Henry looked up from the grass, proudly holding up some multi-legged or winged insect trapped in between the mesh sides of the bug catcher. “See?” he called.
Since the night of the solstice, Henry spoke less and less. They tried not to let it discourage them — there was enough of that to go around already. Viviane assumed it had to do with my condition, but the truth was that Henry now found very little worth talking about. And he only talked when what he had to say was really important. That was the rule.
The day they brought me home from the hospital, Viviane had found a large unmarked envelope leaning up against the front door. Inside were two sizable checks — one made out to me, the other to Henry. Trapped in the envelope glue was a strand of copper-colored hair. As far as Viviane knew, Laura Lovelorn had returned to her beloved eastern Washington as soon as her separation from Jack Griffith was official.
“The world is definitely changing,” Viviane murmured. Gabe gave her shoulder a squeeze.
Gabe often teased Viviane about the bare ring finger on her left hand, implying, in his own gentle way, how much he wanted to marry her. She knew she would spend the rest of her nights dreaming beside the gentle giant, his chest pressed against her back, his palm lightly cupping her hip. But she also knew that she would never marry. Not Gabe or anyone else. What use did the heart have for jewelry anyway? To use her words.
Through the fall, I lay in bed with my stomach pressed against the mattress as I had since the day I was brought home from the hospital. The days and nights meshed together, forming a heavy black shroud that covered my eyes, my nose, my mouth, until I could no longer remember what it was like to feel the sun on my face. When the leaves began to change, my mother asked Gabe to move the bed so that, by turning my head to the side, I could look out the window. But when the leaves turned from green to brown, and I watched them fall to the ground to rot, I found they only reminded me of death.
By December the rains had calmed; the gray storm clouds that some suspected would never pass did, and winter arrived, carrying with it mornings of icy roads and icy car windows, and only a few scattered showers. Snow would come later, in January and February, catching them all by surprise when they awoke to a city draped in white.
December 21 marked the winter solstice. It also marked the six-month anniversary of my attack and the auspicious death of Nathaniel Sorrows. For the first time ever, Pinnacle Lane recognized the winter pagan holiday, though it was in somber, solemn tones.
Those days I often thought about death, often wondered what it might be like to die with such intensity that I could feel the edges of my body melt away, as if I were already a decomposing corpse. I imagined that being dead would feel a lot like those days when the nurse gave me a chalky white pill that left me so numb, the hours melted away like morning ice on a window. Like I was nothing at all but an insignificant shadow, a whisper, a drop of rain left to dry on the pavement.
But while the thought of being dead seemed appealing, the actual act of dying did not. Dying required too much action. And if recent events proved anything, my body wasn’t going to give over to death without a fierce fight; so if I were to kill myself, I’d have to make sure I could do it. That I’d be good and dead once it was all over and not mutilated or half deranged but still dreadfully alive. I thought of collecting handfuls of those chalky white pills, of hiding them in my cheek and stuffing them under the mattress, later washing them down in one gulp with a glass of cold tap water. I thought of sneaking into the kitchen for a steak knife sharp enough that a single slice to just one wrist would suffice — I wasn’t sure I could try to kill myself twice. I thought often of jumping from the rickety widow’s walk on the roof of the house. If it weren’t for my constant visitors, those thoughts might very well have led to some dark and dreadful act. Perhaps this was the very reason those constant visitors were there.
Gabe was in charge of breakfast, and each morning prepared simple culinary comforts: plate-size pancakes with gobs of butter and maple syrup licking down the sides; browned links of sausages; slices of smoked bacon; hard-boiled eggs — all served using Emilienne’s good china and linen napkins and the heavy silver knives and spoons. Gabe put everything on a tray and brought it upstairs to my room, bringing Henry along with him. In his own silent way, Henry was best at getting me to eat, and on the days when I wouldn’t, well, there was always Trouver.
Lunch was brought up by Cardigan, who dutifully arrived at our front door every afternoon, first just as the sun moved to its one o’clock spot, and then a little later in the day once school began. She brought her schoolwork with her, reading aloud from the books whose pages she’d been assigned and whispering secret plans she’d made for us when I was better.
“When you’re better . . .” she’d begin.
Most of the time Cardigan spent the hours of her visit lying next to me, holding my hand as we stared at the wall in silence. Once I turned my unfocused eyes to my best friend and said, “This suits you,” meaning Cardigan’s new, simplified look.
To which Cardigan replied, “This doesn’t suit you,” meaning everything else.
Dinner always varied. Sometimes it was brought by my mother. Sometimes it was Penelope or her husband, Zeb, who did card tricks with his calloused hands as I took a few meager bites from my meal. On the days Wilhelmina would come, she’d bring with her tiny satchels of dried herbs, which she’d hand to Viviane with specific instructions for water temperature and seeping time before heading upstairs. When it was ready, Viviane brought the bitter tea with my dinner. We watched and listened as Wilhelmina stood by the open window and sang in a low, melodious voice, tapping out the rhythm of her healing chant on the elk-skin drum she held in her hand. When Wilhelmina sang, my heart slowly became the beating of the drum. My breathing steadied, and I fell into a semi-hypnotic state not unlike that brought on by the chalky white pills, but a much more pleasant one.
I often thought I was going crazy — or maybe not going but already there. As if my future was only a locked room with white painted walls and white painted floors, with no windows or doors or any means to escape. A place where I opened my mouth to scream but no sound came out.
Instead of dying, instead of slowly disappearing until only a broken body remained, what happened was quite the opposite — my body began to repair itself.
I was grateful to the nurse who came every day to change my bulky bandages, even when it was quite clear that I no longer needed them. The nurse never said a word to either my mother or grandmother. I appreciated this; it gave me time to think, and I needed that time, what with all these images of death muddying my thoughts.
Then one night I awoke to find a man sitting by my bed, one hand covering the place where his face had been shot off.
“Don’t be afraid,” the man said. His words were thick and warped, as if his voice were leaking out of parts of his body other than his mouth.
“I’m not,” I replied, my own voice strange with disuse. “I know who you are.”
If the man could have smiled, he would have. “And who am I, then?”
“You’re death, of course.” I sighed. “To be honest, I find it comforting that you’ve been looking for me as much as I’ve been looking for you. Will it be long now?”
“Not long.”