The Children(104)

She wasn’t sure if she meant it. Whether all of them included their parents. Ennis didn’t answer. Even the catch in his throat was a comforting sound. His nearness, his adolescent odor of deodorant on dirty skin, beneath dirty clothes. And under that, thrumming like a bass note, the baked cotton scent that was Ennis as a child.

They turned toward each other at the same time, hands pillowed under their cheeks and faces inches apart. The outer bit of his left eyebrow got burned off a couple years back, leaving a little braid of scar tissue that hooked up at the end. It turned his face into an unanswered question, an unpicked lock. So many people would throw themselves against that question, jiggle and bash at the lock. But not yet. Right now, he belonged only to her.

For a moment fatigue overtook her and she lost her place in time, swept backward by a memory so old and falling apart she saw it in disco ball flashes. A long cool room, an oblong of window, a gust of exhaust and brine. Come look, Guinevere. Her brother’s voice, high and sweet. Pointing at a vaporetto chugging over the purling water of a Venetian canal. She blinked and—

“I’m scared,” she said.

He didn’t ask her, Of what? Everything was charged with menace, anything could be the door behind which an ending hid. Edith’s panic, Llewellyn’s stupor, Jonathan’s desperation. The party guests, gusting in and out.

The woods.

The dreams.

The writing room.

The house.

The house.

“Doesn’t it feel,” she said, “like it’s all about to change?”

He looked at her, almost appalled. “Do you want it to stay the same?”

She hooked a leg around his, resting her cold foot on his warm calf. “I’m scared to go to sleep,” she whispered.

“It’s okay. You sleep. I’ll stay awake.”

This reminded her of something. An old game they’d played constantly, then never again. “You’ll take first watch?”

“I’ll take only watch. Go to sleep, Guin.”

There was more to be said. One more fear caught tight in her fist, that she had to let go of before she could close her eyes.

“Something is coming,” she said.

Her brother wound his fingers in hers. “Not for you.”

Meaning he would protect her from it? Or meaning she would be left behind? She wanted to ask, but he kissed her cheek and said, “Sleep.”

The word was a spell. She dropped into blackout.





Fifty-Six

Twelve hours until Mother




It had taken less than a week to sweep away everything that gave Guin’s life shape and purpose. She shivered within this new shapelessness.

Every action she performed felt like a ritual. A preparation of the self for grander, deeper things. Washing her face, making coffee, laying out clothes, all of it a shriving. She went for a run and saw the city as if through the eyes of a time traveler. Its heat and color couldn’t touch her, had nothing to do with her.

When she got back to the apartment her phone’s screen was covered in messages she didn’t want to look at, missed calls she wouldn’t return. As she moved to sweep them away, a text came in from Fern.

I want it on the record that I think Regina is doing you dirty, not to mention blinking when she shouldn’t blink. Your sales numbers are through the roof after a pretty slow start. If I were in charge I’d be prepping for a reprint w/ a new essay responding to what’s happening. An essay written by you, not a ghostwriter. I hate to see a missed opportunity. Check your email. I messaged you from my private account so you’ll have it. Get in touch with me there if you have any questions about what’s going on at H&C. I’m working on Regina, trying to get her to see things differently, but you know she’s old guard. Stay tuned.



It was three in the afternoon, four, five, six. Her headiness settled into a thrum of focused anticipation, indistinguishable from dread. It kept breaking over her in waves: she would see him tonight. On his terms, at his—kind of—invitation.

By seven her body was filled with a hammering panic. She made pointless rounds through the rooms, wondering what she was forgetting. Finally, finally, it was time. She hurried out into the night.



* * *




Guin’s Lyft driver let her out a block from the factory, because the street in front of it was full of people.

All the icy LEDs were dark, a one-block blackout. The sky was the color of iolite. Against it the factory’s ground-floor windows were jack-o’-lantern bright. The rest of the windows, from the second floor up, were gone, obscured by neatly fitted panels of concrete. The effect was oddly horrible. The building’s derelict facade flowed blindly into the sky.

She’d failed to pack some element of disguise, ball cap or surgical mask. It didn’t matter. No one was looking at her. The crowd seemed caught in a mood, not of shared excitement but isolating reverence. It was deepened by the night’s oceanic stillness, its staining mineral blue. Even the Gowanus moved silently, shining like wrinkled plastic wrap. As Guin surveyed the people her brother had drawn here—fashionable, mostly young and youngish—the ill wind running through her thickened to a gale.

A murmuring began. The factory doors were open.

There was no stampede. The visitors moved like a tour group entering a famed cathedral. Eyes glittered, arms were clutched. Now that they were moving together in a long slipstream, Guin saw a few people give her the double take. Nobody approached. Whatever was happening through these doors promised to be more interesting than a grown-up Guinevere Sharpe.