He snatched her hand from the air and pulled her near. Something in her eyes kindled,
but with what? Desire? Fear? She was sometimes impossible to read. In the mirror above
the mantel, he saw the two of them, and the image thrilled him.
“Let’s go to Boston after the wedding. We can drive up to Maine for our honeymoon. I
don’t want a long sea voyage.”
She only lifted a brow and smiled. “Bertie, Paris was part of the bargain.”
“But why? We have time to see the whole world.”
“You have time. I will be a mother to your children and a hostess to your business partners. But for a moment …” She stood on tiptoe, her lips a bare breath from his, the heat of her body palpable as her fingers pressed against his arm. “I might simply be a girl
seeing Paris for the first time, and we might simply be lovers.”
The word hit him like a hammer swing.
“Paris it is,” he said on a laugh, and kissed her. It was not their first kiss, but like every kiss with Daisy it felt new.
A creak sounded on the stairs, then a rolling sound, like someone stumbling.
Daisy pulled away. “Gladys has the very worst timing.”
But over Daisy’s shoulder, Bertie could see Gladys still drifting dreamily along the green, her white cap bright against the dogwoods.
He turned and saw—nothing, no one, an empty doorway. Daisy sucked in a startled
breath.
The edge of his vision blurred, a dark blot spreading like flame catching at the corner
of a page, eating along its edge. He cried out as he felt something like pain, something like fire, pierce his skull. A voice said, They cut me open. They wanted to see my soul.
“Daisy?” he gasped. The word came out garbled. He was lying on his back in an
operating theater. Men stood above him—boys, really.
Something’s wrong, one said.
Just finish! shouted another.
He looked down. His stomach had been cut open. He could see, oh God, he could see
himself, his gut, the meat of his organs, displayed like winding snakes of offal in a butcher’s case. One of the boys was pawing at him. They cut me open.
He screamed, doubled over. He clutched his stomach. He was whole.
He was in a room he didn’t recognize, some kind of office, polished wood everywhere.
It smelled new. The sunlight was so bright it hurt his eyes. But he wasn’t safe from those
boys. They’d followed him here. They wanted to kill him. They’d taken him from his good spot at the train yard. They’d offered him money. He knew they wanted to have their
fun, but he hadn’t known, he didn’t know. They’d cut him open. They were trying to take
his soul.
He couldn’t let them drag him back to that cold room. There was protection here. If he
could only find it. He reached for the desk, pulling open drawers. They seemed too far away, as if his arms were shorter than he remembered.
“Bertie?”
That wasn’t his name. They were trying to confuse him. He looked down and saw a black shape in his hand. It looked like a shadow, but it felt heavy in his palm. He knew the
name for it, tried to form the word for it in his mind.
There was a gun in his hand and a woman was screaming. She was pleading. But she
wasn’t a woman; she was something terrible. He could see night gathered around her. The
boys had sent her to bring him back so they could cut him open again.
Lightning flashed but the sky was still blue. Daisy. He was supposed to protect her. She was crawling across the floor. She was weeping. She was trying to get away.
There, a monster, staring back at him from above the mantel, his white face filled with
horror and rage. They’d come for him and he had to stop them. There was only one way to
do it. He had to ruin their fun. He turned the shadow in his hand, pressed it to his gut.
Another flash of lightning. When had the storm come on?
He looked down and saw that his chest had come apart. He’d done the work. Now they
couldn’t cut him open. They couldn’t take his soul. He was on the floor. He saw sunlight
crisscrossing the slats, a beetle crawling over the dusty floorboards. Daisy—he knew her