Page 144
Lazarus leaves offerings. Tea she does not drink and books she does not open. A small vase of crimson flowers she moved from the table to the windowsill but did not throw away. Progress, he calls it. Then I stood in the doorway and stared at the flowers for longer than necessary. Alcott catalogs her needs. Soft foods, and clean bandages. Sedatives in case she asks. No sudden noises, no men entering without permission. No one touching her unless she reaches first. He writes lists with Laz. Always lists, as though order can redeem what happened. As though ink can make sense of ruin. Elisa comes each afternoon, she does not ask questions. She sits beside Olive’s chair and reads aloud from newspapers, letters from the girls, nonsense gossip from La Sirene, complaints about a dancer who keeps misplacing hairpins, an argument over whether blue feathers or black lace make a stronger opening impression.
Olive rarely answers, sometimes she listens, sometimes her eyes drift to the window and remain there until Elisa’s voice shakes. She presses one hand low against her stomach, and every person in the room pretends not to notice because noticing feels too much like another violation.
At night, the nightmares come. Not always loudly, that is the cruel part. At night she screams, those are easier. Screaming is honest, but other nights, she makes almost no sound, it may be a breath cut short. A broken whimper swallowed before it can become human. The scrape of fingernails against sheets, then silence. The silence is worse. Alcott stops sleeping, and I wait. Waiting is not my preferred art, but still, I wait, because Olive is not gone. Olive is somewhere beneath the painted stillness, beneath the thin wrists, the flinches, the hollow eyes, and the soft little head shakes she gives when someone asks whether she needs anything.
She is buried, not dead.
Buried. There is a difference.
We keep him beneath Lazarus’s manor. A sentimental location perhaps, stone walls, iron rings, good drainage. No windows and no witnesses.
The Collector hangs from a chair bolted to the floor, wrists bound, ankles strapped, throat wrapped in stained linen. His missing eye is covered with a filthy bandage I refuse to change gently. He wakes when I enter, his remaining eye rolling toward me. Recognition arrives slowly, then fear. Delicious.
“Alcott?” he rasps. The stitches tug when he speaks, his voice is ruined. Another small pleasure.
I smile. “Not quite.”
His breath hitches, he remembers. Men always remember the thing they failed to account for. I drag a chair across the floor and sit before him, crossing one leg over the other. “You look terrible.”
He tries to smile, but it fails.
“Where is she?” his strained voice asks.
I tilt my head. “Still thinking you are owed answers? How brave.”
His eye narrows. “She will not kill me.”
“No?”
“She is broken.”
I am out of the chair before he finishes the word. My hand closes around his throat, thumb pressing against the careful, ugly seam Alcott made to keep him alive. His body convulses. His face reddens. A wet sound rattles from his chest.
I lean close. “Say that again.”
He cannot. A pity. I release him before the damage becomes permanent. He gasps, shaking.
“Broken,” I say softly, “is not dead. You more than anyone should appreciate the distinction.”
He glares as I smile wickedly, tauntingly. “She is home.”
His expression twitches. Ah.
That wounds him.
“You had her for one year and six months,” I continue. “You dressed her. Starved her. Painted her. Cut her. Called her doll until your pathetic little tongue believed the word had power.”
His breathing changes.
“You did all of that, and still, when Edward touched her skirt, her fingers moved.” I let the words settle. His eye shifts, not much, but enough, “She was never yours.”
The Collector laughs. It comes out broken, wet, and ugly. “All things become owned if held long enough.”
How predictable. How fucking dull. I stand and walk behind him. “Do you know what I find peculiar?”
No answer.
“I have spent much of my existence enjoying Edward’s pain.” I state.
