I trained in the gym, at the obstacle course, on the climbing cliffs. I swam every day to keep my ribs loose, to regain the muscles lost in my hospital bed. I took my little cousins on cross-country runs, taught them celestial navigation, and formed them into teams for Battle Tag, exchanging flurries of foam-tipped arrows in the old barn.
I didn’t cry when I listened to music, no matter how it cut my heart.
I slept on my left side, easing my broken nose into its new shape. Day by day, I looked less like the grainy photos of Jessica Anderson that had appeared in the media. I kept my hair short, reshaped my eyebrows.
I pulled my own staples out.
On my morning runs past the Barrow Marsh, I ignored the acceleration in my step, the way the sky seemed to darken. It was just another stretch of reeds, marked by a few patches where wildflowers grew in strange profusion.
I wrote no letters to Bellamy.
When the estates’ pack leader, Rader, got runny eyes and vomiting spells—signs of canine distemper—I gathered the little cousins to say goodbye, then slit his throat with Aunt Beatrice’s gelding knife.
Under my watchful gaze, not one of them shed a tear.
We were all perfect Mortons.
But my family still tested me. They woke me up at three a.m. for fight drills, checked my startle response with flash grenades, and let me free-climb after only a week back home. Veronica tutted with disappointmentwhen my aim grew worse, arrows falling short, flying over, sticking crookedly in the outer rings, the center always eluding me.
I didn’t even try to throw knives.
I took my brain pills every day.
My memories didn’t return though. The days before the crash remained splinters. I still hadn’t been told to report for a debriefing.
After Sebastian went back to Albany, we began to text again. We never mentioned our estrangement, his forgiveness. For the first time, our thread was full of photos—sunsets on the estate, the best pastrami sandwiches in Albany, my new haircut.
We also discussed Mary’s upcoming mors curae. She was doing well in her lessons—dance and pain resistance in particular. Despite our fears of another Mister Fluffernutter, she was sticking true to Trotsky’s namesake, dispatching the rabbit with an ice axe.
I found myself looking forward to the end of summer: Sebastian coming home, returning to Helshire, even Mary’s curae. Maybe that was what I needed now.
Another death of care.
I ignored the warningon my pill bottle and drove to pick Sebastian up at the train station.
He was back from Albany for good, and his luggage included an unMorton quantity of suitcases, garments bags, even a hat box.
I looked at the pile. “You were expecting Orrin.”
“We’ll manage,” he said, his smile buffed to a high gloss. He was still in his Albany clothes: a red power tie, a dark blazer bought from a store.
I hoisted two suitcases and headed toward the parking lot.
Everything fit into the old Beamer—somehow—and soon we were on the road. We drove in silence for a while, the windows open, the first hints of autumn in the air.
We were still connected—those strings that tried to pull my heart out when the right music played. Sebastian was beautiful, and I knew now that beautiful things could hurt.
“You look different,” he finally said. “Not just the hair.”
“It’s the nose.”
“From the crash? Or did the doctors do something?”
It took a moment to answer. I wasn’t sure how intentional my new nose had been. The pictures of me that had popped up in the media were grainy and out of focus, taken in a dark, crowded restaurant. The police didn’t consider me a suspect—just a loose end.
But Mortons didn’t permit loose ends.
“Don’t you like it?” I asked.
