Chapter 46
Over the next few weeks, I tried to be the perfect Morton.
I trained in the gym, at the obstacle course, on the climbing cliffs.
I swam every day to keep my ribs loose, to regain the muscles lost in my hospital bed.
I took my little cousins on cross-country runs, taught them celestial navigation, and formed them into teams for Battle Tag, exchanging flurries of foam-tipped arrows in the old barn.
I didn’t cry when I listened to music, no matter how it cut my heart.
I slept on my left side, easing my broken nose into its new shape. Day by day, I looked less like the grainy photos of Jessica Anderson that had appeared in the media. I kept my hair short, reshaped my eyebrows.
I pulled my own staples out.
On my morning runs past the Barrow Marsh, I ignored the acceleration in my step, the way the sky seemed to darken. It was just another stretch of reeds, marked by a few patches where wildflowers grew in strange profusion.
I wrote no letters to Bellamy.
When the estates’ pack leader, Rader, got runny eyes and vomiting spells—signs of canine distemper—I gathered the little cousins to say goodbye, then slit his throat with Aunt Beatrice’s gelding knife.
Under my watchful gaze, not one of them shed a tear.
We were all perfect Mortons.
But my family still tested me. They woke me up at three a.m. for fight drills, checked my startle response with flash grenades, and let me free-climb after only a week back home.
Veronica tutted with disappointment when my aim grew worse, arrows falling short, flying over, sticking crookedly in the outer rings, the center always eluding me.
I didn’t even try to throw knives.
I took my brain pills every day.
My memories didn’t return though. The days before the crash remained splinters. I still hadn’t been told to report for a debriefing.
After Sebastian went back to Albany, we began to text again. We never mentioned our estrangement, his forgiveness. For the first time, our thread was full of photos—sunsets on the estate, the best pastrami sandwiches in Albany, my new haircut.
We also discussed Mary’s upcoming mors curae. She was doing well in her lessons—dance and pain resistance in particular. Despite our fears of another Mister Fluffernutter, she was sticking true to Trotsky’s namesake, dispatching the rabbit with an ice axe.
I found myself looking forward to the end of summer: Sebastian coming home, returning to Helshire, even Mary’s curae. Maybe that was what I needed now.
Another death of care.
I ignored the warning on my pill bottle and drove to pick Sebastian up at the train station.
He was back from Albany for good, and his luggage included an unMorton quantity of suitcases, garments bags, even a hat box.
I looked at the pile. “You were expecting Orrin.”
“We’ll manage,” he said, his smile buffed to a high gloss. He was still in his Albany clothes: a red power tie, a dark blazer bought from a store.
I hoisted two suitcases and headed toward the parking lot.
Everything fit into the old Beamer—somehow—and soon we were on the road. We drove in silence for a while, the windows open, the first hints of autumn in the air.
We were still connected—those strings that tried to pull my heart out when the right music played. Sebastian was beautiful, and I knew now that beautiful things could hurt.
“You look different,” he finally said. “Not just the hair.”
“It’s the nose.”
“From the crash? Or did the doctors do something?”
It took a moment to answer. I wasn’t sure how intentional my new nose had been. The pictures of me that had popped up in the media were grainy and out of focus, taken in a dark, crowded restaurant. The police didn’t consider me a suspect—just a loose end.
But Mortons didn’t permit loose ends.
“Don’t you like it?” I asked.
“It has a certain rakish charm. Like you’ve had a few bar fights.”
“That’s high praise, from Mr. Rakish Charm himself.”
“I have never been in a bar fight.”
“Albany was a waste, then.”
Sebastian laughed at this, reaching for the dials of the Beamer’s radio. I flicked his hand away.
He looked at me. When we were little, we’d sneak out to the garage to listen to the car radios. It was our only unmonitored connection to the outside world, the only place that songs and stories came flowing in without elders providing commentary, warning us against sentiment.
“Headache,” I said.
“Have you told Uncle Harold? You have to be careful, after a car crash.”
“It’s not the concussion,” I said, wishing I could tell him that my head only hurt when music was beautiful. Even then, it was my heart that suffered most. “I had a long morning of yowling.”
“Pain resistance?”
“Fifteen new puppies. Lady Borden was early.”
“They must be beauties,” he sighed. “Too bad we can’t have pets at Helshire.”
“Tell that to Gertie. Though one supposes Uncle Max isn’t coming back this year.”
“Oh, he is.”
I looked at Sebastian.
“She told me about your little affray,” he said. “Turns out, felines can survive a fall at terminal velocity.”
“Shouldn’t terminal velocity be…terminal?”
He shrugged. “Maybe Uncle Max only has eight lives left.”
“Seven,” I said.
Both of us laughed at that for a while, the road rumbling under our tires, the sun sinking low enough to flicker through the trees. Juniper scents began to replace the stench of paper mills.
No matter how much I’d changed, home still smelled like home.
“I missed you this summer,” Sebastian said.
You had my number. I was three hours away.
“Missed you too.”
“It wasn’t fair, blaming you.” He put his head back, closing his eyes. “It wasn’t blame, really. I just had to hurt someone—for Peter. Do you understand?”
“Sebastian, why do you think I burned down Halcyon Hall?”
He smiled. “As a glorious tribute? That bomb was so beautiful. It would’ve been a shame to waste it.”
“More than a bomb—an engine of destruction.” I thought of those sparkling flames every time it rained.
Sebastian was watching the passing trees. “Peter told me something once. He was afraid of letting his anger out. Becoming dangerous.”
“Cousin,” I said. “We are all dangerous.”
“Peter was scared of becoming another Uncle Max.”
“Oh.” All those small animals, their skins, their bones, their eggs. His bullying of younger kids. The chapel, set aflame. His engine of destruction, target unknown.
“Maybe that explains him,” Sebastian said. “All his demerits, from Mister Fluffernutter on, were a way of saving the rest of us.”
“He wanted to be culled? Suicide-by-Grandma?”
Sebastian nodded. “His death was on Elizabeth, and the rest of them—not you. That’s why I forgive you in advance, if you ever get me as an assignment.”
The car swerved a little, though my hands were tight on the wheel.
“Sebastian.”
“Don’t tell me it’s impossible.”
“That was Peter. We’re different.”
“Even prodigies screw up,” he said. “I have a confession to make.”
I let out a sigh. “You told the Lindqvists about Yvonne, Tobias, Zach, Tillie, Katie, Olive, and Ramsey.”
Sebastian was silent for a long moment. The sun was behind the hills now, and the tempest of our open windows had grown cold.
“Who else knows?” he finally asked.
“Gertie told me. I’ve told no one.”
“Thank fuck.”
“It’ll come out, sooner or later.”
“I swear, Jess, Bianca had half guessed already. Seven kids, and we never had a funeral. We all just pretended they never existed!”
“That’s not the same as the Lindqvists knowing who did it,” I said.
Uncle Max. My father.
Sebastian crumpled in his seat. “I couldn’t help it, Jess.”
I dropped a hand from the wheel, took hold of his. “You should’ve burned down a building. Or killed someone for cutting in line. That’s how we process these days.”
“No time for a Hefnd. Too much going on this year.”
“Such as?”
He didn’t answer, but I didn’t have the right to press, not after the secrets I’d kept from him. I owed him the truth.
“I have a confession too.”
Sebastian looked at me.
“Something’s happened, since the crash. I’m not sure I’m still a true Morton.”
That politicking smile. “You’re the best of us. In every way.”
I shook my head, wanting to tell him that music was on fire now. But that might just be a hallucination—something my pills would eventually cure.
There was only one unforgivable thing.
“There was this girl in the hospital, an ordinary girl. She was dying, I think, and there wasn’t much the doctors could do.”
“And?”
My hands were tight on the wheel. “I worry about her every night. I’m afraid for her. Sebastian, I care about her.”
“Oh,” was all he said.
In silence, we went through Upper Falls, along the old brickyards, then by the oak tree where Cyrus and I had crashed. You could still see the gouges in the bark, like the claw marks of some giant bird.
“One more confession before we get home,” he said. “Freshman year, I looked up my birth family.”
“Your…” It took a moment for the words to click.
I’d always known that Sebastian had parents who weren’t Mortons, imprisoned for their blood-soaked crimes, leaving him in the foster system to be rescued by us.
But a family? Aunts and uncles? Strangers who called him cousin?
To me he’d been a foundling: appearing from nowhere, the rival and ally I hadn’t known I needed.
“I have a twin sister, a younger brother.”
“A twin?” I remembered him playing the twin game with Gertie when we were little. Trying to play it with me. “There’s someone out there who looks like you?”
“A softer version. Desiree never had my rage.”
I shook my head. The world had no other versions of Sebastian.
He pointed ahead at Orrin, waiting for us at the gate. Confessions were over.
“One last thing,” he said. “Do you forgive me too? In advance?”
“Yes. For what though?”
He didn’t answer.