.
he says. “Doesn’t want you anywhere near his father, that much is clear.”
“Vaughn and I don’t exactly get along,” I say.
“Let me guess,” Reed says. “He tried to pluck out your eyes for science.” He says that last word, “science,” with such exaggerated passion that I laugh.
“Close,” I say.
He stops working, leans forward, and stares at me so intently that I can’t help but look back at him. “It was no car accident, was it?” he says.
“What do you keep in that shed?” I counter. Since we’re asking questions.
“An airplane,” he says. “Bet you thought they were extinct.”
It’s true there aren’t many airplanes. Most people wouldn’t be able to afford traveling that way, and most cargo is transported by truck. But the president and select wealthy families have them for business or leisure. Vaughn, for instance, could afford one if he wanted. But my guess is that what Reed calls an airplane is a patchwork of different parts, and not something I’d want to board.
I look at the table. He answered my question; now he’s waiting for me to answer his.
“Vaughn was using me to find an antidote,” I say. “Something about my eyes being like a mosaic, or something. I don’t know. It’s hard to follow him.” And at the time, I had so many drugs running through me that I thought the ceiling tiles were singing to me. Those days were so vivid at the time, but now, looking back, the memory is a shadow at the end of a long corridor. I can’t remember much of anything.
“Doesn’t sound like something my nephew would allow,” Reed says. “Don’t get me wrong, the poor boy is as oblivious as a rabbit on a lion reserve, but still.”
Animal reserves are a thing of the past, but somehow this comparison feels right.
“He didn’t know,” I say. “And when I told him, he didn’t really believe it was as bad as it was. He still won’t. So we’ve decided it’s best to”—I pause, looking for the right words—“part ways. He and Cecily have the new baby coming, and I need to find my brother.” And Gabriel, but that would require even more explaining, and I’m already starting to feel exhausted and achy just thinking about what’s been said so far.
The dull aching becomes a stab of pain in my temple when Reed asks, “Then, why, doll, are you still wearing his ring?”
My wedding ring. Etched with fictional flowers that don’t begin and don’t end. More than once I’ve thought about cutting into it with something sharp. Making a line, severing the vines just so they stop somewhere.
“Can I see your plane?” I ask. “Does it fly?”
He laughs. It’s nothing like Vaughn’s laugh. There’s warmth in it. “You want to see the plane?”
“Sure,” I say. “Why not?”
“No reason not to, I suppose,” he says. “It’s just that no one’s ever asked before.”
“You have an airplane in your shed, and no one has ever asked to see it?” I say.
“Most people don’t know it’s there,” he says. “But I like you, not-Rose. So maybe tomorrow. For now, we have other things to do.”
That night I lie in Reed’s yard. It stretches on farther than I can see, empty, aside from the tall grass and the bursts of wildflowers. I lie on the dirt and think, There is where the orange grove would be. And over there, the golf course, with its spinning windmill, its lighthouse gleaming. And farther down would be the stables, abandoned now, where Rose and Linden used to keep their horses. And here, where I’m lying, would be the swimming pool. I could coast on an inflatable raft as imaginary guppies flicked their bodies around me in glimmers of color.
I thought I’d left that place behind me. But it keeps rebuilding itself in my mind.
Something rustles nearby and I turn my head, watching the grass move. I get the terrible sense that it’s trying to warn me.
I sit up and hold my breath, trying to listen. But a gust of wind is rolling through. I think it’s saying my name. No, that voice didn’t belong to the wind, though it would make more sense than the truth.
“Rhine?”
I lean back on my arms, tilt my head all the way to see the figure standing behind me.
“Hi,” I say.
The moon is full and beaming like a halo behind his head. His curls are his dark crown. He could be a sort of prince.
“Hi,” Linden says. “Can I sit?”
I collapse onto my back, liking the way the cold earth feels against my skull. I nod.
He sits next to me, careful to avoid my hair that’s splayed around my head like blood. A bullet to the forehead, boom, blond waves everywhere.
“Didn’t think you were coming back,” I say, focusing on the kite in the stars. I look for other kites, or people to fly them.
Linden lies beside me. All I can think is that he’s going to get grass stains on his white shirt. He’s going to dirty that lovely hair. I feel like he’s trying to prove a point that he can be like me—not so neat and perfect.
“I didn’t send my father, the other day,” he says. “I didn’t know he was going to do that.”
What he doesn’t say is that his father probably tracked my whereabouts using whatever device he implanted in Cecily. Linden saw for himself the one that had been implanted in me.
“Thought you said you knew him so well,” I mumble. Without looking back, I can feel his stare.
“He was trying to spare me,” Linden says. “He knew how difficult it would be for me to see you.”
“So you were spared,” I say. “Why did you come back?”
“My uncle called me this afternoon,” he says.
“I didn’t know you even had a phone,” I say. Somehow this feels like a violation, a reminder that while Linden treated me as an equal during our marriage, that was only part of the illusion. I was always a prisoner.
“He told me you were leaving,” Linden says. “He said you just planned to walk off and leave everything to chance.”
“Something like that,” I say.
“That’s not much of a plan,” he says. “What are you going to do for money? Transportation? Food? Where will you sleep?”
I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters.”
“This is why Reed was stalling, isn’t it? He wanted to talk to you before I left.” I suppress a cry of frustration. “Please just let this be my problem,” I say. “Not yours.”
He’s silent after that. The silence adds a foreign element to the air, polluting the moonlight, making my throat tight, the crickets extra loud. Planets are leaning in to listen. And finally I can’t take it anymore. “Just say it,” I tell him.
“Say what?”
“Whatever it is you want to say to me. There’s something ugly in there you’ve been wanting to let out. I can tell.”
“It’s not ugly,” he says gently. “Or angry at all, really. It’s more of a question.”
I prop myself on one elbow to look at him, and he does the same. There’s no hostility in his eyes. There’s no kindness, either. There’s nothing but green. “That night, at the New Year’s party, you said you loved me. Did you mean that?”
I stare at him a long time. Until his face disappears, and he’s just a shadow.
“I