A distant clank came from outside, and I lifted a gauzy curtain off a French door to find a small balcony with a view toward the stables. Beyond a stand of trees, the white-fenced paddock met the lane where Tom and I had walked.
Tom. The view. Solana. Madeline. The earrings. Everything here from the smallest stud to the deepest relationship was Althea’s, and I’d stepped into all of it. It would be so easy, in a way, to vanish into her life. I had all these people to please here, and I already owed them so much. They weren’t asking me to pretend I remembered Althea’s old life. They just wanted me to move forward with them as their daughter and granddaughter and cousin and girlfriend. They just wanted to love me and my baby.
When I stepped into the hot water of the shower, the freshly stocked soap and shampoo suited me perfectly, and I guessed they were Althea’s favorites. A little jar of face scrub smelled like apricots, and the creamy grit was soothing on my nose and cheeks. I was shaving my legs in the shower for the first time, flexing around my belly to slide the razor along my shin, when it hit me once and for all that this awkward, gangly body was mine. I was caring for it and living in it. Althea’s body was the tool I now used to interact with the world, and her life was mine to make decisions with.
When I came out of the bathroom, I climbed heavily onto Althea’s bed and sank into the mattress, exhausted. My pores were still damp, and my bathrobe felt bunchy and warm around me. My legs felt nice and smooth. I felt like I was home, but it felt wrong to feel that way.
I had too many interior contradictions: I wanted my baby, and I didn’t want it. I felt like I was home, but I wasn’t. I thought like Rosie, but I wasn’t Rosie anymore. Any last, lingering, irrational idea that I’d ever be able to get back into Rosie’s body vanished, which left me with the question: why did I want to find her?
For her sake. Because she needed to be found. Berg had the other Rosie captive, and I couldn’t just forget and neglect her because I had new problems of my own. Besides, it went deeper than that. I owed it to myself to find Rosie. My nightmarish memories of lying helpless in the vault still haunted me, and no matter how safe I was in Althea’s pretty room, I knew I wasn’t safe inside.
*
The next morning when I awoke, Solana was sleeping on the rug beside my bed. She lifted her head as I got up.
“You’re my buddy, aren’t you, girl?” I said, and rubbed between her ears.
I pulled on some clothes, collected my cane, and took her out to do her business. The house was still when we came back in, but I heard a distant tapping to my right, and Solana headed in that direction, with her nails clicking on the wood floor between the carpets.
I followed, seeing how many steps I could take without using my cane for balance. Morning light spilled in everywhere, clean and clear. I passed a library that smelled of mahogany, an office, and a south-facing solarium with a proliferation of green plants. A weapons room showcased modern firearms alongside antique rifles, pistols, swords, tomahawks, and bows and arrows. The next room contained a collection of antique ship models all in large glass cases, like for a private museum.
The tapping came again, and I headed down a short hallway to a suite of rooms that felt newer. The ceilings slanted high, with open beams of golden wood. A mini kitchen led off from a sunken living room. I paused at the sight of a hospital bed in one of the bedrooms while a strange, eerie feeling crept through me. The bed was covered in plastic, as were a series of medical-looking machines that lined the corner. It smelled faintly antiseptic. A shelf held several empty vases and a willowy statuette of a girl with her arms extended and head thrown back.
This, I realized, was where Althea had lain in her coma. My host body had been in this place, for weeks, and now my feet had brought me back, like I belonged here. I felt a faint flicker of fear or premonition.
“Is that you, mi corazoncita?” Grampa called.
I backed out of the coma room. Then I followed his voice around a bend and found a small, cozy den with a big TV, an upright piano, and a large desk. I breathed more easily. Grampa’s hat perched on a rack by a folded American flag.
“You’re up early,” he said.
“So are you.”
A ship model was propped before him on the desk, and a hundred tiny timbers were spread out on graph paper. He wore special glasses with magnifying lenses built in so that he looked like a mad bug when he turned to me. “You found your old room?”
“Yes. How long was I there?” I asked.
“Three months. I thought you’d be there forever.”
I came closer and leaned against the windowsill where I could watch him work.
“You talked to Tom,” I said, thinking of the way Grampa had filled him in.
“Yes, I did. He kept calling. Seemed only right.”
I liked that the old man had his own code of decency regardless of what Althea’s father felt toward Tom. I nodded toward the ship pieces. “Do you make these?” I asked.
“I restore them,” he said, holding up a tiny crow’s nest. “What do you think?”
“Cool,” I said.
He passed me the little piece, and then I watched as he clamped a different sliver of wood in a holder. He tightened the screw carefully and then began to shave the side with a delicate tool.
I set the crow’s nest down softly and picked up a small round mirror. “How long have you been doing this?” I asked.
“Ten years now. I used to be an engineer for NASA.”
I remembered Madeline had mentioned that. I held up the little mirror, gazing into the glass to inspect my face one small circle at a time: an eyebrow, the swell of my cheekbone, my ear with the nick in the top.
“Do you miss your old face, then?” Grampa said.
“Sometimes. Do you want to see a picture of what I used to look like? I can get my phone.”
“Maybe sometime,” he said. He was still focused on the wood he was shaping, and his bright work light glinted in his glasses. “It’s not particularly relevant.”
His honesty surprised me.
“To you, or to me?” I asked, lowering the mirror.
“To anybody. It’s how people reflect you back that matters.”
I wasn’t sure I understood him. “How can a person reflect me back?”
He kept his fingers lightly poised on his blade. “If I appreciate you for what you do or say, you feel it. You feel lovable. Understood. Deserving. Right? It’s like a mirror.” He gestured toward the circle of glass in my hand.
“I guess.”
He sniffed. “A true reflection feels right.”
“What am I reflecting to you right now?” I asked.
He straightened to look over at me, taking his time. His special glasses gave him four eyes and added an air of gravity to the inspection. “You appear to respect me,” he said. “What’s more, you’re genuinely interested in my philosophical train of thought. It fits with how I think of myself. I’m clever. I have dignity. Too much, sometimes,” he added, smiling.