Chapter 47
Mary Morton, seventh of her name, performed her mors curae on the grounds of the family estate, in the burned-out husk of the chapel.
As Sebastian and I approached the ruin, a full moon etched our shadows on the ground. The sky was clear, and it was close to midnight.
It had been five years since the fire. Fallen stones lay jumbled on the ground, worn smooth by rain, wildflowers sprouting between them. The remaining columns were still marked by smoke. The old steeple stood tall, braced by weathered wooden beams.
“Someone should get married here,” Sebastian said.
“Trotsky’s wearing white.”
“Not for long.” His smile was half-hearted.
We hadn’t spoken much since I’d picked him up the day before—not a word about our confessions, or his other family.
He looked grim, like he was the one killing a rabbit today.
“A flask to mark the occasion,” I said, pulling it out. Granduncle Otto’s from the 1920s, glass with a leather wrap. The brass cap shone in the moonlight.
“Thought booze didn’t go with your pills.”
“This one’s for you.” I handed it to him. “An Old Gal with Georgia Heartwood whiskey.”
He took a sip, and his smile turned genuine. “Barely horrible at all. We’re meeting in the middle.”
“Always,” I said, wondering if his twin sister shared his sweet tooth.
We entered the ruined chapel through what was left of the front archway. Its braces needed replacing, but the kids played tag in the ruin—the family didn’t want to coddle them by making it too safe.
Mary wasn’t here yet, but her stage was set. She’d swept clean a large rectangle where the altar had stood. The corners were marked with torches, already lit. A small table sat at its center.
“Is that Edwin’s phonograph stand?” I asked.
“We’ll be in trouble if she gets blood on it,” Sebastian said.
“Just me. I’m the auntie here.”
He made a mocking bow, but mentoring a curae was serious—especially with a child like Mary.
I went closer to the table. In the torchlight were a small pile of rabbit treats, a water bottle, and an ice axe.
I lifted the axe, designed for mountain climbing—one side a pick, the other an adze for digging snow. It looked brand new.
“The original Trotsky’s mode of death,” Sebastian said. “A history lesson doesn’t seem like Mary’s style.”
I rubbed my thumb across the point, which had been sharpened by hand.
“Fully in character,” I said.
“Oh dear,” came a voice from the front archway.
It was Gertie, a pet-carrying case in one hand. Thomas stood behind her, struggling with two lime-green valises.
Sebastian was as surprised as me.
“Gertie,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“One was invited.” She put the pet case down. A pair of red eyes flashed within. “It seemed rude not to attend.”
“Same.” Tom was looking anywhere that wasn’t me. “Got a note under my door yesterday. Asked me not to tell anyone.”
“Amazing,” I said.
For her audience, Mary had assembled the survivors of Uncle Max—the four of us left, anyway.
Gertie sighed. “If one had known the guest list, one mightn’t have brought a certain cat. Alas, one’s train was late, so here he is.”
“When did you start calling yourself one?” Tom asked.
“When she started a cult,” I said. “Do you think Mary ran any of this by the elders?”
“You’re the elders,” Sebastian said.
“Right.” And I’d never asked Mary for a list of witnesses.
This was already a shit show.
“Is that booze?” Tom asked, and Sebastian handed him the flask. He took a sip and grimaced. “Where is she, anyway?”
We all went silent.
Tom looked at his watch. “Do people ever miss their own curaes?”
“The genitive plural is curarum,” Sebastian said. “Used to happen all the time, back when the consequences for failing were higher.”
That long-ago Dwight, impaled on the old oak tree.
I took the flask from Tom and allowed myself the tiniest sip—smoked wood, gentian, and pecan pie. My first booze since the night of the crash. Strength for whatever was coming.
“Mary’s not the type for stage fright.” I took another sip. “She just wants to make a dramatic entrance.”
Those words, it seemed, were Mary’s cue.
The mors curae is a rite of passage, but also a declaration of personal style. Despite what the Lindqvists think of us, our ceremonies are often spiced with flair, comedy, or folly. A few are legendary.
Grandmother Elizabeth’s vintage laundry wringer, starting with the tail. Veronica’s copperhead, one animal in each bare hand. Cyrus’s purple neoprene glove, his glass stockpot of boiling water. Peter in goggles, so close to Mister Fluffernutter that a week later his ears still rang.
But it was still surprising when Mary appeared in costume.
I wasn’t sure what she was meant to be. Overalls and boots, a paddy cap, pulled from the family stores—everything too large for her.
She cradled Trotsky in her arms, more kindly than I’d ever seen her before. She didn’t wait for my introduction, just stood behind the table and began her declaration of care.
“This rabbit is my pride and joy.”
Tom and I settled ourselves on a stretch of broken wall. Gertie sat down on Uncle Max’s carrying case, always a bit uneasy when she was not the center of attention. Sebastian stayed standing and ready, as if expecting chaos.
I took another sip from the flask. An ounce or two wouldn’t kill me.
“I wanted to do this at night,” Mary said, “because I like talking to Trotsky in the dark. She’s a good listener. She doesn’t interrupt, and she shivers at the scary parts.”
Like me, whispering to the other Jessicas in bed.
“I listen to her too,” Mary said. “So I know that she likes dried blue cornflower, timothy grass, and red clover best of all.”
As she named each, she took a treat from the table and let the rabbit nibble at it. Despite its guest list, this was a proper curae so far.
Care, then death.
“She’s warm and soft in my arms. She smells like hay and grass and sometimes rabbit musk.” Mary’s voice had gone high and sweet. “She’s not like any other rabbit—because she’s mine.”
She eased Trotsky onto the table, slipped her hands out from underneath. The rabbit waddled across to snuffle at the remaining treats.
Mary took up the ice axe in both hands. It gleamed in the torchlight.
“But she’s a bunny.”
Red eyes flashed again from the carrying case beneath Gertie.
“Bunnies are weak. Bunnies don’t fight back. Bunnies have no idea when something bad is about to happen.”
I watched the rabbit—she ate contentedly, unaware of the change in Mary’s voice, the ice axe looming.
I tried to feel some connection, a bond that would snip when the pick came down. I tried to care about Trotsky the way I’d cared about Rabbit, so my weakness might ease a little when she died.
“Bunnies are dumb,” Mary said. “They can’t tell when someone they love, someone they trust, is about to kill them. It happens out of nowhere, like a knock on the door.”
A soft intake of breath came from Tom.
Mary looked at him and laughed. “Bunnies just sit there, while the whole world thinks about eating them.”
She looked at Sebastian.
“Bunnies let you cuddle them, even if you’re wearing gloves lined with some other bunny’s fur.”
She looked at Gertie.
“Bunnies don’t matter, no matter how much people love them.”
Then she looked at me.
“Because I love my little Trotsky more than anything, and today she gets a special treat.”
With a sweep of her arm, Mary flung the ice axe away into the dark. It crashed somewhere in the brush beyond the chapel’s broken walls.
She showed us her empty hands.
Change of plan.
The darkness tipped around me.
Had she decided to fail? Would Mary, out of all my little cousins, become a school counselor? A lawyer? A fixer of cars?
When I didn’t speak up, Sebastian did. “Mary, what’s happening?”
She was still gazing at me. Her eyes flickered in the torchlight, full of certainty.
Change of plan—that’s what the first text had read, in that small room in the Catskills. Then, while I was still staring at my phone, another:
She knows your last name.
Yes, that was the problem. My last name. My connection to Garrett, to Helshire, to the estate.
I had to snip that string.
“Whatever you decide is okay, Mary,” Sebastian said. He sounded relieved.
But another twist was coming, I could see it in her eyes.
“A very special treat for Trotsky,” Mary said, reaching beneath Edwin’s phonograph table.
A ripping sound as she pulled a larger axe into the light, adhesive trailing from its handle—it had been taped to the bottom of the table. A felling axe.
The kind that hangs on the wall of a woodshed.
Tom made a sound, and so did Gertie’s cat, two moaning cries that wound together in the dark. The rabbit looked up from its food at last, whiskers twitching in the firelight.
“Fuck,” Gertie said. “Tobias, Ruby, Olive, Tillie, Zachary, Katie, Yvonne.”
“Trotsky,” Sebastian said. “TROTZKY.”
Both of them turned pleading stares at me. I was the auntie here.
But I was helpless—like when Grandmother’s orders had come.
Mutual kills are difficult to stage, she’d written, before I’d even grasped the other texts. Murder-suicide is simpler.
“This is our big day,” Mary cried, raising the axe high. “So I want it to be amazing!”
The moonlit axe came down. Not a squeak, not a squelch from the rabbit, just the thunk of metal biting wood. A gasp from Tom.
The blade stuck fast into the wood; the handle quivered with glee.
Mary reached down and lifted Trotzky’s severed head into the air. She turned it to face her, and began to scream at it.
“Do you still see me? Can you feel this? Does your little rabbit brain still love me? I love you too!”
Acid rushed into my mouth. I tipped forward, falling from the broken wall onto my hands and knees. A heaving wave went through my body, expelling everything in my stomach onto the cold hard stones. The burn of dinner, of bile, of whiskey.
An instant later, Sebastian was by my side.
“What’s wrong?” Hiromi asked, as Grandmother’s final text came in:
Fides sine cura.
The butterfly knife, ready to cut away that piece of me. She was gone forever.
I heaved again. Tears blurred my vision.
“Jessica!” Thomas cried, halfway across the stones to us.
Sebastian’s hands on my shoulders. Mary shouting at the rabbit head, laughing at the stars. Uncle Max shrieking in his carrier at the scent of fresh blood.
That small room, smelling of rust and panic.
“It’s her medicine,” Sebastian said to the others. “From the crash. She wasn’t supposed to drink.”
I’d taken three sips.
With his arms around me, I let myself fall into gravity’s dark well. I focused on breathing, on drawing the chill night air into my acid mouth.
When I could see again, the other three survivors were crowded around me. Mary stood a few feet away, on tiptoes atop a large stone, peering down. Her hands were soaked, her face streaked with blood. She was dressed, I saw now, as some antique Morton—a child’s idea of Uncle Max.
She was still laughing, until Sebastian pointed a finger at her.
“Enough!” he cried, and she fell silent.
But as the others wiped my face, dribbled water on my lips, lifted me up from my scraped knees, Mary mouthed a word at me.
Bunny.