“I did it for you, Jessica.”
I put on rubber gloves.
“That wasyourbig day,” she said, going into a series of pirouettes, her ballet shoes shushing as she spun. “The day you became a prodigy.”
“I was always a prodigy.”
The bucket held mineral spirits, baking soda, detergent, steel wool—Merwin’s tool kit for removing blood from wood. As I poured mineral spirits onto a washcloth, the smell of solvent cut the air, like freshly opened mezcal.
“You were a prodigy attraining,” Mary said. “That’s not the same as someone coming at you with an axe.”
“True.” The spirits were soaking through the table’s ancient varnish, lifting the blood. My eyes burned.
“When I pulled out the special axe, Tom made a funny noise,” she said, her dance slowing to a halt at last. “Like one of Aunt Beatrice’s boy-pigs getting cut. Did he shriek like that when Uncle Max came for real?”
“He was young. He left his rabbit behind. But he’s alive.”
She giggled. “Trotzky isn’t.”
“Her name was very clever. When did you come up with it?”
“Aunt Tilly used to tell us stories at bedtime.” She promenaded to one of the barres and began to stretch. “Gruesome murders, clever assassinations. No one noticed but me, how the names fit together.”
“And you kept it a secret all this time. Impressive.”
She smiled at me, radiant.
The blood was lifting, except in the deepest part of the gouge, which I could cover with filler. I might not have to revarnish.
Mary hadn’t offered to help, but the thought of asking her made my heart race. What if she refused?
“Everyone always says I should be like you,” Mary said. “That’s what I was trying to do last night. Did it work?”
Abused as a child, and you don’t even know it.
“Only you can answer that,” I said. “How do you feel now?”
Her stretching came to a halt, a distance coming over her expression, as if she had gone to some deep place to consider the question.
“Like I could dance all day,” she finally said. “Bunnies get heavy at the end.”
49
Late that night, something pulled me out of sleep.
It wasn’t the gentle creaking of floorboards itself—family went up and down my hall at all hours—but that the sound halted right outside my room.
By the time the door opened, I was already behind it, knife in hand.
“Jessica?” came a whisper. He took a step inside, staring at my empty bed.
I came up behind him, reached around to place the flat of my blade against his stomach.
“Sebastian,” I said.
For a moment we stood there, motionless, my heart racing. Had he come for me? Was that why he’d asked for my forgiveness?
Then I realized—this was how I’d taken Lyon when he’d walked into that small room. The scent of blood and bowels and panic rushed into my head, sweeping the strength from my muscles.
