Chapter 35
“Where’s your husband?” asked Sloane, stepping foot once more into The Country Wife’s farmhouse.
There was fresh paint on the walls, a new wall of built-in bookcases that had been decorated—that was the only word for it, more so than shelved or stocked—with an ombre pastel palette of coordinated spines.
“Oh, locked in the basement,” said Caroline. “I mainly just go down there for sex or when I need the Wi-Fi unplugged and plugged in again.”
“Oh,” said Sloane faintly, and Caroline fixed her with a look of supreme condescension.
“I’m joking,” said Caroline. “He’s out to dinner with a client.”
“What does he do?” Sloane wandered the living room, looking at the books.
The titles were all familiar. She recognized some book club bestsellers, some mainstream nonfiction, a few sci-fi classics that Sloane remembered reading in school.
She had the sense that despite the curated arrangement, Caroline had actually read them all.
“Internal audits,” said Caroline. “It’s dull as shit. He’s funny, though.” The last bit was faint, pulled from her like teeth, despite being unsolicited.
“You actually like your husband?” Sloane turned to look at Caroline as she asked, amused.
“I’m not just using him, if that’s what you’re implying.
” For the first time, Caroline seemed a little bit guarded, as if Sloane had uncovered something horrific or maybe even repulsive—more repulsive than being fed human heart.
“He’s got a great cock and he’s nice to animals. All in all, I’ve got no complaints.”
Sloane turned back to the books. “Is it really that shameful for you to admit you’re in love with the man you married?”
With a jolt, she ran a finger down the spine of her first book. The name Sloane Hartley gleamed in tiny, unimportant letters.
“I don’t find it shameful. I just don’t expect it to last.” Caroline gave a disaffected shrug.
“You know, I remember thinking that marriage was kind of scary at first,” Sloane mused aloud. “It changes shape, and that can be alarming.”
“Are you honestly trying to give me advice?” Caroline barked a laugh. “Your husband is cheating on you.”
Sloane froze, her hand still curled in the air from where she’d been fondly stroking the ghost of herself, the spine of her work. Then she turned sharply. “How do you know that?”
“By looking at you.” Caroline’s aggressive, predatorial smirk was back. “You don’t like your husband anymore. But for some reason, you’re trying to teach me something. Why, because you’re older? So you’re supposed to know something I don’t?”
Sloane shook her head. “I couldn’t get comfortable at first,” she said, unsure why she was disclosing any of this.
Only that she felt too tired to play games.
“For a long time, I didn’t really believe he was going to love me forever.
For years I was as happy as I could be while still half expecting him to leave.
” She stopped. “I think it’s why I took things on that …
I don’t know. It seemed like maybe he’d love me more, I guess, if I just became everything he needed.
If I took better care of him than me. I think that’s what backfired on me in the end.
I taught him exactly how to neglect me.”
“Oh my god,” said Caroline, wrinkling her nose. “Stop. This isn’t even sad. It’s just gross.”
“I came here because I wanted to ask you about the ritual,” Sloane said, rolling her eyes internally at this literal child, who would either learn one day to be grateful for what she had for the time that she had it or she would simply eat her husband, and either way it made no real difference to Sloane. “How does it work?”
“Like any form of hunting,” said Caroline, her eyes big and deep when they looked at Sloane.
Sloane was beginning to understand this was Caroline’s face of interest, and the one she made when she was waiting for a reaction.
“You don’t want gunpowder residue in the meat.
You don’t want something that’s been dead for a long time.
You want the slaughter to be efficient and humane.
We usually stun them first, then slit the throat.
Oh, and a restraint system is critical. Don’t want to waste the blood, that’s valuable.
Don’t want to bruise the carcass either, that’s bad for the meat. ”
“When you say ‘we,’” Sloane began, and Caroline shrugged.
“I told you, I learned all this from Alex,” she said. “She’s the one who came up with the ritual.”
As if by magic, there was a knock at the farmhouse’s front door.
“Did you call her here tonight?” asked Sloane with a sigh.
“Yep,” said Caroline, waltzing leisurely to the front door. “Like I’d speak to you without my lawyer present,” she muttered, followed by an eye roll that Sloane already knew Isla would give her millions of one day.
Caroline opened the door, and Alex stepped inside the farmhouse with a tired expression on her face. “You’re driving back this time,” she said to Sloane without preamble, and to Caroline, she said, “What’s for dinner?”
“Coq au vin,” said Caroline.
Alex nodded approvingly. “A classic.”
“Is it actually coq au vin?” asked Sloane.
“Dude, if you can’t tell the difference between chicken stew and dismembered human, that’s on you,” said Caroline.
Alex sat down beside Sloane at the kitchen island. Caroline moved blithely around the kitchen, gathering iridescent wineglasses. There was a new lightness to her performance, like someone gladly showing off.
“This is beautiful glassware,” murmured Alex.
“Thanks, I’ll send you the link,” said Caroline, pouring a bottle of glittery, sanguine Zinfandel first into Alex’s glass, and then Sloane’s.
Alex raised her glass to her lips, draining it. Then she turned to look at Sloane.
“I heard about your husband,” she said.
“Mm,” said Sloane, taking an extravagant pull from her own glass. It would be a long drive, but she suspected it would be a long meal, too. “It’s just a sabbatical. To work on his book.”
“That’s good—that means they have no proof.” Alex nodded approvingly, just as she had to the menu. “Unsubstantiated rumors.”
“Yeah. It’s great.” Sloane took another drink. “I’m the wife of the man with unsubstantiated rumors and there’s a house full of young women in my care.”
“Could always serve him as a nice roast,” said Caroline cheerily. “I’ve got a great rub for that.”
“I don’t think Dr. Hartley wants to talk about our little proclivities, Caro,” murmured Alex.
“Actually, I was just asking Caroline about the ritual.” Sloane turned to face Alex. “I want to know something. And honestly, I’d love to hear your answer.”
Alex shrugged. “Hit me.”
“Are you happy?” asked Sloane. “Like, does it work?”
“What, the ritual?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you mean me specifically, or…?”
“I mean all of you. The House,” said Sloane. “Are you actually different from me? I guess I’m including you in that,” she acknowledged to Caroline, who winked at her over her glass. “I want to know if it’s real. Or if it’s just another fucking VidStar trend.”
Caroline refilled Alex’s glass, and Alex swirled it contemplatively, twice, before looking back up at Sloane.
“Like I said, no member of The House has died of any illness since the ritual began,” she said.
“Nobody has ever gotten Botox or any other reconstructive surgery, either. Nobody wears glasses or has carpal tunnel and the pregnancies were all safely delivered and nausea-free. We all have the careers we wanted—including Caroline,” said Alex with a toast in her direction, “who, as you know, is a serial killer with 4.5 million followers.”
“My dream ever since I was a little girl,” Caroline contributed wistfully.
“So then it works,” said Sloane, breathing out. “It actually works.”
Alex pinched the bridge of her nose as if to contemplate something, or to still her swimming thoughts.
Her eyes darted to Sloane’s, a look of concern passing over them.
“Is this for your book? Because I think even the social sciences require a longer period of experimentation. Of course nobody has died of any illness; the oldest members who’ve completed the ritual are in their mid-thirties. I’d hardly call it conclusive.”
“You do it anyway, though, right? You believe in it?”
Alex’s knee jiggled apprehensively. Again she seemed to look warily at Sloane, as if she saw something on Sloane’s face that worried her. “Wherever you’re going with this, Sloane—”
“I have a daughter,” said Sloane. “Someday she’s going to be a woman.”
Alex grimaced. “I know.”
“I can’t give her this world, you know?” Sloane felt like she was pleading, and maybe she was.
Neither Alex nor Caroline seemed able to look at her.
“The world where you fall in love but then he fucks teenagers. The world where the dean cuts your hours because he doesn’t understand VidStar and then you die just to get out of your debts. ”
“World’s fucked, Sloane,” Alex confirmed with a shrug.
“It’s why I tell The Girls they have to go far, as far as possible.
It’s not about girlbossing or whatever the shit Fawn Carter thinks I’m trying to enforce.
It’s about being in the room where the decisions are made.
It’s about doing whatever it takes to break down that door and let others follow. ”
“You have so much time,” Sloane said wistfully, looking at Caroline. “So much time.”
Caroline’s brow furrowed, her eyes darting to Alex with something that looked to be a wordless cry for help.
Sloane understood, then, that Caroline was just a tiny little baby.
Just a sweet little girl who happened to be clinically deranged.
Why, then, was she looking at Sloane like she was the crazy one?
“You shouldn’t eat everyone you kill,” Sloane said to her, gently.
“You’ll get some incurable brain disease. ”
“I don’t,” said Caroline, looking at Alex again. “I already know about kuru. And I don’t eat human brains, I’m not a fucking zombie—”