I finally found the last Easter egg. It was in my bedroom, under my pillow.
“Your father,” Jack says now. “You never tell me about him. You never tell me anything about where you grew up, or about your school days, or about what you were like as a girl. You know I’d listen. I love you. I want to hear these things.”
I look away from him toward the trees, their briefly illuminated trunks flashing by in the night. I wonder who might be out there.
“Maybe.”
*
Everyone in the neighborhood will know about my breaking into Helena’s house and about my being arrested and about the psychological rehabilitation I will undergo. At dinner parties, they will be nice. They are always very nice. They will offer their support. They will tell me they care about me and love me and want what’s best for me. Jack will remind me, as he always does, that he loves me.
It’s funny, all these people talking about love. They think love is something like a fluffy pillow where you rest your head. They think love is sweet and gentle, all hands and lips and nestling. But they’re wrong. I know what love is. Love is angrier than this. It’s harsher. It’s tasting the world on your tongue and digging your claws deep into the underbelly of life. I know exactly what love is. It’s sometimes leaning over your husband while he sleeps, while he conjures in his dreams all the fears and ecstasies he would relish if he were ever able to let himself be truly and wholly alive, breathing in the fermented air exhaled from his pink, undamaged lungs—and it’s sometimes wanting to rip out his throat with your teeth.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Josh Kendall and Eleanor Jackson. I owe them considerable gratitude. If you could read the first version of this book, you would see just how much.
About the Author
Joshua Gaylord grew up in Anaheim, California, and currently resides in New York City. Using his own name or the pen name Alden Bell, he has authored three previous novels, including The Reapers Are the Angels. He received his PhD from New York University and has taught high school English as well as literature courses at NYU and the New School.