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Men like the viscount, they take what they want.” So do I, thought María
If she had looked, she might have stopped. If she had looked. But she doesn’t.)
Jess. Freckles like stars across her cheeks.
More and more she thinks of cutting it off. Her hair. His hand. Depending on the day.
Everyone insists it is her purpose, and it drives her mad, the idea that the shape of her body determines the shape her life must take.
“How did he die?” she asks. The widow’s smile widens. “Slowly.”
“Those grown in the midnight soil are never alone.”
Never walk alone at night, they tell you, if you’re a girl. And it isn’t fair.
Sabine has no way of knowing that this one night will tip the balance of her life. That this one girl will be both the beginning and the end of everything.
“Follow the music,” said the bouncer, like the world’s most unhelpful white rabbit, and now here’s Alice, stuck in Wonderland.
“Maybe, but the fact is, when Boston winter rolls around, they’ll notice if you’re going about with a thin sweatshirt and no hat. So it’s better to blend in.”
She had no way of knowing then. It would be fifty-two years before she returned to Clement Hall.
She doesn’t see Sabine arrive. But she feels it.
She is not a lily or a rose. Not a flower ready and waiting to be picked. She is still growing wild at the edges of her family garden. She is not ready. She will never be ready. This isn’t what she wants.
She feels the life slide down her throat, take root inside her chest. Coil around her heart, which, at last, begins to beat again.
“The world is so dark,” whispers Charlotte. “So full of death. There must be something we can do.” Sabine brings her fingertips to Charlotte’s chin, and lifts her face. “Yes,” she says, “we can live.”
Harder when you are still inside, convinced you can douse the blaze before it spreads, or rushing room to room, trying to save what you love before it burns.
Jess. Freckles like stars across her cheeks.
