Leandra scrambles backward, too caught off guard to fight, and I quickly grab a sheet pan off the stove, holding it out as a weapon as I usher Leandra behind me. Blood trails on the floor, gushing from her injury, and Marcella grabs a dishtowel, telling Leandra to press it to her wound.
“What are you doing?” I shout at Rosemarie. She stands there,looking like a serial killer grandma. Her gray hair is an arc of fuzz where it fell out of her ponytail, blood splattered on her clothing, her eyes wild and feral. Rosemarie keeps those eyes trained on Leandra, tracking her like a trapped animal.
“You can’t leave,” Rosemarie says to her. “You should have just had the pie, my dear.”
“What are you talking about?” Leandra shouts. “You’ve lost your mind!”
“Winston swore you liked cherry best,” Rosemarie says, motioning to the pie on the table. “Cherry with a hint of angel’s trumpet, perhaps. Maybe some nightshade. You wouldn’t have felt a thing, Leandra. He preferred it that way.”
Leandra stills, and I look back at her, confused. What does Winston have to do with any of this? Leandra’s teeth begin to chatter; she’s losing a lot of blood.
“You’re saying…,” Leandra starts, anguish in her expression. “You’re saying Winston put you up to this?”
“Breakups are never easy,” Rosemarie responds in mock sympathy. “And I thought you were right for him, I really did. But you’ve been holding him back, Leandra. You didn’t deliver the girls like we thought you would. No. Instead, you’ve helped build them up. Made them too self-sufficient.” Rosemarie tsks, shaking her head. “Now what are we supposed to do with a bunch of rebel girls? I’ll have to destroy them all. You’ve ruined everything.”
“I don’t understand,” Marcella says, helping Leandra hold the towel to her gushing wound. “Winston Weeks is dead. His body was found at the railway. He—”
“He’s not dead,” Leandra says. Her skin is now a grayish color, her eyes watery and bloodshot. “We staged it,” she adds miserably. “Winston Weeks is still alive.”
I’m completely stunned, a rush of complicated feelings flooding my chest. I can’t believe he’s alive. I can’t believe he tried to kill us. My head spins, and Rosemarie laughs at our shock.
She examines the knife before wiping the blade on a dishtowel to clean the blood. She smiles at us, but then she coughs again, putting the back of her hand to her mouth, bending over with the force of it. When she straightens, I notice how she’s sweating, her skin growing sallow. She blinks quickly, patting her chest just below her throat.
Behind me, there is a soft laugh.
I turn and see Lennon Rose using her fork to pick through her untouched slice of apple pie. “I switched the recipes,” Lennon Rose says calmly, almost bored. “Apple’s your favorite, right, Rosemarie?”
She glances up at Rosemarie, and I turn back to see the poet’s eyes widen. Rosemarie exhales heavily through her nose, her hand holding the knife beginning to shake. Sweat drips off her chin onto her shirt.
“And although angel’s trumpet was an inspired choice,” Lennon Rose continues, “I find wolfsbane to be much more effective. Pretty, too. Has a bit of an aftertaste, don’t you think?”
“You poisoned me?” Rosemarie asks, her voice growing thick as her throat constricts.
“Obviously,” Lennon Rose answers. “You didn’t think I wasgoing to let you kill any more girls, did you? I mean, that would make me a monster. But rest assured, we’ll make sure Winston Weeks never ascends to the greatness he thinks he deserves. We’ll put him in his place.”
Rosemarie lunges for her, but Lennon Rose is quicker and slides out of her chair, allowing the poet to crash into the table, knocking over the teacups. Rosemarie’s lips have taken on a bluish tint, and she continues to try to clear her throat.
She sways as if struck by a wave, and all at once, she seems confused, dulled. She opens her mouth, but nothing comes out aside from a gurgle. A burp. Rosemarie clutches her chest and takes a step, stumbling.
The girls and I look around at each other, unsure of what to do. For her part, Lennon Rose follows silently behind Rosemarie, her boots clacking on the kitchen tiles.
“I didn’t want to kill you, you know,” Lennon Rose explains to her. “I’d hoped that after you spent time with the other girls, you would see the future we could have. Instead, you destroyed them. You destroyed them because they wouldn’t be what you wanted them to be. In the end,” Lennon Rose says, “you were no better than the men who kept us captive. Just because you’re a woman doesn’t mean you escape blame. It means you should have loved us more because we were with you, we trusted you. But you betrayed us.”
Rosemarie staggers toward the back door, and then she’s outside. We walk out behind her, not offering help—she was going to kill us—but unsure of what to do. At this point, all wecan do is witness. Witness the death of our mother.
And of course it’s painful. Lennon Rose is right, we wanted to trust her. We wanted her love. But in the end, she wanted power. Power to decide how we would live, and then the power to decideifwe lived.
Rosemarie makes it a few more steps before falling to her knees in the flowerbed, her poisonous beauties all around her. And I’m not sure, but I think I see a ghost of a smile on her lips before her expression goes blank and she falls sideways. There is a final jolt before white foam slides from her mouth. And then, Rosemarie is dead.
She’s dead.
Brynn cries and turns to Marcella, who hugs her fiercely. Sydney is motionless next to me. We stare down at the woman who created us, the woman who woke us up. And eventually, the woman who would have let us die, or killed us herself.
There are heavy footfalls, and I turn back to see Leandra rushing out the back door, a dishtowel still pressed to the wound in her shoulder.
“Leandra,” I call as she runs past us. She doesn’t even look at Rosemarie’s body as she steps over her legs where they lie in the path. Leandra heads directly to her car, pulls open the driver’s side door, and climbs inside.
She’s determined, but more than that, she’s furious.
