“They bury her under the willow tree,” Amy said happily, wiggling in Trenton’s arms. “It’s magic. And the tree learns to cry, and then Penelope can come back to life. Remember, Mommy?”
“I remember, sweetie.” Minna tried to smile and couldn’t. Her eyes met Trenton’s again. She looked old—older than she should have. He felt a message pass between them, strong and wordless. I love you, too. The words were there, suddenly, in his mind.
Amy was still babbling. “And then the army of Nihilis comes to raid the palace and drive out the Innocents.”
“All right, Amy,” Trenton said. He tried to sound cheerful. “You can tell me about The Raven Heliotrope while we get everything ready to go. Sound good?”
“But the Innocents escape through the tunnels and they burn the palace down so that the Nihilis die. It’s sad because they love the palace, but they have to burn it or else. The fire is so big it goes all the way to the sky.” Amy stretched her hands toward the ceiling, gesturing.
“Wow.” Something stirred in Trenton—a memory, an idea. Fire. “That’s pretty big.” Trenton pushed open the screen door with the toe of his sneaker. Outside, the sun was blazing, and the sky was white as ash.
ALICE
I didn’t mean for her to die. Believe this, if you believe anything.
I thought I could erase her. I thought I could will her back into nonexistence.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
That year, too, there was cottonseed. I remember how it trembled in the screens, like small alien creatures, sent to bear witness; how I wished that it were real snow and would bury me when I slept. Maybe I should have died. Maybe that’s what I deserved.
But I didn’t.
Ed was on his way home from the war.
I couldn’t return to my family. I had no close friends besides Thomas.
And Thomas, too, I meant to erase.
I’d heard rumors in Boston, when I still lived at home, about girls who’d gotten into trouble. There were doctors who’d do operations, I knew, but operations cost money; there were other ways. Pills and poison. A coat hanger, even.
I thought she would just vanish. One day I would be pregnant. And the next day: a chance to start over. I would be a better wife to Ed. I would learn to love him again. I would pray to God every day for forgiveness.
At least that part of the bargain, I kept.
But she held on. Little Penelope, my poor little Penelope, who didn’t know how to do anything but live. I swallowed bleach and took pills to make myself throw up. I prayed for her to wither, like a flower on a stalk. I even tried to fall down the stairs. But at the last second I couldn’t let go of the banister.
She came at last, Queen Penelope, riding a carpet of blood: blue and cold, like someone left too long in the ice. Wise Penelope. She refused to take even one breath of this new world, where mothers were monsters; and men were at war; and nothing and no one could be believed.
TRENTON
They were done in Coral River. Minna had arranged for Holly, a local woman who’d cleaned for her dad, to come later and deal with the dishes and trash from the memorial service. The luggage was loaded. Adrienne had gone, escorted to a motel in town by Danny’s partner. Richard Walker was buried, as he had requested, on the land he had loved.
Trenton wanted to walk through the house one last time.
He went through every room, touching walls and curtains and the remaining pieces of furniture, hoping to feel some further connection to his father, to his past, to Eva, even. But they were just rooms, many of them empty and thus unfamiliar, like the rooms of a stranger’s house. It didn’t much matter. The past would come along with you, whether you asked for it or not.
In the kitchen, he paused at the window. The squad car was idling in the driveway. Trenton’s mom was just visible in the passenger seat. Minna was chasing Amy around the BMW, trying to distract her—or maybe trying to distract herself, to forget what they had just seen. Trenton could see birds wheeling in the sky, and the soft waterfall silhouette of the weeping willow. Even now, Trenton thought, his dad’s ashes were there: intermingling with the earth, someday to be swept up by the wind, spiraling up to the afternoon sky and the clouds like new milk. He thought of the girl, the tiny little child in the box, and felt an ache in his chest. So much better to be released into air and sky.
That’s what everyone wanted, in the end: to be a part of something bigger.
Then, in the bare silence, Trenton heard a voice so soft that afterward it seemed like a memory of a memory: Release, it seemed to say. Release.
He stood very still. He held his breath.
Fire. The voice was a flickering impression in his mind, a sense of shadow and heat. Please. Fire.
Trenton felt a finger of cold go down his back, as though someone had reached out and stroked him. He thought of the lightbulb that had exploded above his head, and the sudden push, the force of wind, that had tipped all the candles in the attic.
He thought of how terrible it would be to be trapped forever in a body like a box; to have only the long hours for company, only rooms and walls and divisions, keeping you from the open air.
And he knew what he would do—what he had to do.
Trenton leaned over the sink and closed the window, making sure it was latched tight. He felt surprisingly calm. He felt almost as if there were a force moving through him, controlling his body, as if he were experiencing a kind of possession. It couldn’t look deliberate; he had to be careful.
A burner leaking gas. A spark from a faulty wire, an exploding bulb, an overturned candle. An accident.
He moved to the stove. The burner let out a hiss of escaping gas, like a satisfied sigh.
“Trenton.” He jumped when he heard his name. Minna was leaning into the kitchen, one hand on the doorknob. “Are you ready? We really have to get going.”
“I’m ready.” He was filled with the sudden, desperate urge to stop, to turn off the gas, to go through the house again, memorizing every corner, every curtain, every patch of sunlight. But he forced himself to cross the room toward her.
Minna stopped him before he could get out the door.
“Hey.” Minna frowned. “Do you smell gas?”
Trenton didn’t blink. “Nope,” he said.
They stood there for a second. And it came to him; they could still, after everything, speak without words.
“Let’s go home,” she said, putting an arm around his shoulder.
Trenton made sure the door was closed tightly. At the last second, fitting the key in the lock, he thought he heard a voice—fainter than a whisper, barely louder than a thought. Thank you. But it might have been the wind singing through the grass, the leaves rubbing palm to palm, the far-off hum of the crickets.
He couldn’t bring himself to look back at the house. And what was the point, really, of looking back?
He wanted to be far away by the time the fire trucks came.