At the door, Thomas tipped his brow against the frame. Shutting his eyes, he drew a single, steadying breath. His fist rose to drum against the wall in three slow but firmthump, thump, thumps. And then, with alarming alacrity, he moved to the curtains and snapped them shut. When it was done, he turned to face his sister.
“I am sorry,” he said, speaking clearly and slowly, “that I missed my birthday.”
“We saved you a cupcake,” said Tess, though it came out grudgingly. “What happened to your eye?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
She tailed him into the kitchen. Vivienne, feeling a little lost and extremely horrified, trailed after them like an unwelcome ghost. She watched Thomas rise onto his toes over the dish-filled sink and secure the window latch. On the laminate counter sat a kiln-fired plate smeared in little blue handprints.Tommy, someone had painted along the lip.Age 3.A single cupcake sat in the center, the candle going lopsided where the frosting had begun to melt.
“Have you been fighting again?” asked Tess, tailing Tommy the few short steps to the back door. He jostled the handle, ensuring it was locked. “Because if you have, Mom will kill you. And you’ll feel terrible, because the effort it would take to kill someone your size would knock her flat for a month. Do you want that, Tommy? To be plagued by guilt for eternity?”
Tommy swung around, gripping his sister firmly by the shoulders. “Tessa.”
She didn’t balk. “Tommy.”
“Go finish your movie.”
“I don’t want to,” said his sister brightly. “This is way more interesting. Is that your girlfriend?”
Thomas went visibly, painfully still. He still didn’t look at Vivienne, but this time, she could feel him very deliberatelynotlooking at her. As though she was all that he was aware of, every last cell in his body urging him to turn and face her.
“No,” he finally said. It came out strained.
“She’s bleeding,” noted his sister. “Were you in a car accident?”
Thomas edged past her with a scowl and tugged open a cabinet, rattling the contents until he reemerged with a compact medical kit.
“Are you going to eat your cupcake?” asked Tess, tailing him back into the living room. “It’s Funfetti.”
“I’ll eat it later,” said Thomas. “Vivienne, let’s go.”
Vivienne stood isolated in the dark of the kitchen. She wanted to ask why he’d brought her here—why he’d let her in his home like this, after she’d been so deliberately awful. It felt like he’d scored himself open and she was looking directly into the heart of him, and it was cruel, cruel, cruel because how was she supposed to keep from loving him now?
“Vivienne?” Tessa rounded on her with wide, pale eyes. “Is that your name? It’s pretty. My brother is exhibiting his usual weirdo behavior, so can you please tell me—were you in a car accident? A ten-car pileup, maybe? Is that why hemissed his birthday?”
“Leave her alone,” said Thomas, shooting an arrowed glance in her direction. They had a brief but silent sibling conversation—the sort that made Vivienne starkly aware of how blisteringly lonely her own childhood had been—and then Thomas, emerging victorious, announced, “We’ll be in my room. Don’t feed the dogs anything from the fridge.”
Vivienne hadn’t spent much time in other people’s houses. When she was young, it was a precautionary measure. Away from the watchful eyes of Philip and Mikhail, it would be too easy for her to slip up and speak. Later, once she’d grown old enough to guard her tongue like a fortress, it was a habit. She stayed at home, locked away in her room and viewing the world through the narrow window of her cell phone—building a veritable kingdom in the palm of her hand, where she could be as loud or as quiet as she wanted without ever speaking, could shape herself into whatever or whomever she wanted.
Outside her room, the rest of the Farrow house was untouchable. A museum. Sun soaked and beige, she’d heard her mother call it once, during an interview with her favorite home and garden magazine. She’d been all smiles as she showed the journalist from room to room, standing proudly aside in her new dress and designer heels as the photographer snapped photos.
All Vivienne ever saw it as was cold.
The Walsh family home was anything but. Color infused every corner, the myriad hues plastered with photographs of a tiny, grinning Thomas in an inflatable pool, Tessa in a high chair, her face smeared with spaghetti. Pinned here and there were creased Crayola drawings of striped giraffes and lopsided horses, torn coloring book pages filled with broad slashes of primary color where the artist hadn’t been big enough to stay inside the lines.
It was the sort of thing her mother threw away, the moment she received it.
Vivienne and Thomas walked in silent single file down a narrow hallway bearing smiling, gap-toothed photos of Thomas and his sister—so many that there was hardly any wall left over—and then headed down a short set of carpeted stairs. From there, a door swung open and they emerged into a garage.
Or the bones of one.
There were no cars to be found. Instead, a neatly made bed had been pushed up against the farthest wall, its flannel duvet folded down at the head. Nearby—hemmed in by a tower of storage bins markedwinter—was a partially painted dresser, as though someone had begun the project with the intention of restoring it into something new and then given up halfway through. Several pegboard shelves were mounted on the wall, and on them sat a variety of comic book figurines in pristine condition, save the film of dust gathering on their shoulders.
Is this your room?
“It was this or bunk with Tess,” he said without looking at her. “I have to make a quick call. I’ll be right back.”
And then he was gone, his phone at his ear, the low murmur of his voice echoing back toward her in an indecipherable baritone. She moved through the space in silence, alone and desperate for something to do, and fell to tracing idle fingers over the dusty heads of the figurines. Her finger paused on a compass, the cap open to reveal shattered glass and a red, wobbly arrow. Intrigued, she lifted it for inspection.
