Chapter 5
“My namesake, yes.”
Faraday crouched before the gravestone, touching the letters. “Oh, that’s sad—this Jessica only made it to age nine.”
“That’s why. When Mortons die young, we use the name again. Like being reincarnated.”
“So sweet. Or maybe creepy?” Faraday looked up at me. “How do you feel about it?”
I decided to be honest. “I love her.”
“You love her? A dead kid.”
I nodded, feeling my old connection with the weathered stone. All those conversations when I was little: a space for my fears, my uncertainties. All the things I couldn’t say to the living.
“She never told on me.”
“Makes sense,” Faraday said. “Wait—this reincarnation thing is why you have those names!”
I looked at her. “Those names?”
“Next year I’m housemates with a Hopper, a Salinger, a Dutton, and an India.”
“And you’re a Faraday.”
“Exactly! While you legacy kids are all: Sebastian, Jessica, Xavier, Leopold. Like, who calls their kid Orrin?”
I gestured. “There’s an Orrin in the last row. The 1910s.”
“Of course there is.” Faraday said this with a smile, but shivered a little as she turned away. She walked down the row of headstones, reading out more names, like an incantation.
She’d need a proper drink when we got back to our rooms. But when the chill of the hidden graveyard faded, Faraday would recall how my family stretched into the past. There was solidity in this field of stones.
“Wait a second,” she said. “Nobody’s older than ten!”
“Yes.” The Little Graveyard was reserved for failures.
That Jessica was born under the old tradition, when children were culled if they couldn’t complete their mors curae.
Spare the rabbit, slay the child. No second chances back then.
Or rather, I was her second chance—the third, in fact. There was another Jessica farther up the hill, where the forest brush wasn’t cleared away, the end of the nineteenth century.
Being a Morton has never been easy.
I knelt before the grave, pulling a small weight from my pocket. The last of the stones I’d placed on the ledge of the Physics Lounge window, the one I hadn’t needed to throw.
When I’d gone back to check if the police had dusted the lounge for fingerprints—they hadn’t—it was still there.
I placed the stone above Jessica’s name.
“We made it.”
The other Jessicas would never feel what I felt now—this sense of completion. They’d lost their way.
I was finding mine.
Faraday had gone silent. I looked up at her.
“Sorry for staring,” she said.
“It’s okay, dear.” The connection between me and the ghosts was already fading.
“I know how close you and Peter were,” she said.
“Yes.” Killing is a kind of closeness.
I heard something in the barn, and turned.
Framed by the back door was a girl, nine years old. A fat white rabbit twitched in her arms, its pink eyes giving me a baleful stare.
“Mary,” I said. She’d grown since winter break.
“That’s my name.” She came toward us, the rabbit’s hind legs swinging. “Who’s that?”
I stood up, dusting my knees. “This is Faraday, my friend from college.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mary. Cute rabbit!”
Mary came to a halt, presented the creature. “Her name is Trotsky.”
“Ha!” Faraday smirked at me. “Should’ve known you were lefties, living on a commune like this.”
I didn’t explain that the connection was not political. Mary liked ice picks.
“She’s looking healthy,” I said.
Mary held the rabbit up high. “She’s heavy now, but I carry her everywhere. When I finally put her down, I’ll be stronger.”
“More fun than lifting weights,” Faraday said.
“You might see a few kids with rabbits this weekend,” I told her. “It’s a Morton thing, called a mors curae. You have to feed them, clean up after them, protect them from the dogs for a whole year. Like a baby.”
“Until her big day!” Mary cried.
Faraday smiled. “You’re such a responsible kid.”
Mary shifted the struggling Trotsky into the crook of her arm. She was staring at Faraday, studying what made her different from us.
“Were you looking for us?” I asked.
“Uh-huh. Uncle Cyrus wants you to visit.”
I looked at Faraday. “Peter’s father.”
“Peter died,” Mary said with gentle wonder.
Faraday gave her a soft smile. “Can I hold Trotsky?”
“I’m supposed to take care of her.”
“I promise to be very careful.”
Mary looked up at me, and I gave her a nod. She huffed a little sigh, then thrust the rabbit into Faraday’s waiting hands.
“We should go,” I said, taking Mary’s hand.
The three of us went through the barn again, out into the afternoon light.
Faraday walked behind us, exclaiming at Trotsky’s soft fur, her gentle barnyard smell, the twistiness of her attempts to escape. At first, Mary glanced over her shoulder at every squeak, but soon she settled into telling me the estate’s gossip.
Aunt Veronica had a new composite bow. Grandpa Dwight was angry at the deputy mayor, who was causing zoning trouble.
Some of the little kids were happy that Peter wouldn’t be bullying them anymore, but Mary missed him.
Uncle William had come back from an assignment very sad because he’d had to kill a barking dog.
“You’ve got a cuticle,” she said, rubbing at my fingertips with her free hand. “What if it snags your funeral clothes?”
“I’ll fix it before tomorrow.”
“No, me. Please?”
I glanced backward—Faraday was still entranced by Trotsky.
“Fine.”
Without breaking stride, Mary brought my ring finger to her mouth. Her face twisted into a bare-lipped smile, and I felt the small, sharp teeth close gently, searchingly.
There was a click.
She dropped my hand, and I could see her tongue moving in her mouth, worrying the little nubbin of hard flesh. Then she swallowed.
I rubbed my finger, wet but smooth.
“You don’t have a taste, Jessica.”
I patted her head. “You just didn’t get enough of me.”
“How do you think Trotsky will taste, on her big day?”
“Hmmm…like rabbit?”
Mary threw back her head and laughed. Her namesake in the second row would be the last in the Little Graveyard.
Slay the rabbit, spare the child.