“If he tries again, I’ll murder him first,” I tell her.
“Not necessary.” Her voice is slurring. “I’ll do it myself.”
I keep up the braiding, and eventually the drugs and the exhaustion pull her back under. Her mouth falls open, letting out steady breaths.
She’s grown so much since I ran away. Her pert chin has elongated just enough for her face to lose its permanent pout and give her an air of assuredness instead. Her bratty sense of superiority has matured into a cool, practical certainty, which is perhaps why Vaughn grabbed her arm that morning, why he seems to fear he has lost control of her. Her ferocity is palpable now; it’s the very strength that brought her spluttering and gasping from death itself, as if to say she were promised twenty good years and she’s going to have them.
“Jenna would be proud of you,” I whisper. Her eyebrows knit for a moment and then relax.
When Linden returns, his arms are folded across his stomach. There are streaks from tears on his skin. He looks small, rattled. I’ve only known him to be this way late at night, when he was first mourning Rose; the darkness hid the worst of it then. His shaking breaths make my arms remember the shape of him beneath the blankets. Something deep within me wants to pull him close.
“How is she?” he asks. His voice is congested.
I open my mouth to say that she’s okay, but what comes out is, “She’s terrified, Linden.”
I expect him to argue that she’s perfectly safe, but he only nods as he takes his place in the chair by her bed. “My father agreed to leave for now, so she can rest. But he wanted to take her home tonight. He thought she’d get the best care in her own bed, with the doctors we have at home.” He watches her eyes roving busily as she dreams. Her eyelids break apart, revealing a sliver of white. “I said it wouldn’t be a good idea.”
I’m impressed. It’s the first time he has overridden one of his father’s decisions.
I think about how he spent last night awake, waiting for the moment when he could see Cecily again. I drifted to sleep a few times in the waiting room, leaning against him, and every time I awoke, his face had changed into a different kind of grief. “Linden,” I say softly now, “you should at least try to get some sleep.”
He shakes his head, watching as I gather Cecily’s hair for a new braid.
“My father warned me that you’re an interloper. He told me I should make you leave, since we’re no longer married and you’re not my concern,” he says. The thought gives me a chill. Yes, I’m sure Vaughn would love for his son to abandon me, so that Vaughn can swoop in and reclaim me the second I’m alone.
But Linden adds, “I told him that wouldn’t be a good idea either.”
By evening Linden has succumbed to sleep. He sits hunched over the bed, his head resting beside Cecily’s on the pillow, his hand gripping her arm as though she might float away from him. I listen to the rain and the thunder, and I think I hear Jenna’s voice in them, sounding out a warning. She’s been gone for months now. But sometimes it feels like she’s more alive than ever. She’s one of the indecipherable things that make sounds in the wind, and she’s in every kind of dream—the good and the awful.
I go into a fitful half sleep. Coasting along, I hear Cecily’s voice, high and operatic and lovely when she sings. I dream of Jenna braiding her own long dark hair as music notes fill the room. We’re safe here. Safer than we’ll ever be when we’re awake.
But with morning comes reality. The rumble of gurneys and trays in the hallway replaces the danger of last night’s storm.
“I brought you some tea,” Linden says when I open my eyes. He nods to the paper cup on the night table. “It’s gone cold.”
“Thanks,” I say.
“Sure,” he says, looking at Cecily, whose face is more relaxed in sleep.
“I think she’s doing better,” Linden says, miserable, drained, “now that my father’s gone.” His next breath looks like it hurts. “I thought she loved my father. I thought my father loved her. He has told me that she’s like a daughter to him.”
I decide that right now is not the time to say anything awful about his father. Linden’s having a hard enough time. I sip my tea. It is cold, but I feel it immediately in my stomach, stirring things, waking my organs and making me alert.
Whatever Linden is thinking, he doesn’t say it. He only stares at Cecily.
“She’ll be all right,” I say, resolute. “We’ll get her a little bell to ring when she needs anything, and by the second day we’ll want to throw it out the window.”
That gets a smile out of him. I hear the scrape of stubble when he rubs his chin. He opens his mouth like he wants to say something, but then he looks away.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Do you think—” He swallows something painful. “Do you think my father had something to do with this?”
Linden. The thought is sinister for him. Even I didn’t want to entertain the possibility. But now that the fear and the shock are subsiding, I know it’s the best explanation. Vaughn is so good at his wicked craft that he can ruin his daughters-in-law without even being under the same roof, without even being in the same city. He finds a way into our blood, as deadly as the virus that kills us.