Chapter 9

Ember's POV

The rain had been letting go of the city since morning. The noise against the glass first cracked out of one dense sheet into a few broken runs, and then even those came apart, until all that was left was a single thread of water sliding off the eaves, one drop, a long wait, another drop, the gaps drawn out long enough to make you think it had quit for good.

I sat on the edge of the bed and pulled my right knee up, pressing the scrape through the fabric of my nightgown. Under my fingertips it was numb at first, and after the numbness passed it left a dull ache that throbbed in little beats. The sound of that tray going over into the trash can was still in my ears, and no amount of shaking would get it out.

It was only today that I finally got the arithmetic straight. Everything he did landed on my mother in the end, and what he wanted was a house with no room in it for the two of us.

I wanted to leave too.

He wanted to send us out, I wanted to walk out under my own power, and for once we had ended up standing on the same side of something.

At least I'd heard my mother say she hadn't signed the marriage license yet. If she pulled out now, the worst of it would be a stretch of feeling bad, nothing that could damage her anywhere else.

I had to get it open between us first, while the books were still clean.

I got up and opened my door. The hallway was empty, the carpet swallowing every footstep, so that by ear you couldn't tell whether the house was alive or dead.

I knocked on my mother's door first, two raps, and got nothing back. I walked to the head of the stairs and looked down. The living room was empty and the door to Arthur's study was shut. A pair of her shoes was missing from the rack in the entry.

The rain outside had only just stopped.

And that was when the door at the far end of the hall opened.

Vincent came out with his hair wet, strands of it stuck flat to the back of his neck, the collar of his dark shirt hanging open. Even from that distance I could smell the soap on him. He'd showered. Something small and mean rose up in the back of me, that coat of sugar, he'd washed it off.

Serves him right, those two words came up first, and were good for half a second.

Then his wrist caught my eye — pale skin where his sleeve had pushed back, the tendons shifting as he moved — I pressed both hands down along the seams of my pants before I could pull my breathing back level.

The fabric was cool against my palms and that helped, a little.

I had the reason ready almost immediately. He'd made me angry, that was all. I didn't know a single soul in this house, he was the only one raving at me, and the moment I saw him I wound up tight, so of course my heart wasn't going to hold its rhythm.

The reason made sense, and I believed it.

He stopped in the middle of the hall, fished two things out of his pocket, and flicked them toward me. A flat cardboard box and a small glass bottle landed on the carpet and stayed where they fell.

"Deal with it." His eyes never came to my face. They sat on the wall a little above my shoulder. "Don't let it rot there."

"What do you mean?"

"Your knee." He turned and walked off, water dropping from his hair onto the carpet one bead at a time and leaving a line of dark marks that dragged all the way to the stairs.

At the corner he paused without looking back. "If they ask, don't tell them it came from me."

I crouched and picked the box up off the floor. Bandages, three sizes, and a small bottle of iodine with the seal still new. The way he threw things was no different from the way he tossed out garbage, but this wasn't the kind of thing that turned up in a garbage can.

Dinah had said one thing to me the day she put me on the bus. That kind doesn't hand you anything without a bill attached. I rolled the bottle half a turn in my palm. The cap was screwed on hard, and I still hadn't found where the bill was.

There was noise downstairs. My mother. I heard the umbrella ribs shaken out over the tile first, then the two light taps of her heels on wood.

By the time I got down, she was at the door changing her shoes, a small dark patch on the shoulder of her coat, the ends of her hair damp, but there was color in her face, and her lipstick was still on, only the edges gone soft where the wet had gotten to them.

"Where did you go?"

She laid a hand flat on the strap of her bag and said she'd gone out to take care of a thing or two, that the roads were bad in the rain and she'd been late getting back. She didn't look at me while she said it.

The bag never came off her arm. One hand stayed on the strap, holding it down, the way you hold down something you don't want anyone else touching.

I was about to keep at her when a maid came up the hallway on light feet and stopped two steps short of my mother.

"Ma'am, there's some trouble over at the greenhouse. The man says he needs you to come look."

The greenhouse.

She handed the bag to the maid, said, "Let me see," her voice perfectly level, and turned and walked toward the back without breaking stride once.

I went after her without saying anything, without letting myself get too close, staying three or four steps behind.