I laughed, thinking he was messing with me. Then I said his name a few times, each one more strident than the last. His face was the color of skim milk, pale and faintly bluish.
When I screamed for Mama, she didn’t come.
The Cortlands were away, a day trip out of town. Vin had been left with a Ukrainian nanny who barely spoke any English and didn’t even seem to realize I was in the house with him. Instead of calling an ambulance, she panicked and bundled us both into her own car. I was too small for the front seat, barely able to see over the dash, but Vin was sprawled across the backseat.
He wasn’t breathing by the time we got to the hospital.
Vin Cortland’s heart stopped beating for two and a half minutes.
They eventually brought him back, but a lot of people would say that necessary organ never started back up again.
The doctors said the damage was consistent with poisoning. That was how I first learned that the beautiful oleanders lining the pathways of Cortland Manor’s gardens are toxic. Perfectly safe from afar, but the leaves secrete a poison. When consumed, enough of them can stop a grown man’s heart.
They asked if I had ever seen Vin eat the flowers. Maybe we had played with it, like kid’s do when they scavenge the yard for ingredients to make mud pies. Pretend play that had turned unknowingly, and accidentally, dangerous.
I didn’t answer the question. I didn’t answer any of their questions. At first, I was too shocked to do anything but stare up at the intimidating men in their white coats looming over me, insistent and impatient.
My throat squeezed shut, and all I could manage was a whimper.
They ran tests on me too, just to be sure, but I was healthy as a horse.
Later, when I finally found the words to speak, no one bothered to ask me any questions.
The nanny drove me home and dropped me off without bothering to see me to the door. She had just been fired, so had better things than me to worry about.
My mother was gone.
She must have been in a hurry, but her belongings were packed up so thoroughly that it was hard to say she had ever lived there at all.
A postcard arrived from her a few weeks later. Sorry written on it in big block letters, scribbled so hastily that it barely even looked like her handwriting.
It would be years before I stepped foot in Cortland Manor again.
Grandpa told me when Vin got out of the hospital because he’d heard from the butcher who delivered meat to the Bluffs. For years, I would wonder why she did it. Had it been some strange sort of accident? Or had she hoped to swoop in and save him to the relief of the Cortland family, but somehow miscalculated?
I’ll never know.
The next time I saw Vin Cortland was on our first day at Deception High. He was bigger than I remembered
“Who did it?”
He had snapped the question as a crowd gathered. They might not have known precisely what was going on, but recognized the start of a fight when they saw one.
My throat froze in the same way it had with the doctors. So many years had passed. I almost had myself convinced that I had imagined most of it. Grandpa always said that Mama would come back eventually. She had never been good at sticking with anything. Not her education, or relationships, or jobs. Why would motherhood be any different?
But I knew the truth. She ran away from what she did.
Vin looked at me like he wanted to grind me into dirt. And the longer I stayed silent, the more anger filled his eyes.
His reputation from middle school preceded him. People already whispered about the rich boys from the Bluffs who did whatever they wanted and got away with it.
The VICE Lords.
And he was the worst of them.
Vin’s lip had twisted in a sneer. “If you can’t tell me what I want to know, then maybe you shouldn’t speak at all.”
But even when I opened my mouth to speak, no sound came out.
She did it.
She did it.
She did it.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t turn on my own mother even after what she did.
Even after she left me.
I had a few friends from middle school, the ones who hadn’t dropped out before we reached freshman year. But none of them were willing to stand with me, not with Vin Cortland on the other side.
Maybe he meant it to be an idle threat at first, even a joke. But it didn’t matter. Words passed from Vin Cortland’s lips to the ears of pretty much everyone in town.
Eventually, I got so used to the silence that I forgot how to exist with anything else.
The truth might set you free, but guilt is a cage that has been welded into place. There isn’t a key in the world that might unlock it.
I won’t ever be able to escape it.
Twenty-Nine
I scrub at my body with the excruciatingly hot water and rose-scented soap. Like I can wash away whatever part of Zaya feels like its stuck to my skin.
It was fucking stupid of me to set all this shit up. I told the vineyard staff to make it nice, but I didn’t know that would mean covering literally everything in roses. I have no idea what stupid urge drove me to make things nice for her, but I need to get my shit together.
We aren’t in love. This isn’t some tragic story about star-crossed lovers. We have a deal, and we just need to put up with each other until the deal is done.
No more of this romance shit.
I hear it when the door opens, but initially assume that the latch didn’t catch and a gust of wind blew against it. But when the shower curtain parts and a slim body slips in
