Now, in my dream, I am once more in my chair by the foot of her bed, but instead of reading, I’m working on a hoop of embroidery. My stitches are haphazard and crazed—I can make no sense of what the work is meant to be. Rebecca reclines against the pillows, watching me, her face pale, dark circles etched beneath her eyes. A bowl of blood sitsnext to the bed, from her latest bloodletting. A futile attempt to save her life, despite Dr. Broadbent’s insistence otherwise.
“Do you remember ...” she croaks. “Do you remember when Mother took us to the opera. In New Orleans?”
“Yes,” I say. I stab the needle through the stretched muslin, once, twice. An angry circle of red blooms on the fabric. I’ve hurt myself. Yet I feel no pain.
“There was a man there. At the opera. Do you remember?”
I pause, resting the embroidery hoop on my lap. Blood trickles from my finger. Drips onto my skirts. I do nothing, inexplicably, to stanch the flow.
“No, I don’t remember.”
“I do,” she says tiredly. “He brought Mother champagne. Gave us sweets and joined us in our booth.”
I vaguely remember a young man—handsome, blond, broad-shouldered—who sat next to Mother for part of the opera. “I recall that he was there for a time. Then left rather quickly.”
“Yes. Butsheleft, too, right in the middle of the mad scene.” Rebecca smiles tightly. “No one leaves during the mad scene.”
I know what Rebecca is getting at—one of the secrets we share. Our mother dallies and toys with men. Flirts. Craves their eyes upon her. The blood courses faster from my finger now, pouring out in a steady stream. I nonchalantly watch it plop, plop onto the floor, where it creeps toward the edge of the rug. “What are you trying to say, Becca?”
“Mother. She’s always been vain, hasn’t she? She craves attention. When I’m sick, she gets it.”
My defensiveness rises. My blood pulses. “No more than you. You enjoy the attention, too. She dotes on you because of it. Everyone does.”
“You’re wrong. I hate it.” Rebecca sighs, her eyes finding the corner of the room. “You don’t know how lucky you are. You think beauty is a blessing. But beauty is a curse.”
“So says the beauty.” I stab with the needle. But I’m no longer sewing through the muslin. I’m piercing my skin. I force the needlethrough my forearm, drawing the thread along with it. I do it again, then once more, stitching a tidyxon my flesh. Blood beads around my work.
“You can’t understand, Lil. You don’t see what’s happening to me. What she’sallowing. No one sees it. And I dare not speak of it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re not making any sense.” I sew anotherxclose to the first.
“There are bad kinds of attention, you know,” she says, and coughs. “Something broke in her, after Ruth and Emma died. She keeps me sick, because it gets her what she wants. Water, please. I’m so thirsty.”
I bring the glass to her lips. Blood drips from my wrist onto her coverlet. She ignores it and drinks the water, then collapses onto the pillow. I return to the chair, take up my needle, and add another stitch to my skin. I now have a neat row of cross-stitches. It’s the best work I’ve ever done. I raise my arm, admiring the evenness of my stitches, and vow to always practice my embroidery in this way.
Rebecca begins to cry, faint tears tracing down her face. “I’m so sorry, Lil. I just want it to be over. All these years ... you’ve wanted what youthoughtI had. But you’ll never know what it’s been like.”
“Hush now, you’re only making things worse.” Another stitch.
“Do you know? I think I would have been happier if I’d been a thing made of porcelain instead of flesh and bone.” She whimpers, then goes silent. I raise my head. She’s gone, her coverlet pulled taut, like she was never even there at all. Her doll, with its flurry of red ringlets and softly parted lips, lies upon her pillow instead, its glass eyes void of life.
I wake in a panic, inspecting my arms in the pale shaft of moonlight passing through the trees. There are no stitches. Only Kate’s ruined cravat, wrapped around my hands. I sit up, remembering where I am, and what happened. William. The party. The soldiers. Kate. I’d abandoned her.
As dawn lightens the sky, I begin rebuilding my hermitage, slowly and deliberately. Rain comes, soaking my clothing and destroying my progress. I huddle in the underbrush, crying with frustration. Everything seems futile. My continued existence a mockery. Once the rains abate, I resume building my shelter. I have the walls completed by early afternoon. After I’m finished, I search the underbrush and find my pouch of money and jewelry, my kitchen knife, and the two remaining fishing hooks and twine Ruby gave me. I dig up some earthworms, then trudge to the creek to fish. I shed my jacket and roll up the trousers, letting my feet dangle in the current to soothe their soreness. Though I miss Kate fiercely, I’ve missed this, too. The solitude. The sense of self-reliance I cultivated in the wild.
I catch two redfish, then head back to my campsite. When I arrive, I find a box of matches lying on the sycamore stump. I smile. “Thank you, Ruby.”
I sense her nearby, and sure enough, with a quiet rustle, she emerges from the shadows, dressed in dark muslin, her hair covered by a green kerchief. “Why are you back out here?” she asks.
“This is the only place that’s safe.”
“Does Mr. Mayhew know you’re here?”
“No,” I say. “And I don’t want him to.”
“Why? What’s happened?”
I set about gathering twigs for a fire, not knowing how to answer this question. Kate and I are good together. I love her. But in this world, in these circumstances, what could ever come of our partnership? I’m a convicted murderer on the run. She had a steady, predictable life before I came along. “It’s for the best that I left, Ruby. That’s all. Mr. Mayhew helped me, and I’ll always be grateful to him, and to you, but I must exist henceforth in solitude.”
