tightly crossed, a look of annoyance etched explicitly across her face.
“Get in the car,” Alex said to Sloane, her eyes still fixed on Caroline. “Now.”
“What? Fuck no.” Sloane shuddered, the brine of her own stomach acid now curdling on her tongue.
“Get in the car,” Alex repeated, her eyes sliding sharply to Sloane, “now. We’re leaving.”
Sloane gagged again, desperate for water, unsure whether anything here could be trusted. “No way,” she rasped. “My car is here, and if you think I’m going anywhere with you—”
“It’s beef heart,” Alex snapped, her impatience a sudden, horrific surge of perspective—the disappointment of a mother rather than the unhinged rantings of a maybe-cannibal.
For a moment, Sloane was able to recall a thread of sensations she’d always hated, like realizing it was April Fool’s Day, or the third night with no contact after having trusted that a boy would call you back.
From behind the kitchen island, Caroline let out a bray of a laugh at Sloane’s expense.
“She’s just fucking with you, dumbass,” said Alex flatly. “Get in the car, okay? I’ll get your car for you tomorrow. You’re in shock, you shouldn’t be driving.”
It was true, Sloane was in no position to drive.
The new-old reminder, the one that had been there ever since Isla’s birth, rang out again in Sloane’s head: the fact that she could not die, she simply couldn’t.
She had to come home to Isla or who would raise her daughter, who would comfort her, who would protect her from harm, who would teach Isla how to be?
Who would tell Isla who Sloane had been, and how could Isla ever know how hard and desperately Sloane had tried to do right by her if Sloane threw her life away now?
Alex was here, a new character in Sloane’s waking nightmare, for better or worse, and thank god she was.
Sloane wanted to crumble with relief. She felt like a child, but for a moment, there was something beautiful in that.
What she wanted most desperately then was for Alex to take her away, to stroke her hair, to tell her the monsters under her bed weren’t real.
Her hands were shaking, she felt impotently nauseated, cold chills still running up and down her spine.
How could she be a mother when she was still just an idiot baby? How could she get up every morning and not sob to death over being so fucking dumb?
Sloane picked up her purse and did what she was told. She walked silently to the door, Caroline’s laughter unignorable behind her. “Bon appétit, Dr. Hartley,” Caroline called again at Sloane’s back, and Sloane shuddered.
Alex’s hand gripped her shoulder, hard, once she came within reach. “I’ll explain everything in the car,” Alex said in a low voice.
Sloane said nothing, only climbing obediently into the passenger’s side of Alex’s electric SUV.
Alex got into the driver’s side, starting the car and cranking the heat. Sloane still felt like she might throw up if she opened her mouth. Alex’s car smelled familiar, clean, and alive. In the backseat was Theo’s car seat, his toys.
Alex was real, Sloane realized. Alex was a normal person, and Caroline was not. The nightmare was slowly fading.
“It’s my fault,” Alex muttered to herself, reversing out of Caroline’s driveway.
“I knew you were a little too curious about Caroline, but I just—” She sighed.
“I thought if you just spoke to some of the others … I don’t know.
I guess I thought you’d lose interest.” She paused, then shook her head with a scoff.
“Nah. I just trusted you. That’s on me.”
Sloane said nothing.
“Caroline’s a problem,” Alex acknowledged after another moment, leaning onto her left elbow as she guided the steering wheel with her right hand.
They’d pulled into the remote country road Sloane had taken earlier while it was still light out, which seemed eerier now than it had on the drive in. “I’m handling it.”
“You’re handling it?” Sloane felt herself speak without realizing she’d meant to, her voice almost slurred when it finally came out. “I really thought she was giving me, you know. Human heart.”
She knew how ridiculous she sounded; how little she could explain the sense that had nonetheless lodged deeply in her soul that something about Caroline’s behavior was dangerously off, and that Sloane’s sense of wrongness about Caroline had come from the same place as her unshakeable curiosity about The House.
But then, that was exactly what Caroline had wanted her to believe, wasn’t it?
Maybe what had driven Sloane to investigate The House had nothing to do with sociology—or everything to do with it.
Maybe it was born from the usual instinct women had to hate each other, to sniff out the other, the weakness, the root cause of envy that invariably became the thing that didn’t belong.
Maybe Sloane, too, was a vessel for the patriarchal flaw that meant a group of inordinately successful women simply had to be doing something unnatural.
Maybe it was a resentment so natural and socially programmed that Sloane hadn’t needed more than a prank to be convinced she’d been right to judge.
Still, she couldn’t shake it. The feeling like she’d finally found the sticky gear in the overall workings of the fallacy—the thing that logically hadn’t fit between The Girls who entered The House and The Women who came out.
Its skeletons. Its sins.
“I know it’s stupid,” Sloane sighed, “but for a second, I really believed her. She didn’t seem crazy. She seemed—”
“She was fucking with you,” Alex said again, confidently.
“But can you prove that? Because I’ve never eaten anything like that.” Sloane shuddered. “And you didn’t see her face when she was talking about the ancient fucking Egyptians.”
Alex didn’t answer. Sloane felt her cheeks heat with something, some desire for an appropriate counterweight.
For Alex to be angry, either at Sloane or at Caroline, to react in some extreme way because it was what the moment was owed.
“I mean, what a prank, right? It seems so … so … I don’t know, it just doesn’t make sense!
” Sloane blurted out, interrupting herself.
“Why would she do that to me? What problem did she have with me?”
“It’s not you.” Sloane caught the motion of Alex’s jaw tensing in the low glimmer of a rare passing streetlight.
“It’s me, Sloane. It’s a tantrum, that’s all.
She told me you were coming. I would’ve been there sooner, but my usual babysitter was booked and I had to drop Theo off at Britt’s—anyway.
” Alex’s mouth tightened. “The point is, it’s not you, it’s me.
” She paused, drumming her fingers on the wheel. “And anyway, I was going to tell you.”
“Tell me what, exactly?” Sloane said with a tired, sardonic grumble. “That Caroline’s crazy, or that all this time you’ve been commiserating with me and playing with my baby and encouraging my research, you’ve actually been running a sorority house full of cannibals?”
It sounded so ridiculous out loud. Too ridiculous.
And yet what had Caroline said? That it wasn’t water that kept her skin clear? What a weird—honestly, what a fucking diabolical thing to say. It was unhinged, it was deranged, it was actively fucking stupid.
The one thing it hadn’t sounded like was a lie.
Alex rolled her eyes, which Sloane took as temporarily bolstering, even if all evidence should have suggested it really, profoundly wasn’t.