The words lashed out quick as a striking snake. “I thought Jesus preached kindness. Doesn’t that make you a hypocrite?”
Her slap was so hard she nearly sent me off the chair. I caught myself against the vanity, cheek throbbing.
“How dare you? Do you want me to get your father?”
My ears rang. All I could think was: I had to tell Ever. This dark secret that had been kept from him, the real reason they called his father the Devil and avoided him at all costs. His whole life, he thought he’d killed his mother, had carried the weight of it. What would happen when he knew the truth?
That fierce anger filled me, the kind that begged me to defend him, the way he’d done for me in the swamp with Renard. I longed for the cool weight of a stone in my hand. But who would I turn it on—all of Bottom Springs? What could I actually do against people like my parents? Weak, meek Ruth Cornier.
My mother walked to the bed and seizedTwilight. “Your rebaptism couldn’t come at a better time. The Devil is hard at work inside you.” She thrust the book at me. “Take this down to your father and show him what you’ve done.”
The instincts seized me and I obeyed. And when my father commanded me to strike a match and set fire to the book, no matter how much it hurt, I didn’t protest. I held the flame in the fireplace and let it drop. I thought of that girl: Ruth Cornier, the wisp. And as the pages blackened and curled, I imagined it was her who was burning.
“On this holy day,” my father shouted, his voice triumphant, reaching across the waves to the congregation, who watched raptly from the shore. “We give thanks to the Lord for giving his life so we might have a path toward redemption!”
A wave crashed at my back, knocking me forward, the water warm and murky and high as my hip bone. My father seized a fistful of my hair and braced a hand against my back. The congregation swayed on their feet, anticipating.
“You are gathered here to witness the rebirth of Ruth Sarah Cornier,” he yelled. “Today she recommits herself as God’s servant.This, my friends, is how we defeat death.Thisis how we conquer that last great hurdle!”
They cheered. What a sight we must’ve been, my towering, golden-skinned father, holding me in the waves like a redheaded flame he would douse in the sea. He kept yelling, but I let his words fade out. My eyes drifted past the congregation to the blue sky above.
A flock of starlings was coming, hundreds of black birds pouring toward us like a dark wave. They danced in their murmuration, undulating like water, forming topography, twisting into spirals, mysterious messages I wished I could read. It was beautiful. Somehow, they knew how to do this, each of them born with an instinct for exactly where they were meant to be. They called to each other in a great cacophony and I imagined they were calling to me, asking where I was meant to go, what I wanted in this life.
In my heart, I knew the answer. It was the same as the answer to my mother’s second question:This all-encompassing love for all the wrong men—what’s in it for you?The truth was, I longed to kiss people like Edward Cullen, vampires and heartbreakers who could hurt me, kill me, men who walked the knife’s edge of life, because what I really wanted—what I’d wanted from fourteen, even before I had the languageto describe it—was to suck the marrow out of them and carry it myself. Forget puberty, forget growing up into a woman. I wanted to drink their threat, hold that volatile substance in my chest. Swallow their danger and become the danger myself. Vampire, viper; all that power, mine.
That was the thing everyone glossed over about Bella—why as I aged, I fell in love with her, I think, even more than him. Because all along, she knew she’d been born to be a vampire; it was only after Edward turned her, in her death and monstrosity, that she became her truest self.Thatwas what I longed for, and no number of girls who died trying, no number of cautionary tales would ever stop me.
Because I wanted to be transformed. Same as all the people up there on the shore. Except baptism wasn’t strong or quick enough for me. Love so violent it was a threat, a maelstrom—maybe that could do it. Maybe after it burned through me and I was transfigured, the world would look atmeand be afraid. Wouldn’t that be something? The prayer of every teenage girl.
A roar went up.
My father dragged me underwater.
28
NOW
I surface from my thoughts with a gasp as the organ music soars and the congregation rises to its feet.
“Earth to Ruth,” says Barry, and yanks me up.
I grip the pew, unsteady like I’ve just emerged from somewhere deep. In front of us, the choir trails down ornate twin staircases to the stage in their red and white finery. Once Holy Fire Born Again was no more than a small, square building on an empty plot of land, its steeple the grandest thing about it—and even that, outmatched by the library. Over the years it’s grown in every way: the building with renovations, the congregation filling this massive nave, and my father’s reputation. After the choir sings their opening, he’ll emerge on the balcony overlooking us, magisterial, an emissary from God. Like clockwork, the Holy Spirit will overtake someone, and they’ll start speaking to him in tongues.
Barry pries one of my hands off the pew and squeezes it. “I was thinking we could have a short engagement. Get married right here in the fall. What do you think?”
I’d finally told him I needed more time to consider his proposal, and though he wasn’t happy, he also hadn’t let the answer stop him fromplanning. He seems to view our marriage as a foregone conclusion that I’ll eventually catch up to.
I smile weakly. “Fall is nice.”
A rare visitor appears in the aisle: Augustus Blanchard hobbles to his row up front, accompanied by a hovering usher. He’s grown emaciated these last couple of years, no longer a commanding figure. He leans hard on his cane with every step.
“Looks awful,” Barry whispers, leaning in. “That man hasn’t been the same since Herman passed. That’s what grief’ll do to you, I guess. I’m worried reopening Herman’s case is gonna make the old guy keel over.”
I study Augustus’s profile. His face, though hollowed, is as stern and unyielding as ever. I don’t read grief in him.
“Barry,” I say, and he straightens to attention. He’s been fawning and attentive since I told him I needed time to think. Withholding my answer has given me more power over him than I’ve ever held—and unfortunately, I need to exploit it. “Who’s inheriting the Blanchard fortune when Augustus dies?”
“Shoot.” Barry raises his eyebrows. His hands are folded in front of him, his brown hair swept to the side, wearing a carefully ironed collared shirt. The spitting image of a good man. “That’s the million-dollar question, ain’t it? I got no clue. Just know it wasn’t gonna go to Herman.”
