Chapter 42
The next time I woke up, I smelled Faraday.
Her scent stood out against the background of hospital antiseptics: her lemon shampoo, her mother’s perfume. The hit of weed she smoked whenever she had to deal with bureaucracies or elevators.
“Hello, dear,” I said.
“She lives!”
My eyes opened to find her in one of the visitor’s chairs, which she’d tugged into a slant of afternoon sun. Faraday’s smile glittered, striking the bell of my constant headache.
“For the moment,” I said.
“Don’t be silly, dear. It’s just a bump on the head.” She waved a hand at the machines, the tubes. “All this is precautionary, one of your aunts told me.”
“Someone told me I had a seizure, from my brain swelling.”
“Nothing’s swollen but your nose, dear.” Her smile slipped a little. “And those lovely cheekbones are missing. To be completely honest, I had to check the room number twice.”
My face had changed, perhaps permanently. All the better for the disappearance of Jessica Anderson.
Me, transformed into not-me.
“Am I unsightly?”
“I’m mostly sad about your hair.” She leaned forward to take my hand, the last of her shiny cheer evaporating. “My god, Jessica. When Sebastian called, I almost lost it.”
“Sebastian.”
“He called me the moment he found out. The poor sweetie—he sounded so upset.” She glanced at the door to my room. “I haven’t seen him yet.”
“Me either.” Just the dream Sebastian, who was still sad about Peter. He’d come again the night before, telling me I was forgiven. “How long have I been here?”
“Three days. You were on your way back from the city. You, Cyrus, and a tree?”
“Three days.” It felt like less time than that. It felt like much, much more.
“Don’t worry, Jessica. You’re going to get better. Your face will go back to normal. Those scars on your head will be covered by hair.”
“Mortons always heal,” I said.
A pent-up sigh eased from her. “You simply have to, my dear. I can’t imagine doing any of this without you. Not senior year, not graduation. And especially not…this.”
Her hand went to the breast pocket of her linen jacket, where a neatly folded pocket square peeked out—crimson and excruciating in the sun.
She hadn’t earned that red. (I had earned mine.)
“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll always take care of you.”
And your children, and your children’s children.
“You already are.” The smile returned to her face. “I bumped into a certain former business partner the other day.”
The events of two weeks ago reassembled in my head: Thomas’s first wrack, Bianca following me, Gertie’s anger, Uncle Max launching out the window—all of it clear and shiny, from the time before the dark swirl of the accident, when everything made sense.
“He popped up at a christening.” She gave a smirk. “I knew he’d be there.”
“Did he behave?”
“He positively scurried.”
“Good.”
Faraday leaned closer, her voice dropping. “But you must explain, dear. Is that all it really took?”
I shook my aching head. “What?”
“His little finger was in a cast—the tiniest cast, with a Velcro contraption to keep it straight. Like a mouse with a broken leg!”
“Faraday.”
She ignored my tone. “Seriously, all you did was snap his pinky? Is that the fountainhead of the Mortons’ awesome power?”
I gave her my stare, empty behind the eyes. “Don’t ask about this again.”
Faraday held my gaze, her smile unwavering.
For the first time, my mother’s stare wasn’t working. My head was too addled, too swollen with stray thoughts.
“It’s not what we do, but how,” I said.
“Well, I’m not going to spill your terrible secret.” She tugged at her own pinky, till the joint gave a little pop.
For a moment, she looked like Grandmother—the ashen shadow, the upside-down eyes, that cool and ancient smile.
Then she shimmered back into Faraday.
“Are you okay, dear?”
“Sometimes I don’t know where I am.” I’d been thrown through the windshield into some other world.
She patted my hand. “You’re right here, with me.”
“But it’s different now.”
“They’ll fix you,” Faraday said. “And if they can’t, you’ll fix yourself.”
I woke up late that night, or some other night.
The windows were pitch black, the room lights dimmed. At last, I could open my eyes without pain. The hallway was quiet, and the machines around me lay in peaceful slumber. The cannula in my arm was gone.
When I sat up, my rib cage hurt, but it was a simple, honest ache—like I’d been punched. I could deal with punches.
I shoved aside the thin hospital blankets and swung my feet out.
The mass of my body was jumbled, my head weightless, my limbs full of sand. The floor of the hospital room seemed too far away. On my unsteady path to the bathroom, gravity pooled unevenly.
At last I was peeing, grateful for how little coordination the paper robe required. Hanging inside the door was my dressing gown from home, and I’d spotted slippers back by the bed.
Maybe I could take a walk.
My robe smelled of the estate—cedar chests, alfalfa blossoms—but the slippers were hospital issue. Too small, they left my heels brushing the cold floor. Gravity had evened out, at least.
I shuffled, toes clutching the precarious slippers, into the hall.
I recalled my first moments awake, afraid of something terrible waiting outside my room. But there was nothing scary about this hallway. A shiny tile floor, too much light, an unattended desk at the far end.
With one hand on the wall, I started walking—away from the desk. I didn’t want anyone ushering me back to bed. It was a relief to move my muscles.
The doors to the patient rooms were open, allowing glimpses of sleeping, unguarded figures, machines in various states—alight, pulsing, gently hissing.
It felt good to be the only one awake, the way it felt to walk among ordinaries. I’d missed this sense of my own power.
The hallway ended at a large window that looked out over a parking lot. I leaned against the cool glass to catch my breath. A smattering of cars clustered near the bright halo of the intake doors, but the rest of the lot was vacant.
The emptiness out there made me feel abandoned. I wished my family would take me back to the estate, to the world I understood.
My reflection stared back from the glass—hair raggedly shorn, shaved in places, centipedes of staples rippling my scalp. The fading scratches on my face unearthed memories of being pushed from an SUV. Between tired eyes, my nose was bulbous and bruised.
Push it under your feet.
You’re. Just. Meat.
I wondered if Uncle Cyrus had any bruises.
No, wait. He was just Cyrus now.
And I was Aunt Jessica…
I turned from the window, the floor aslant, the air too thin. Halfway back to my room, I veered to one side, reaching out to steady myself against a doorframe.
A soft noise came from inside the room. Sprawled on the bed was Bellamy, the little girl who’d visited me.
She lay tangled in her blanket, one pale leg thrust over the edge of her bed. I saw pink scars where pins and rods had gone into her knee.
It pained me to see her asleep—so thin, so delicate, a child made of eggshells. I still felt the strings connecting us, her fragility plucking at my bones.
Cancer, she’d said. The spreading rot that had hollowed out my Aunt Eunice when I was twelve, leaving her ashen, gaunt, weak. And then gone.
Mortons don’t always heal.
I could shuffle closer, here in the dark, and break this defenseless child so easily. Switch off her machines, snuff her out with a pillow. Snip those hundred humming strings that connected us. Kill this weakness, like a rabbit.
Like my Rabbit.
“Miss?” came a gentle voice.
I turned to face the nurse in the hall, happy to look anywhere that was not the breakable child.
“You’re up!” she enthused in a whisper. “Good work, but let’s get you back to bed.”
“Good idea,” I said, and offered her my arm.