Mary’s face seems to emit a soft glow in the gloom of night. If there is a God, Janey thinks mistily, I bet he looks like Mary.
Mary falls asleep with her ear on Janey’s collarbone, waiting for her to say something else. In the morning, when she wakes, Janey’s limbs are still and cool. Nestling in beside her, Mary watches the blue and white colors change in the contours of Janey’s face as the sun rises. Mary doesn’t move until daylight is streaming in the window, and Mother is screaming.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Vanessa
Ever since the incident with Mr. Adam, Vanessa has been having nightmares of blood. Blood wells out of Mr. Adam, covering the floor in a slick, wet sheet, rising to cover her ankles in summer-warm fluid, grasping her clothes and licking her waist. It pours out of a crack in the sky, pounds the island red, rises in a scarlet mist from the early morning ground. She drinks water to find her mouth ringed with crimson and thick, salty blood running down her throat. When blood begins spotting her inner thighs one afternoon, Mother weeps, but Vanessa is unsurprised. Surely so much blood can’t live in her dreams without finding its way to her waking life.
Since that day, Father still comes to her room occasionally and climbs into her bed, but only to talk, or to sleep. Vanessa can tell Mother doesn’t like this, and sometimes she hears her listen closely by the door, or tiptoe into the room to stare at them. Father seems amused and then annoyed by Mother’s snooping, but in the morning he looks away from Mother’s gaze and talks of something else.
One night Vanessa wakes up screaming from a dream of choking, a worm of blood coiled in her throat and slithering toward her lungs. She coughs and breathes gratefully as Father, lying in the bed, rubs her back and murmurs comforting words. Eventually she trusts the air enough to lie down against his chest.
“Father,” she whispers, “when I killed Mr. Adam—”
“You did not kill Mr. Adam,” replies Father. “I told you. We exiled him.”
“When I cut him, then.”
“Yes?”
“I couldn’t help thinking of Mrs. Adam’s baby.”
“The one that died with her?”
“Yes.”
“What about it?”
“It might have been a girl.”
“Well, yes.”
“If it was a girl…”
“Yes?”
“It would have had Mr. Adam do to her what he tried to do to me.”
“Well, it would be different.”
“And then I thought, what if I were Mr. Adam’s daughter?”
“You would be a completely different person, Vanessa.”
“Perhaps. But what if you died in the sickness—”
“We had the medicine.”
“Fine, what if a big rock fell on your head, and Mother had to marry again, and Mr. Adam was there—”
“Mother would never marry him.”
“What if the wanderers told her to? Or he was the only unmarried man?”
“But that wouldn’t happen. I mean, at the worst, she’d become a second wife—”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m saying, what if Mother had to marry Mr. Adam, and I was suddenly his daughter?”
“But I’m telling you that wouldn’t happen.”
“Everything that happened that day would have been different. He wouldn’t have been breaking any laws. I would have been wrong, for cutting him. I would have been punished. They probably would have killed me.”
“But—”
“Think of all the daughters who got new fathers, after the sickness.”
“Well, I should hope none of them are like Mr. Adam.”
“But nobody knows, really.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nobody knows what someone is like, unless they live with them.”
“You think all men are like Mr. Adam, behind their walls? Am I like Mr. Adam?”
“No. But I think you want to think Mr. Adam was a strange mistake, something that never happens, and I’m not so sure.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’ve been thinking about it.” She pauses. “The last new family, before the Adams, was the Jacobs.”
Father is silent.
“You know what Mr. Jacob is like. You just had to look at Caitlin to know what Mr. Jacob is like. Mr. Jacob could take a new wife at any time. That wife could have a daughter.”
“I don’t think he will live that long. He’s poisoning himself with drink.”
“But what if everyone from the wastelands is like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like Mr. Adam, like Mr. Jacob.”
“They can’t be.”
“Remember that meeting you had with the wanderers?”
“Where Mother said you were listening at closed doors?”
Vanessa flushes slightly, but continues, thankful for the darkness. “What if all the new families we bring in are like him? You’re right, all the people in the wastelands can’t be like him, but what if all the men who want to come here are?”
“Like Mr. Adam?”
“Yes.”
“That isn’t possible.”
“What if it is? What if I marry someone like that?”
“You’ll be married by the end of the summer. We won’t be bringing in unmarried men.”
“How do you know Mr. Adam was like Mr. Adam when he was a young man? How do you know Mr. Jacob was? What if the new families bring in, somehow, something that turns island men into that kind of man? Like a wasteland sickness?”
There’s a long silence. She takes a deep breath. “What if—”
Then Father says angrily, “That’s enough, Vanessa. I know you’re clever, but you’re still a child.” He gets out of bed and stomps down the stairs, not bothering to be quiet. Vanessa lies in the dark for a long time, holding her breath.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Vanessa
We are choked with death,” Pastor Saul says, his voice trembling. His wife and both his children died, and his new wife sits in the front pew, staring at him like someone struck her over the head. It’s been weeks since church has reconvened, and his messages of gratitude have slowly become more and more sorrowful. “Death has smothered us. And yet we still live. There is no death without rebirth, and our island has been reborn. We thank the ancestors for our deliverance.
“And yet, why did this happen? Why did such a terrible plague fall upon our society? Perhaps the ancestors asked God to punish us for our sins. Perhaps the ancestors are displeased with us.
“As I look upon us, I can see the reasons for their displeasure. We have strayed from them. We have strayed from their vision and their holiness. We clot up the minds of our daughters with useless knowledge, instead of taking the precious time to teach them to be a solace to their fathers. Wives have forgotten how to be a support to their husbands. We let our aged live too long, past their prime years, for the simple reason that our hearts are soft. Men are swayed by the words of women, by the words of wives and daughters who refuse to submit to their will as wives and daughters should.”