Wither (32 page)

“Sweetheart, you’re scaring me. I’ve never seen you like this.”

That’s right. I’m Rhine, the orphan who trained to be his bride, who is happy to be here. Maybe in his mind I should even be happy because one dead sister wife means more of his time can be devoted to me. But I was always more of a sister wife than an actual wife. I can’t imagine being in this marriage with him alone.

“What can I do for you?” He kneels by the bed, pushes the hair from my face. I stare at him through a mess of tears.
Set me free
, I think.
Send me back to last year. Give
Jenna her sisters back.

I just shake my head. I cover my face with my fists, but he moves them away, and I don’t put up any kind of a fight.

“It’s a new year now,” he says softly. “There’s a party tomorrow night. Would you like that?”

“No,” I choke out.

“Yes, you would,” he says. “Deirdre is already working hard on your dress, and Adair is even helping her.”

Adair. What’s to become of him now that Jenna is gone? He worked for her, and her alone. Though, there wasn’t much to do—Jenna was so self-sufficient, and she rarely had any cause to wear new clothes. Maybe it makes him feel useful to help with my dress. I can’t just throw it back in Adair’s face. I swallow a lump in my throat and nod assent.

“There. That’s better,” Linden says. But I can see in his eyes that he knows I’m in pain. Maybe as much pain as he felt when he lost Rose. When she died, he threw things, screamed for all of us to go away. So doesn’t he understand that I want to be alone too?

But he’s not having it. “Move over,” he says softly, and lifts up the blankets and climbs into the bed with me.

When he pulls me to his chest, I don’t know if it’s meant to comfort me or him. But I crumple in his arms and succumb again quickly to tears. I try to float into outer space, to disappear from this miserable world for a while, but all night I’m kept firmly in place by his fragile bones.

Even as I phase in and out of a restless sleep, I feel him there, holding me with more strength than I thought he had.

As I expected, Deirdre and Adair parade into my room the following afternoon with a stunning dress.

In Manhattan there’s not much cause to attend a New Year’s celebration. It’s an occasion reserved mostly for first generations who have the wealth and longevity to celebrate. It’s also an opportunity for orphans to break into unattended houses in more well-to-do areas. Rowan and I would spend the first nights of the new year ramping up security and making sure the gun was loaded. It’s also something of a free-for-all for Gatherers. There are all those drunk, gorgeous, motherless girls who dance and sell sparklers in the park. Rowan won’t even let me leave the house to go to work, it’s so unsafe.

Rowan. I worry about how he’s doing, alone in that house with only the rats to help him keep watch.

The first generation attendants buff and wax me to a shine, and then Deirdre goes to work on my makeup while Adair winds my hair around a curling iron. It’s always curls. “They open up your eyes,” Adair says dreamily. Deirdre coats my lips with red and tells me to blot.

Cecily comes in for a while and sits on the divan to watch. Vaughn has taken Bowen off somewhere to draw his blood or analyze his DNA, or whatever it is he’s doing to that poor child in the name of an antidote, and Cecily seems lost without the baby to care for. Over the course of several months I watched her go from a giggling teenage bride to a swollen stomach, and I could have never imagined that she’d be any kind of mother.

And now, suddenly, it seems she doesn’t know how to be anything else.

“Do her makeup,” I tell Adair, who is busying himself by inspecting my dress, which is already perfect. “Don’t you think she would look nice in purples?” I have no idea what I’m talking about, I just can’t stand to see Cecily looking so sad.

“Earth tones,” Deirdre cries, while she pins fake baby’s breath to my hair clip. “With that hair and those eyes?

You need browns and greens for sure.” She winks at me in the mirror.

I make room for Cecily on the ottoman, and we sit back-to-back while the domestics make us sparkle. Cecily threatens to hurt Adair if he stabs her in the eye with the mascara wand, but she relaxes a little when she realizes he knows what he’s doing. And then it’s kind of nice.

Like we’re really sisters, and like there isn’t the promise of an early death hanging over us.

“What do you think the party will be like?” Cecily asks me, blotting her lipstick into a tissue Adair holds out for her.

“Nothing fancy,” I say, still not wanting to entice her with something she won’t get to see. Maybe once I’m gone, Linden will take her out. She would love the chocolate fountains, and something tells me she would like the attention of the House Governors and architects kissing her hand and telling her how pretty she looks. “It’s just a bunch of rich drunks all dressed up, talking business.”

“Will you bring me some éclairs?” she asks.

“If they have them, sure.”

She takes my hand, and it’s small and warm. A child’s hand. She was so eager to abandon her youth, in this world that has stolen the luxury of time, and I wonder who she would have been if only she could have had more years to live. When I’m gone, will she assume first wife? Will she embrace womanhood entirely? I feel like I’ve failed her somehow. It was hard enough to watch Jenna slip away, and here I am planning to leave the sister wife I have left. I worry about how she’ll handle losing me.

But if not now, it would be later. In less than four years she would be at my bedside, watching me die.

I squeeze her hand. “Doing okay?” I ask.

“Yes,” I can hear the smile in her voice. “Thank you.”

My dress is a short strapless number, in a shimmering aqua with black pearls sewn into vaguely floral firework shapes up one side. A black pearl choker wraps around my throat, and black leggings and gloves will keep me warm against the biting January cold. Deirdre tops if off with a black ribbon for my hair, to go over the baby’s breath, and a light coat of glitter that reminds me of Cecily’s wedding gown. She seemed so happy then, fluttering ahead of me to the gazebo.

Now she stands back and admires my completed ensemble. She suddenly looks so grown-up with her face artfully colored in earth tones. Her hair is curled like mine, and she’s beautiful even in her rumpled nightgown.

“You look great,” she says. “You’re gonna kill tonight.”

I don’t tell her that, dress or not, I have no desire to go to this party. I would much rather crawl into that bed and pull the covers over my face and cry. But these are not the actions of a first wife. And Deirdre, Adair, and Cecily are watching me, so I smile in that way that my mother reserved for my father.

It scares me how easily I can pretend to be in love with this life, and the husband who comes with it.

Linden shows up in a simple black tuxedo—standard dress attire for all of the House Governors, I’ve noticed, but his lapels are the same aqua as my dress. I catch our reflection in the metal elevator doors, arm in arm, a perfect match. The doors open. We step inside.

“Have fun!” Cecily says.

When the doors have closed, Linden says, “Has she been a little strange lately?”

I’m not sure how to respond, because I have noticed a change in Cecily. Even since before Jenna’s death, she has been oddly forlorn. But I think it might have something to do with Vaughn’s constantly taking Bowen from her. And who knows what he’s doing to him. It’s common knowledge that new babies are the test subjects for wealthy households seeking the miracle antidote, but Vaughn has been so secretive and Bowen looks unscathed. I also can’t find a nice way to tell Linden that I think he was selfish and wrong to impregnate such a young girl in the first place. And maybe I’m worried he’ll start pressing me for children again. At sixteen I’m practically an old maid.

“She’s just tired,” I reply. “You should help her with the baby more.”

“I’d love to,” Linden says. “Between Cecily and my father, I’m lucky I even remember what my own son looks like.”

“Linden,” I venture, cautiously. “What do you suppose your father is doing with the baby all the time?”

“Monitoring his heart rate, drawing his blood to be sure he’s healthy, I suppose.” He shrugs.

“And that seems normal to you?” I say.

“What’s normal?” he says. “The first generations didn’t even realize their children were dying until twenty years later when it started happening. Who knows what will happen to our children?”

He has a point. I stare at my glittery heels. Here I am in a pretty dress while the world falls apart. I can hear Jenna’s voice saying,
Don’t forget how you got here. Don’t
forget.

Linden grabs my hand. At times like these I think he’s as frightened as I am. I give him a small smile, and he bumps his shoulder against mine. The smile grows.

“That’s better,” he says.

In the limo he pours us each a glass of champagne, but I don’t finish mine and I stop him from finishing his also.

“There will be plenty more at the party,” I say.

“Spoken like a true first wife.” He laughs and kisses my temple. I blush in spite of myself. It’s the first time he’s said the words out loud. First wife. It’s only for a few days longer, but I can pretend, for his sake, that that isn’t so.

“Do you suppose there will be cameras?” I ask.

“Tons,” he says. And he looks a little worried. “Maybe I should have asked you to wear those green contacts,” he says. “I don’t want the whole world knowing just how extraordinary you are.”

I straighten his tie. “Are my eyes what make me special to you?”

“No,” he says. His voice has become soft and dreamy.

He pushes the curls from my face. “They are only a ripple on the surface.”

I smile. For a moment I think this is the way my father felt about my mother, and I could almost swear this marriage was real. A stranger passing by would think we had been together for years, that we planned to live the rest of our lives together. I always knew I was an excellent liar; I just didn’t know I had it in me to fool myself.

We enter the party with our arms linked together, and with the music blasting it’s easy for us to be unnoticed.

The party is being thrown in an upscale bar that has platforms and a spiral staircase. The top two platforms are made of some sort of one-sided glass, so that we can see can see the people below but not the people above us. I’m relieved, because this means nobody can look up my dress. And something tells me some of these House Governors would try.

It takes approximately two minutes for one of Vaughn’s colleagues to approach us, with two giggling brunettes on his arms carrying neon glasses. They look barely older than Cecily. They’re dressed in matching fuchsia dresses that look like plastic wrap wound around their angular bodies. He introduces them as his wives—twins, each of them pregnant—and when he kisses my hand, both women stare at me with contempt.

“They’re jealous of your beauty,” Linden whispers when they’ve gone. “You look stunning, by the way. Stay close so nobody snatches you up.”

Right. Being snatched once is enough for a lifetime.

I do stay close to him, though, because I don’t trust any of these men, and because most of the other wives my age seem to already be drunk. This is a post–New Year’s party, and Linden explains that at midnight they’ll replay the countdown to the new year. When I ask him why, he says, “Who knows. But we only have so many new years left in life. What’s the harm in adding a few more?”

“Good point,” I say, and he pulls me onto the dance floor.

I do better with slow dances, which barely involve any motion at all, but one look at the flickering strobe lights tells me there will be no slow music tonight. I try to keep up with Linden, who patiently guides me along, and all I can think of is Jenna. How she taught Cecily and me her dance moves on that afternoon before the hurricane hit.

She would love this party, even if she wasn’t fond of Linden. She would be breaking hearts and crushing them under her heels as she whirled about the platform. I have an urge to tell her about the party when I get home, and then I remember that she’s gone.

Linden dips me over his arm. He’s in high spirits, considering how little he’s had to drink. When I’m swept back to my feet, he plants a quick kiss on my lips.

“Mind if I cut in?” a man asks. And perhaps “man” isn’t even the right word. He can hardly be any older than I am. He’s short and pudgy, and his carrot hair is reflecting back the rainbow of lights. His pale skin is so washed out I can barely make out his features. There’s a tall blonde on his arm in a bright red dress that matches her lips. She looks sober, as she looks Linden up and down.

Linden hesitates and looks at me.

“Come on!” the man says. “Just for one dance. We’ll swap wives.”

“All right,” Linden says, taking the red dress’s hand and passing me over to the carrot-head. “But I’m rather fond of my Rhine. Don’t get too attached.”

I feel nauseous. The man smells like an unfortunate assortment of all the meats on the deli platter, and he’s had too much to drink. He steps on my black shoes more than once, marring them with dirty footprints. He’s so short that I can see right over his head, and I’m watching Linden dance with this man’s wife, and she seems to be having the time of her life. She’s probably relieved to be with a husband who knows what he’s doing. But he isn’t her husband! He’s mine.

The thought stops me in my tracks. The pudgy carrot-head crashes into my breasts and laughs. “You sure are clumsy, baby,” he says. But I barely hear him. Mine?

No. Linden is not mine. It’s all an act. These parties, the key card, this first wife business—it’s insubstantial. In a few days Gabriel and I will run away, and this whole life will be a distant memory. What was I thinking?

I force myself to look away from Linden and the blonde, who is clearly enjoying dancing with a man her own height. And when this dance ends, I disappear to the dessert table and scoop up some éclairs and chocolate mini-cakes for Cecily before the good ones are taken.