“Then why—why did you want me?”
His eyes are jarring in their sincerity. “I wanted to study you.”
“What?” I gasp.
He turns his back to me. “Did you know,” he says, so quietly I have to strain to hear him, “that my mother lives in that house?” He looks to the closed door. “The one my father brought you to? The one where he shot you? She was in her room. Just down the hall from where he was keeping you.”
When I don’t respond, Warner turns to face me.
“Yes,” I whisper. “Your father mentioned something about her.”
“Oh?” Alarm flits in and out of his features. He quickly masks the emotion. “And what,” he says, making an effort to sound calm, “did he say about her?”
“That she’s sick,” I tell him, hating myself for the tremor that goes through his body. “That he stores her there because she doesn’t do well in the compounds.”
Warner leans back against the wall, looking as if he requires the support. He takes a hard breath. “Yes,” he finally says. “It’s true. She’s sick. She became ill very suddenly.” His eyes are focused on a distant point in another world. “When I was a child, she seemed perfectly fine,” he says, turning and turning the jade ring around his finger. “But then one day she just . . . fell apart. For years I fought my father to seek treatment, to find a cure, but he never cared. I was on my own to find help for her, and no matter who I contacted, no doctor was able to treat her. No one,” he says, hardly breathing now, “knew what was wrong with her. She exists in a constant state of agony,” he says, “and I’ve always been too selfish to let her die.”
He looks up.
“And then I heard about you. I’d heard stories about you, rumors,” he says. “And it gave me hope for the very first time. I wanted access to you; I wanted to study you. I wanted to know and understand you firsthand. Because in all my research, you were the only person I’d ever heard of who might be able to offer me answers about my mother’s condition. I was desperate,” he says. “I was willing to try anything.”
“What do you mean?” I ask. “How could someone like me be able to help you with your mother?”
His eyes find mine again, bright with anguish. “Because, love. You cannot touch anyone. And she,” he says, “she cannot be touched.”
FIVE
I’ve lost the ability to speak.
“I finally understand her pain,” Warner says. “I finally understand what it must be like for her. Because of you. Because I saw what it did to you—what it does to you—to carry that kind of burden, to exist with that much power and to live among those who do not understand.”
He tilts his head back against the wall, presses the heels of his hands to his eyes.
“She, much like you,” he says, “must feel as though there is a monster inside of her. But unlike you, her only victim is herself. She cannot live in her own skin. She cannot be touched by anyone; not even by her own hands. Not to brush a hair from her forehead or to clench her fists. She’s afraid to speak, to move her legs, to stretch her arms, even to shift to a more comfortable position, simply because the sensation of her skin brushing against itself causes her an excruciating amount of pain.”
He drops his hands.
“It seems,” he says, fighting to keep his voice steady, “that something in the heat of human contact triggers this terrible, destructive power within her, and because she is both the originator and the recipient of the pain, she’s somehow incapable of killing herself. Instead, she exists as a prisoner in her own bones, unable to escape this self-inflicted torture.”
My eyes are stinging hard. I blink fast.
For so many years I thought my life was difficult; I thought I understood what it meant to suffer. But this. This is something I can’t even begin to comprehend. I never stopped to consider that someone else might have it worse than I do.
It makes me feel ashamed for ever having felt sorry for myself.
“For a long time,” Warner continues, “I thought she was just . . . sick. I thought she’d developed some kind of illness that was attacking her immune system, something that made her skin sensitive and painful. I assumed that, with the proper treatment, she would eventually heal. I kept hoping,” he says, “until I finally realized that years had gone by and nothing had changed. The constant agony began to destroy her mental stability; she eventually gave up on life. She let the pain take over. She refused to get out of bed or to eat regularly; she stopped caring about basic hygiene. And my father’s solution was to drug her.
“He keeps her locked in that house with no one but a nurse to keep her company. She’s now addicted to morphine and has completely lost her mind. She doesn’t even know me anymore. Doesn’t recognize me. And the few times I’ve ever tried to get her off the drugs,” he says, speaking quietly now, “she’s tried to kill me.” He’s silent for a second, looking as if he’s forgotten I’m still in the room. “My childhood was almost bearable sometimes,” he says, “if only because of her. And instead of caring for her, my father turned her into something unrecognizable.”
He looks up, laughing.
“I always thought I could fix it,” he says. “I thought if I could only find the root of it—I thought I could do something, I thought I could—” He stops. Drags a hand across his face. “I don’t know,” he whispers. Turns away. “But I never had any intention of using you against your will. The idea has never appealed to me. I only had to maintain the pretense. My father, you see, does not approve of my interest in my mother’s well-being.”
He smiles a strange, twisted sort of smile. Looks toward the door. Laughs.
“He never wanted to help her. She is a burden he is disgusted by. He thinks that by keeping her alive he’s doing her a great kindness for which I should be grateful. He thinks this should be enough for me, to be able to watch my mother turn into a feral creature so utterly consumed by her own agony she’s completely vacated her mind.” He runs a shaky hand through his hair, grips the back of his neck.
“But it wasn’t,” he says quietly. “It wasn’t enough. I became obsessed with trying to help her. To bring her back to life. And I wanted to feel it,” he says to me, looking directly into my eyes. “I wanted to know what it would be like to endure a pain like that. I wanted to know what she must experience every day.
“I was never afraid of your touch,” he says. “In fact, I welcomed it. I was so sure you would eventually strike out at me, that you would try to defend yourself against me; and I was looking forward to that moment. But you never did.” He shakes his head. “Everything I’d read in your files told me you were an unrestrained, vicious creature. I was expecting you to be an animal, someone who would try to kill me and my men at every opportunity—someone who needed to be closely watched. But you disappointed me by being too human, too lovely. So unbearably naive. You wouldn’t fight back.”
His eyes are unfocused, remembering.
“You didn’t react against my threats. You wouldn’t respond to the things that mattered. You acted like an insolent child,” he says. “You didn’t like your clothes. You wouldn’t eat your fancy food.” He laughs out loud and rolls his eyes and I’ve suddenly forgotten my sympathy.