Chapter 72
Xavier was the perfect sacrifice.
His own actions confirmed his guilt: He’d helped me cover up Crystal’s death. He’d committed a murder without family approval, but also without passion, without vengeance. Pleading a Hefnd would do him no good. His only excuse was his long-standing crush on me—a confessed traitor to my own family.
Regina Lindqvist was safe.
Kumar and Leopold had fled, I was certain now. When Grandmother came to visit a few days later, she didn’t press me to name anyone else.
All she wanted was Sebastian.
“He was a precious jewel,” she said, staring at her knitting. “We educated him, clothed him, trained him. We gave him our name, our history. We saved him.”
“Maybe he didn’t need saving.”
Grandmother’s needles went still.
I paused to choose my words. “He still wonders what he could’ve become without us.”
“Probably an addict.”
His sister was becoming a doctor, but I didn’t mention that. Desiree and Gervais didn’t need Mortons hovering, ready to swoop if Sebastian came to visit.
Not that he would go near them. He was waiting for me in that small town on the far side of Albany.
I changed the subject. “What do you think you would’ve become, if the Mortons hadn’t adopted you?”
“I don’t care. Fides sine cura.”
“You’ve never wondered?”
“Jessica. I don’t want to imagine a world where I never helped raise you. Never sat on the porch of the Great House at night, looking at the stars. Never killed anyone, or gave out presents on Quilting Day.”
I didn’t have an answer—next to a sleeping Hiromi, I’d tried to imagine myself as something other than a Morton, and failed.
Grandmother gave a sigh. “Do you suppose Dwight was right all along? We adopted Sebastian too late?”
“That’s not why he’s gone. I’ve also turned against you.”
“You were intentional—we made you a traitor. With patience and kindness, we’ll make you one of us again.”
I didn’t argue. The more Grandmother believed that, the sooner I would leave this room.
We began to knit together in companionable quiet. For hours sometimes, she visited me without questions. We Mortons are patient, silence our old friend, and she believed my heart would go cold again.
Not quickly enough—a week later, I grew tired of waiting.
“I don’t know where Sebastian is hiding. He didn’t trust me.”
She accepted this with a nod, like I’d mentioned the weather. We fell into silence again.
But the next day she said, “Trust doesn’t come into it—he worships you. He wouldn’t disappear without a plan to reconnect.”
I shrugged. Elizabeth’s contempt was showing again. Sebastian didn’t worship anyone. No Morton did, unless they were flailing, like Peter.
“We made a lot of plans. But I don’t know where he is.”
Her needles danced for another moment, then became still. She set them carefully into her lap and reached into a pocket.
She held up a shiny key on a silver chain. “What’s this, then?”
I kept my hand from going to my neck. “The necklace you sent me. And a key.”
“Where’s the lock?”
“Nowhere important.” The lies I’d been practicing at night began to flow. “Sebastian found it at Senior Tea one day, on the floor under his chair. It was a joke between us.”
“A joke?”
“A symbol,” I said, my eyes on my knitting. “Lost and found.”
“Did Sebastian realize he was lost?”
I shook my head. “He always worried he’d have to run without me one day. Because you trusted me, but never him.”
“We did trust him,” Grandmother said. “Until he betrayed us.”
“That key was our signal. When I was ready to join him, all I had to do was drop it in the lost-and-found box next to Admissions, still on this chain.”
She frowned. “And your cousin will magically appear?”
“He’d find a way to get in touch with me.”
Grandmother looked at my hands, watching for a dropped stitch. “So to find him, we have to set you free. You’ll go back to Helshire and wait for him.”
“Yes.”
Her voice became low and soothing, like when she’d told us bedtime stories. “Would you bring him back to us? Even knowing what we’ll do?”
My hands kept knitting as I opened myself, like in poker games at Lavernick, letting expressions spill across my face. Vulnerability was a kind of power.
I was still a hammer, but there were different kinds of nails.
“Yes,” I said.
“Why would you lure him into a trap?”
“Because I want him back. Whether he’s a Morton or not.”
“Sebastian is a Morton, blooded and true. That’s why he needs to pay.”
“With all due respect, Elizabeth, you’ll be outvoted.”
A sad smile. “Are you saying we would allow betrayal?”
“He’ll fix cars and grow poisonous plants.
He’ll teach pain resistance and needlepoint.
He’ll become best friends with the new mayor of Upper Falls, and one day be elected a local judge.
And together he and I will make seven babies, brilliant and beautiful, to replace the little Mortons my father cut down. ”
I’d come up with this speech in bed, watching the half-moon crawl across my skylight. All lies, but as easy to spin as the truth. Part of me wanted it to be real.
Mortons, but not. Careful, but powerful.
“That’s a beautiful story,” she said. “When we began all this, I hoped you’d only uncover Wolvaardts and Lindqvists and Seths—that our children were no longer infected with rebellion.”
“Because there aren’t enough of us to spare. So let Sebastian come home.”
“It isn’t entirely up to me.”
“Whoever wants to cull him will be outpoliticked, outcharmed, outvoted. Sebastian will survive. Let me go back to Helshire with that key, and I’ll prove it to you.” I gave her my oldest smile, a mocking look, from when I was a child who didn’t cry. “Or are you afraid I’m right?”
Her eyes went from my face to my knitting, waiting for my hands to tremble. I kept knitting like I didn’t care, like a true Morton would, not dropping a single stitch.
Finally, she tossed the key into my lap. “All right then. Perhaps Sebastian can be redeemed. But I promise nothing.”
I stopped knitting at last and picked up the key. “Thank you, Grandmother.”
She shrugged, gathering her needles and yarn. She went to the door to my room, pulled it open, and stood aside.
“Come on, then.”
A moment of dizziness passed through me. Was Elizabeth letting me out? I stood, expecting a slammed door, a cruel smile.
The door stayed open. But as I passed her, my grandmother stopped me with a touch.
“One more thing.” She handed me a knife.
I stared at it—a fixed blade karambit, cherry handle, Damascus steel. One of Peter’s impractical playthings, shipped back from Helshire after his fall.
She ushered me through the door. “You’ll know what to do.”
I followed the same dark hallway that Veronica had guided me down a week before. It led to the cement holding cell.
Waiting there, sitting in a folding chair and wearing a purple raincoat and ballet shoes, was my little cousin Mary.
“Finally,” she said, standing up. “This is the third time I’ve had to sit here all day.”
I looked at her, at the knife in my hand.
“Yes, bunny,” she said. “You’re supposed to kill me.”