Sever (Chemical Garden Trilogy)

by Lauren DeStefano

  Cecily interrupts her song to ask, “Where are we?” and lean back into her seat.

  “Someplace rural,” Linden says. “It’s hard to say. I never knew the street names.”

  Cecily reaches for the baby, and then holds him over her head, blowing absurd-sounding kisses on his belly; his giggles make her grin.

  “It’s this turn,” Linden tells the driver. “Off the road. Follow the tire tracks.”

  Even the limo, with its smooth ride, jostles over the uneven terrain. And a few minutes later we’ve come to the only thing in sight: a two-story brick house that looks as old and stable as the mansion, but much smaller. Surrounding it are half a dozen tarps arranged like black car-shaped ghosts. There’s a dilapidated shed and a windmill. The roof is covered in reflective panels.

  Cecily crinkles her nose and turns to Linden. “We can’t leave her here,” she says. “It looks like a junkyard.”

  “It’s not as bad as all that,” he says.

  “There’s tinfoil on his roof!”

  “They’re solar panels,” Linden amends patiently. “So he doesn’t have to use so much electricity.”

  Cecily opens her mouth to object, but I say, “It’s only for a couple of days. It looks fine.” I don’t mention that, while this is a step down from the luxuries of the mansion, it’s as nice as any of the homes I grew up near. And solar panels aren’t uncommon in Manhattan at all, where many can’t afford electricity.

  The limo stops, and I open my door quickly, afraid of sleeping gas or locks or snakes that could come slithering through the vents to strangle me.

  It’s early evening now, and without civilization for miles I can see darkness stretching toward me from every direction. The stars are bright, splayed across every shade of pink and blue, tracing a lone, oblong cloud.

  Linden comes up beside me, follows my gaze skyward. “When I was little,” he says, “my uncle told me the names of all the constellations. But I could never find them.”

  “But you know which one’s the North Star,” I remind him. I remember that he told Cecily about it, and she was discouraged by his lack of romance.

  “Right there,” he says, following the line of my arm as I point.

  “That’s the tail of Ursa Minor,” I say, moving my finger along the corresponding stars. “It’s my favorite because I think it looks like a kite.”

  “I actually see it,” he says quietly, as though astonished. “But I thought Ursa Minor was supposed to be in the shape of a dipper.”

  “Well, I think it looks like a kite,” I say. “That’s how I’m always able to find it.”

  He turns toward me, and I can feel his breaths, so faint and unassuming that they only move the finest hairs around my face. I don’t dare take my eyes from the stars. My heart is pounding. Memories rush through me. Memories of his fingers unbuckling my shoes, inching under the strap of my red party dress. His lips on mine. The darkness of my bedroom swimming with ivy and champagne glasses the night we came home late from the expo. Snow dusting his shoulders and his dark hair the night we said good-bye.

  Cecily slams the car door, snapping me back to reality. “If Rhine is staying here tonight,” she says, “I am too, to make sure she doesn’t get murdered by whatever lunatic runs this place.”

  I open my mouth to chide her for being so rude. To say that Linden’s uncle was nice enough to let me stay, and that asking for anything more would seem ungrateful. And also to point out that she’s barely as high as my shoulder, and how exactly would she fend off a lunatic if I couldn’t?

  But the words won’t come out. The thought of my only remaining sister wife going back to that mansion is making my palms sweat. She was safe when Vaughn kept her oblivious, but now that she’s seen the workings of his basement and she understands what he’s capable of, I worry for her safety.

  “My uncle isn’t a lunatic,” Linden says, and opens the car door again to pull out the suitcase that was sliding around the floor on the way here.

  “Why does your father hate him so much, then?” Cecily says.

  Linden’s father is no judge of who is or is not a lunatic, but I don’t say this either. I lean back against the trunk of the limo because I’m starting to feel light-headed, and the stars are throbbing, and Linden is right, I do need to rest before I venture into the world again. Everywhere I look, there’s nothing. The world is so far away. All that effort, all those miles undone. I was in Vaughn’s basement of horrors for more than two months. Two months that felt like ten minutes. Gabriel must think I’m dead. Just like my brother thinks I’m dead.

  But there has been so much sadness, so much disheartenment, that my body has worked up a defense mechanism to keep me from thinking about it. My head goes numb, and my bones start to ache. Hurricane winds spiral in my ear canals. A sharp pain has streaked my vision with a lightning bolt of white.

  Cecily and Linden are talking—something about what counts as eccentricity versus insanity, I think, and the conversation is getting terse as they interrupt each other. Linden is a creature of saintlike patience, but Cecily has a way of wearing anyone down.

  “You okay?” Cecily asks me, and I realize that they’ve moved a couple of yards ahead of me, toward the house. Linden turns to watch me, Bowen’s diaper bag slung from his shoulder, and a suitcase in his hand; he packed some clothes for me from my old closet.

  I nod and follow after them.

  Nobody answers when Linden knocks on the door. He knocks harder, then tries looking into the only visible window, which has its shade drawn. “Uncle Reed?” he calls, and knocks on the glass.

  “Does he know we’re coming?” I ask.

  “I told him last week when I visited,” he says.

  “How often do you come out here?” Cecily says, wounded. “You never told me.”

  “I’ve kept it secret. . . . ” Linden trails off, mouthing something to himself as he tries to see around the window shade. “I think I see a light inside.” He knocks again, and when there’s no answer, he opens the door.

  Cecily cradles Bowen’s head protectively, and casts a pensive stare into the darkness. “Linden, are you sure?” But he has already gone in ahead of us.

  I follow him, my sister wife shuffling close behind and gripping the hem of my shirt.

  It’s so dark that I can barely make out Linden’s shape as it moves ahead of me. It’s a long hallway, the wood creaking under our feet, and there’s the smoky smell of cedar and must. Then there’s a faint orange light flickering in a room at the end of the hall.

  We gather at either side of Linden in the doorway. We’ve come to a kitchen—at least I think that’s what it is. There’s a sink and a stove. But rather than cabinets there are shelves cluttered with things I can’t make out in the darkness.

  There’s a small round table, upon which a candle flickers in a mason jar. A man is seated there, hunched over something that looks like a giant metal organ. Its wires, pipes, and gears are the arteries, and it’s a mechanical heart, bleeding black oil onto the table and the man’s fingers.

  “Uncle Reed?” Linden says.

  The man grunts, working some intricacy with a pair of pliers and taking his time before looking up. He sees me first, then Cecily. “These are your wives?” he says.

  Linden hesitates. But he doesn’t have to answer, because the man returns to his work rather unceremoniously and adds, “I thought you said there were three of them.”

  “Just two,” Linden says, with so little emotion it gives me pause. It’s as if Jenna never existed. “And this is my son,” he adds, taking the baby from Cecily’s arms. “Bowen.”

  The man—Reed—pauses, astonished by something. But then he only grunts. “Doesn’t look like you,” he says.

  Cecily plays with a light switch on the wall; it doesn’t work. “Please don’t touch anything,” Reed says, and wipes his hands with a dingy rag that only spreads the oil around. He moves to the sink, and the faucet shudders before it spits out an unsteady stream. I can’
t be certain in the candlelight, but I think I see flecks of black in the water. Reed mutters curses.

  Then he pulls a cord over his head, and bleary light fills the room from a bulb that swings from the ceiling. The shadows jump back and forth, animating jars and pipes and senseless pieces that fill the shelves. There’s a refrigerator in one corner of the room, but there’s no electrical hum to it, no indication that it’s on.

  Reed comes closer, inspects the child in Linden’s arms. Bowen’s eyes are dazed, transfixed on the swinging bulb. “Nope, nothing like you,” Reed reaffirms. “Whose is he?”

  “He’s mine,” Cecily says.

  Reed snorts. “How old are you? Ten?”

  “Fourteen,” she says through gritted teeth.

  I get a whiff of something heady and smoky when Reed moves to stand before me. It’s making my eyes water, but I’m just grateful that he looks nothing like Vaughn. He’s not as tall, and he’s a little overweight, and his gray hair is as wild as waves breaking on rocks. “I thought you were dead,” he says to me.

  I must be worse off than I thought, because surely I just imagined that. But then Linden says, “That isn’t Rose, Uncle. Her name is Rhine. Remember I told you the other day?”

  “Oh, right, right,” Reed says. “I’m bad with names. I’m usually much better with faces.”

  “I’ve been told I look like her,” I offer.

  “Doll, you could be her ghost,” Reed says. “Do you believe in reincarnation?”

  “She can’t be a reincarnation of Rose,” Cecily says, indignant. “They were both alive at the same time.”

  Reed looks at her like she’s something he just stepped in, and she inches closer to Linden’s side.

  “Tell me,” Reed says, turning back to me, “because my nephew’s story was confusing. You’re running away from him, and he’s helping you?”

  “That’s one way to put it,” I say. “But I’m not running away. Not really. I’m looking for my brother.” A lump is forming in my throat, caused by Reed’s stare and his smell and the interrogating hue of that light. “The last I heard, he was in Rhode Island. He’s gotten into a—situation, and I need to find him. I won’t be any trouble in the meantime.” My words are coming out one atop the other, fast, and Linden puts his hand on my arm, and for some reason it calms me.

  Reed looks me over, his mouth squished to one side of his face like he’s thinking. “You have too much hair,” he says. “You’ll have to tie it back so it won’t get caught in the machines.”

  I have no idea what he’s talking about, but I say, “Okay.”

  “I told him you would help out a little,” Linden says. “It won’t be anything arduous. He knows you’re recovering.”

  “From the car accident. Right,” Reed says. I don’t know what story Linden fed him to explain my injuries, but judging from his tone he doesn’t believe it, or care to. “There’s a room upstairs where you can put your things. My nephew can show you. The floors make a terrible creaking, so I’ll have to ask you not to walk around at night.”

  That’s apparently our cue to leave, because he turns his attention to the contraption on the table. Linden herds us down the hallway.

  “Oh, Linden,” Cecily whispers, her words almost lost to the creaking of the steps. “I knew you were mad at her, but you can’t be serious about leaving her here.”

  “I am doing Rhine a favor,” he replies. “And she can take care of herself.” He looks over his shoulder at me. I’m two steps behind him. “Can’t you?” he says.

  I nod like I’m not at all unnerved by this new cold side to him. Not cruel like his father. Not warm like the husband who sought me out on quiet nights. Something in between. This Linden has never woven his fingers through mine, never chosen me from a line of weary Gathered girls, never said he loved me in a myriad of colored lights. We are nothing to each other.

  Reed may have forgotten my name, but he apparently remembered that I was coming, because the spare bedroom is lit up by three candles—one on the nightstand, two on the dresser. They and a twin bed are the only furniture in the room. There’s a cracked mirror on the far wall, and my reflection drowns in the darkness of it. Rose’s ghost. I almost expect it to move independent of me.

  Cecily drops the suitcase and the diaper bag on the floor, and a cloud of dust bursts from the mattress when she sits on it. She makes a big show of choking on it.

  “It’s fine,” I say, shaking out the pillow.

  “I’m afraid to even ask if there’s a bathroom I can use,” Cecily says.

  “At the end of the hall,” Linden says, rubbing his index finger along the bridge of his nose; it’s something I’ve only seen him do when he’s frustrated with his drawings. “Take a candle with you.”

  After Cecily has left the room, I sit on the edge of the bed and say, “Thank you, Linden.”

  He looks at his reflection in the mirror. “My uncle won’t ask any questions, if you don’t,” he says. “About why you aren’t staying at home with me, that is.”

  The silence is tight and unnatural. I grip the blanket in my fists and say, “Are you and Cecily going back there?”

  “Of course,” he says.

  He still won’t believe me about everything that happened in the basement. About Deirdre. I vaguely remember whispering about her in my medicated delirium, and about Jenna’s body hiding away in some freezer. He rubbed my arm, whispering words that sounded like moth bodies flying into glass windows. Nonsensical things I tried to cling to. Maybe, lying there, I was so pitiful that he felt no choice but to love me. Now he says I can take care of myself. Now I’m the liar trying to destroy the perfect world his father set up for him, who ran away, broke everything. And it’s getting late, and it’s time to part ways.

  But the words come out of me anyway. “Don’t go.”

  He looks at me.

  “Don’t go,” I say. “And don’t take Cecily back there. I know you don’t believe me, but I have a terrible feeling that—”

  “I can take care of Cecily,” he says. “I would have taken care of you, too. If I’d known you were so worried about my father.”

  Bowen has fallen asleep against Linden’s chest, and Linden shifts him to the other arm. “My father thought that if you didn’t want to be married to me, he could have you. It’s because of your eyes. He wanted to study them, and he took it too far. He can be that way.” His eyebrows knit together, and he looks at his feet, struggling to make sense of what he’s saying, to force logic where there is none. “He isn’t the monster you think he is. He just—he gets so into his work that he forgets people are people. He gets carried away.”

  “Carried away?” I spit back. “He drove needles into my eyes, Linden! He murdered a newborn—”

  “Don’t you think I know my own father?” he interrupts. “I’d trust him before I’d believe anything you say. You couldn’t even do me the dignity of telling the truth.”

  There was a night, months ago, when I almost did. It was after the expo. I was half-drunk, my hair sticky and perfumed and teased, the bed tipping under me. He climbed over my body, and he kissed me. I could hear tree branches murmuring to one another in the moonlight. And Linden said, so close that I could feel his breath on my eyelashes, But I don’t know who you are. I don’t know where you came from. His eyes were bright. I wanted so badly to tell him, but something about that entire night seemed so beautiful, so bizarre, that I didn’t trust it with my secrets. Or maybe I just wanted to play along, to wear his ring and be his wife for a little while before the magic took the light from the moon.

  Now I say nothing. There’s no brightness in his eyes for me.

  “If you didn’t love me,” he says, “you should have said it. I would have let you go.”

  “You might have,” I admit. “But not your father.”

  “My father has never been in charge of what I do,” he says.

  “Your father has always been in charge of what you do,” I say.

  He looks at
me, and I stop breathing. Something comes surging up behind his eyes, some argument of love or vengeance. Something that’s been building every second I’ve been away. And I want it, whatever it is. Want to hold it in both hands like his leaping heart that’s been ripped from his chest. Want to warm it with my body heat.

  He says, “When Cecily comes back, tell her I’ll be waiting by the car.”

  Then he’s gone.

  “I don’t want to leave you here,” Cecily says when I relay the message. “This place looks like it could give you cancer or something.” She’s remembering that word, “cancer,” from a soap opera Jenna used to watch. It’s a disease that was eliminated from our genetics.

  “I don’t think cancer was something you could catch,” I tell her.

  “That’s my point,” she says.

  We must be making too much noise, because Reed bangs on the ceiling.

  Cecily huffs and sits on the bed next to me. After a few seconds she puts her arm around my shoulders and stares at her stomach. At four months along she’s already looking tired and swollen. Her cheeks and fingertips are flushed. Her face and hair are damp from where she’s splashed herself with cold water, something she does after a bout of nausea.

  “Have you been sick a lot?” I ask her.

  “It’s not so bad,” she says softly. “Linden takes care of me.”

  I’m worried about her. I wonder if it has even occurred to her or to Linden that she hardly had a rest between pregnancies. Vaughn surely knows how unsafe this is, and he allowed it, which worries me even more. I’m scared that she’ll enter that dark hall, descend the stairs, and be forever in Vaughn’s clutches. I think she’s scared too, because she doesn’t move. I don’t know how much time passes before Linden comes looking for her.

  “Ready to go?” He stands in the doorway, mostly in shadow.

  “I’m staying the night,” she says.