“Who does?” I ask, unsure what he means. “Ash and Turk?”
He shakes his head, I can hear the subtle shift in the air. “No, Bee.” He sounds tired, like he’s fighting the sleep tugging at his brain.
“Tell me what you mean,” I press.
He sways closer to me. “The others,” he says. And when I frown at him, still unsure what he’s saying, he adds, “You ask too many questions. Too many things you shouldn’t worry about.”
I open my mouth but then his hand is at my throat. Not hard, not violently pressing, but smoothing across my skin up to my ear. He tugs at the ends of my hair, like he used to do when we were kids, when he would sneak up behind me and pull my hair, a reminder that he was there. Always close. My companion, my best friend, and sometimes my shadow.
“I loved you,” he says now, and it sounds as if tears are pushing against his eyelids again. As though I was the one to hurt him, I was the one who has married someone else. “You were always better than me. Smarter even—I always knew it.” He exhales deeply. “Even when we were kids. It’s why I had to—” His voice breaks off.
I pull away from him, and start to stand, but he reaches out quickly and grabs my wrist. “Bee,” he says, drawing me back down, back beside him. “After tonight, I will belong to Alice.”
“You already belong to her.” You’re already married, I want to scream.
He sighs. “But it’s always been us… you and me. Even when we were younger. I always thought I’d marry you, that there would be nothing that ever pushed us apart.”
“But you’ve chosen her,” I say. “You pushed us apart.”
“No,” he answers. “I didn’t push us apart—this place did, this community.”
I shake my head, feeling my own tears swelling against my eyes. I don’t want to hear him say this, any of it. It only makes it worse—the pain he’s cut into me, the betrayal of marrying someone else. He has hurt me more deeply than anyone ever could. And I hate him, hate him, hate him. “I’m not yours anymore,” I manage.
He brushes his thumb across my cheek, catching the wetness. “That’s not true,” he says, his voice breaking a little, his own hurt rising to the surface. “I’m still yours.”
“No,” I say, and again I stand. But he follows me to the door, grabbing my hand. And when I turn back to him, to shout for him to let me go, to shout that I hate him: that I will never forgive him for this thing he’s done, for loving me but still marrying someone else, for denying our child—the tiny ember of light inside me—but instead, his hands find my arm, my face, and he pulls me to him.
I don’t want him to touch me like this—I don’t want the heat of him so close, reminding me of too many nights when we folded ourselves together beneath the sheets. I don’t want any of it. And yet, his lips are against my ear, muttering things I won’t recall by morning. His hands are in my hair, his words in my chest, and I feel myself sinking, slipping, and then my mouth is on his. This man I hate, this man I could press the life out of if my hands found his throat.
But instead, he whispers my name again, over and over, and his hand has found the hem of my dress. I hate him, and I press my lips against his mouth. I hate him, and I dissolve against his touch, the familiar pulse of his breathing, his heartbeat in my ears.
I hate him.
I hate him.
My back presses against the closed door and I pull him to me.
I hate him.
His lips are on my throat, my hands along his spine. Digging. Making trenches. Hating.
I forget that he doesn’t want me.
I forget that he is married, bound to another.
I forget—for the tiniest of seconds—that I hate him with everything I am. Hate hate hate.
And I let the hate become something else: a burning. A need, that is deep and silent and worries not about tomorrow or how this will feel in the morning.
I let myself love him one last time, against his bedroom door, against the soft cotton of his summer-white sheets. And for a moment, I think I can see the ceiling, the tiny blue floral pattern of the wallpaper. I think I see the window, looking out at the tall pines.
I think I see Levi’s face: the lines around his too-green eyes, the perfect structure of his nose and jaw, the form of his lips as they trace along my collarbone.
For the briefest moment, I can see again.
And it terrifies me.
CALLA
A lie is a lie is a lie.
It tastes the same when it leaves your throat, regardless of intent.
Living in Pastoral, you look for ways to keep some part of you hidden, some singularity from the group. But the lie I told my husband is different—I lied because I’m afraid, because the things scrabbling back and forth inside my mind frighten me. They make no sense, not in the way they should.
I told Theo I’ve never read the nursery rhyme inside the Foxtail book… but I have.
I’ve been reciting it every day, a melody that swings in and out of focus when I’m trying to sleep, trying to breathe. I’ve read it so many times, traced the letters with my fingertip, that now it feels as if it’s branded into my skin. It frightens me, the sureness of the words. So I keep them a secret, for now. I don’t tell Theo.
But my husband has lied too.
And so has Bee; there is a lie growing inside her—a tiny thing, but soon it’ll be too large to ignore.
I stand in our bedroom, holding the Foxtail book I pulled from the back of the closet, my fingers worrying over the edges of the cover, as if I could peel it apart, turn the book to scraps—shreds of paper falling to the floor. I watch through the window for my husband to return from Pastoral. He went to speak with Levi after the ceremony, and I walked home alone. But the longer he takes, the more certain I am that something’s happened.
When he finally appears in the far field, he’s moving quickly, head down.
I tuck the Foxtail book beneath my pillow and listen as Theo enters the house, then climbs the stairs two at a time, appearing in our bedroom doorway. “Is Bee back yet?” he asks quickly.
I shake my head.
“She was at Levi’s when I left.”