She would see this change in me.
Uncle Max eased himself from beneath the bed. He twitched his way across the room and jumped into Gertie’s lap. She pulled a dropper bottle from her handbag and began to dribble water into his mouth.
We all watched.
“A cleft palette,” she explained, “from the defenestration. He has to tip his head back when he drinks, or it all comes out his nose.”
When she finished dribbling, Uncle Max sneezed exactly once. It glistened for a moment in the air, like a spritz from a perfume bottle.
“Sorry about what I did to your cat,” I told Gertie.
She blinked. “What an odd thing to say.”
The next morningafter breakfast, I climbed the stairs to Mother’s room.
Nothing had changed—the spiderwebs, the tray of dirty dishes outside her door, a whiff of bedpan. With my new eyes, it was tinged with dignified sadness, like some slow, lush movement by Beethoven.
Twelve years in this room. Not all Mortons heal.
I knocked and went inside.
“Thereyou are,” my mother said.
She was not alone. Grandmother sat in the corner, a phone instead of knitting needles in her hands.
Change of plan.
I bowed to her. “Good morning, Grandmother. How was London?”
“Illuminating.” She smiled—that was all I was getting.
“And Mary’s mors curae?” Mother asked. “How did it go?
“Very well. The declaration of care, in particular.”
“Hmm. The poor creature never looked terribly happy.”
“Some rabbits appreciate tough love.”
“What about the kill? Nothing unseemly?”
I shrugged. “No pyrotechnics.”
She looked away from me, out the room’s single window. Here in late summer, the view was entirely blocked by leaves.
“That’s not what I’ve heard,” she said, and suddenly the ceiling was too low, the air too still.
I’d never understood why ordinaries panic when faced with spiders, bees, venomous snakes—when all they have to do is stay still. But now I felt it, the screaming in my body for action, for flight.
Had Tom said something? He’d struggled to meet my eyes at breakfast.
“She killed the rabbit with a single stroke.” My voice sounded shaky, but the words kept coming. “Like his namesake, with a quicker result. Very clean.”
“You know who didn’t think it was clean?”
I shook my head. Not Sebastian, surely.
“Edwin,” she said.
