WE RETURNED TO THE HOUSE at the end of Pinnacle Lane barely three months after the summer solstice. Gabe carefully placed me on my bed, and my grandmother covered me with a quilt her maman made many years before. Emilienne willed herself not to weep, but I saw it in her face. The gauze hid my sutures well enough, so she didn’t have to stare at the stitchery holding my frail body together. But the bruises would not be hidden. They seeped down my sides, across my arms and hips, down the backs of my legs. And the color — so dark they weren’t purple, but red. The very color of violence.
Those deep-red bruises called to mind the faint brown mark Jack’s kiss had left on her daughter Viviane’s neck so many years ago. They also made her think of René’s lovely face after William Peyton shot it off, of the hole in Margaux’s chest where her heart once beat, and of all the scars love’s victims carry. Then she would have to leave the room.
My grandmother felt no rush to return to the bakery. She could hardly will herself to cook enough to keep her own family fed, not that anyone cared. The appetite of my whole family had dwindled enough so that each ate only when the gnawing pains of hunger fired in their bellies. And even then, they did so without gusto, taking a fork to a neighbor’s cold pan of macaroni and cheese left in the fridge. No one paid any attention to where the food came from, just that it was there.
Something had happened to Emilienne. She could not summon the strength she once had, no matter how hard she tried. While she waited for some sign of life to return to my eyes, it was my mother who held the family together.
Wilhelmina and Penelope were more than capable of running the bakery on their own. They added a popular pastry to the menu; in honor of me, they sold the feuilletage on Sundays. They even hired another baker to replace Emilienne. They hired my mother.
The bakery was exactly as Viviane remembered it: the walls the same golden shade of yellow, the black-and-white-tiled floor still impeccably shined. When Wilhelmina handed her an apron and pointed her toward the oven, Viviane was hardly stunned by how quickly she recalled the trick to a good pear tarte tatin or how to make crème br?lée. Soon her chocolate éclairs were deemed just as good as Emilienne’s.
It shamed her to admit it, but Viviane relished her hours in the bakery, away from the awful odor of misery and despair that wafted through the hallways of our house. It was so strong that my mother often covered her nose with a handkerchief just to walk by my room. They had to hire a nurse to change my bandages. What happened to me was so horrible, Viviane tried not to think about it, often tried not to think at all. Instead, she filled her time with menial tasks, like baking bread and pastries, which she always brought home to serve after my lunch.
Back in our kitchen, my mother folded a paper napkin in half and placed it under a plate of warm bread pudding drizzled with chocolate sauce and topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. She watched the ice cream melt into a plate-size puddle. Viviane heard the soft tread of footsteps behind her as Cardigan made her way down the stairs from my room and into the kitchen.
“Is she hungry?” Viviane asked halfheartedly.
Cardigan shook her head. Out of all of us, Cardigan had changed the most since my attack. She’d let her hair grow out from its stylish bob so that it hung at her shoulders in natural waves; occasionally she threw it in a haphazard ponytail just to get it out of her face. She rarely wore makeup anymore. The first time Viviane saw Cardigan without it, Viviane hadn’t recognized her. The makeup had made her glamorous, untouchable even; without it, Cardigan was pretty but in a less obvious way. Her lashes, blond like her hair, were barely visible around her blue eyes, and her lips were a pale shade of pink and much thinner without the usual swipe of rich red lipstick. She dressed differently, often coming to the house in her brother’s old work boots and a pair of oversize jeans. She was enrolled in honors classes and was secretly planning on taking over Rowe’s old delivery job in October once she passed her driver’s test.
“Heard anything from my brother?” Cardigan asked Viviane. Rowe had left for school a month ago, and not a day had gone by without the mail bringing a letter addressed to me. My mother gathered he wrote to me more often than to his own family. He’d tried calling on the phone a few times, but I had barely spoken four words in the past few months. So Rowe stuck to the post. At first Viviane wasn’t sure what to do with the letters, so she just piled them up on my bedside table.
Viviane pointed to the brown envelope on the kitchen table. Cardigan swooped it up and pressed it to her nose. “I told him I’d whale on him if he ever sent her a perfumed love letter.”
Viviane laughed. She was glad Cardigan hadn’t lost her sense of humor completely.
“What’s the assignment this week?” Viviane asked, nodding to the book in Cardigan’s hand.
“The Scarlet Letter. I’m reading it to Ava so she won’t fall behind.” Cardigan turned toward the stairs. “Don’t you think that’s a good idea?” she added quietly.
Viviane nodded. She’d spoken about my enrollment in the high school with her old teacher Ignatius Lux, now the high-school principal, earlier that summer. Ignatius was a large, barrel-chested man with the tangled mop of red hair that went well with his name. Due to his size, his students considered him a fearsome force. Some even feared the Lux more than they feared their own parents. But Ignatius Lux was actually very soft-hearted, so much so it often embarrassed his wife, and the big man had wept — literally wept! — ?when he’d heard what had happened to me. So when Viviane stopped by to set up an appointment, the principal immediately ushered her into his office, offering her a cup of coffee and instructing his secretary to clear the rest of the day’s meetings. Ignatius had always liked Viviane — years ago, when she was just a spunky student in his class, he had thought, Now, there’s someone who could probably do just about anything.
Ignatius was impressed, but not surprised, by how closely Viviane’s curriculum matched that of the school. He assured her they would save a spot for me in the fall enrollment.
Viviane placed her coffee cup on the principal’s desk. “Considering the severity of her . . . condition, I don’t think any of us are expecting her to fully recover before the spring term.”
Ignatius stammered an apology and gave his word that I could register for classes whenever I was ready. After the meeting Viviane had gone back to her truck and cried, not knowing that only thirty feet away, with his head resting on his big principal’s desk, Ignatius Lux was doing the same thing.
Viviane walked outside to where Gabe sat on the porch swing watching Henry collect insects in the yard. She handed Gabe the two glasses of lemonade in her hands before lowering herself into the crook of his arm, then took the second glass and wrapped his now-free hand around her shoulder.
“Any change?” Gabe asked.
Viviane shook her head wearily. “No. No change.”
Gabe kneaded the sore muscles in Viviane’s neck with his long fingers until the tension she held there began to fade. Viviane had been surprised by how quickly her body responded to his, how the lines of where she ended and he began seemed to melt whenever they touched. It felt natural for him to share her bed, to spend his nights asleep on her pillow. But the best part was that after twenty-seven years, Viviane was finally free of Jack Griffith — a feat so miraculous that sometimes Viviane wanted to call it out from the rooftops just to hear the echo.
“Where’s Emilienne?” Gabe asked suddenly. “Asleep again?”
“Yes.”
Since the night of the solstice, the hours my grandmother spent awake had dwindled to only a few a day. Even when I was still in the hospital, it was common for Viviane to walk in on her sleeping daughter and mother, me in the bed and Emilienne in the chair next to it, her graying hair spilling from the chignon twisted against the paper-thin skin at the nape of her neck.
Henry looked up from the grass, proudly holding up some multi-legged or winged insect trapped in between the mesh sides of the bug catcher. “See?” he called.
Since the night of the solstice, Henry spoke less and less. They tried not to let it discourage them — there was enough of that to go around already. Viviane assumed it had to do with my condition, but the truth was that Henry now found very little worth talking about. And he only talked when what he had to say was really important. That was the rule.
The day they brought me home from the hospital, Viviane had found a large unmarked envelope leaning up against the front door. Inside were two sizable checks — one made out to me, the other to Henry. Trapped in the envelope glue was a strand of copper-colored hair. As far as Viviane knew, Laura Lovelorn had returned to her beloved eastern Washington as soon as her separation from Jack Griffith was official.
“The world is definitely changing,” Viviane murmured. Gabe gave her shoulder a squeeze.
Gabe often teased Viviane about the bare ring finger on her left hand, implying, in his own gentle way, how much he wanted to marry her. She knew she would spend the rest of her nights dreaming beside the gentle giant, his chest pressed against her back, his palm lightly cupping her hip. But she also knew that she would never marry. Not Gabe or anyone else. What use did the heart have for jewelry anyway? To use her words.
Through the fall, I lay in bed with my stomach pressed against the mattress as I had since the day I was brought home from the hospital. The days and nights meshed together, forming a heavy black shroud that covered my eyes, my nose, my mouth, until I could no longer remember what it was like to feel the sun on my face. When the leaves began to change, my mother asked Gabe to move the bed so that, by turning my head to the side, I could look out the window. But when the leaves turned from green to brown, and I watched them fall to the ground to rot, I found they only reminded me of death.
By December the rains had calmed; the gray storm clouds that some suspected would never pass did, and winter arrived, carrying with it mornings of icy roads and icy car windows, and only a few scattered showers. Snow would come later, in January and February, catching them all by surprise when they awoke to a city draped in white.
December 21 marked the winter solstice. It also marked the six-month anniversary of my attack and the auspicious death of Nathaniel Sorrows. For the first time ever, Pinnacle Lane recognized the winter pagan holiday, though it was in somber, solemn tones.
Those days I often thought about death, often wondered what it might be like to die with such intensity that I could feel the edges of my body melt away, as if I were already a decomposing corpse. I imagined that being dead would feel a lot like those days when the nurse gave me a chalky white pill that left me so numb, the hours melted away like morning ice on a window. Like I was nothing at all but an insignificant shadow, a whisper, a drop of rain left to dry on the pavement.
But while the thought of being dead seemed appealing, the actual act of dying did not. Dying required too much action. And if recent events proved anything, my body wasn’t going to give over to death without a fierce fight; so if I were to kill myself, I’d have to make sure I could do it. That I’d be good and dead once it was all over and not mutilated or half deranged but still dreadfully alive. I thought of collecting handfuls of those chalky white pills, of hiding them in my cheek and stuffing them under the mattress, later washing them down in one gulp with a glass of cold tap water. I thought of sneaking into the kitchen for a steak knife sharp enough that a single slice to just one wrist would suffice — I wasn’t sure I could try to kill myself twice. I thought often of jumping from the rickety widow’s walk on the roof of the house. If it weren’t for my constant visitors, those thoughts might very well have led to some dark and dreadful act. Perhaps this was the very reason those constant visitors were there.
Gabe was in charge of breakfast, and each morning prepared simple culinary comforts: plate-size pancakes with gobs of butter and maple syrup licking down the sides; browned links of sausages; slices of smoked bacon; hard-boiled eggs — all served using Emilienne’s good china and linen napkins and the heavy silver knives and spoons. Gabe put everything on a tray and brought it upstairs to my room, bringing Henry along with him. In his own silent way, Henry was best at getting me to eat, and on the days when I wouldn’t, well, there was always Trouver.
Lunch was brought up by Cardigan, who dutifully arrived at our front door every afternoon, first just as the sun moved to its one o’clock spot, and then a little later in the day once school began. She brought her schoolwork with her, reading aloud from the books whose pages she’d been assigned and whispering secret plans she’d made for us when I was better.
“When you’re better . . .” she’d begin.
Most of the time Cardigan spent the hours of her visit lying next to me, holding my hand as we stared at the wall in silence. Once I turned my unfocused eyes to my best friend and said, “This suits you,” meaning Cardigan’s new, simplified look.
To which Cardigan replied, “This doesn’t suit you,” meaning everything else.
Dinner always varied. Sometimes it was brought by my mother. Sometimes it was Penelope or her husband, Zeb, who did card tricks with his calloused hands as I took a few meager bites from my meal. On the days Wilhelmina would come, she’d bring with her tiny satchels of dried herbs, which she’d hand to Viviane with specific instructions for water temperature and seeping time before heading upstairs. When it was ready, Viviane brought the bitter tea with my dinner. We watched and listened as Wilhelmina stood by the open window and sang in a low, melodious voice, tapping out the rhythm of her healing chant on the elk-skin drum she held in her hand. When Wilhelmina sang, my heart slowly became the beating of the drum. My breathing steadied, and I fell into a semi-hypnotic state not unlike that brought on by the chalky white pills, but a much more pleasant one.
I often thought I was going crazy — or maybe not going but already there. As if my future was only a locked room with white painted walls and white painted floors, with no windows or doors or any means to escape. A place where I opened my mouth to scream but no sound came out.
Instead of dying, instead of slowly disappearing until only a broken body remained, what happened was quite the opposite — my body began to repair itself.
I was grateful to the nurse who came every day to change my bulky bandages, even when it was quite clear that I no longer needed them. The nurse never said a word to either my mother or grandmother. I appreciated this; it gave me time to think, and I needed that time, what with all these images of death muddying my thoughts.
Then one night I awoke to find a man sitting by my bed, one hand covering the place where his face had been shot off.
“Don’t be afraid,” the man said. His words were thick and warped, as if his voice were leaking out of parts of his body other than his mouth.
“I’m not,” I replied, my own voice strange with disuse. “I know who you are.”
If the man could have smiled, he would have. “And who am I, then?”
“You’re death, of course.” I sighed. “To be honest, I find it comforting that you’ve been looking for me as much as I’ve been looking for you. Will it be long now?”
“Not long.”
I shivered. “What is it like? Being dead?”
“What do you think it is like?”
I pondered this question, noticing only then that I was still clutching one of Rowe’s letters. “I think death is something like being drugged or having a fever,” I whispered. “Like being a step away from everyone else. A step so large and wide that catching up quickly becomes impossible, and all I can do is watch as everyone I love slowly disappears.”
“Is that what you want?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“We all have a choice.”
I laughed cruelly, but I didn’t care. “Do we? What about you? Did you choose to come here? To spend your afterlife as a misshapen monster?”
“Ah, ma petite-nièce, I volunteered.”
“Why?”
The man stood. “Love makes us such fools,” he said, his transparent form shimmering slightly before disappearing completely.
For the first time in six months, I pulled myself up into a sitting position. I lowered my weak legs to the floor and tried to walk across the room in shaky steps to the window. The maple tree outside stood against the dark sky, its bare limbs shivering in the cold. I looked down at the road knowing that in only a matter of hours it would bring Rowe home on break for the holidays. I had read every one of his letters so many times it was as if each word had been permanently inscribed on the inside of my eyelids. I knew that in the second letter he misspelled the word existence, replacing the second e with an a; in the fourth he forgot to dot the i in believe. I slept with them not under my pillow but clutched in my hand, with the sweat from my dreams leaking from my palms and smudging the ink. And I’d read the last line of the letter I received only a few days before — the final Rowe would send before coming home — until the words had lost all meaning to my head and only my heart still understood.
I loved you before, Ava. Let me love you still.