“Your mother’s fine.” Wulf crouched at her feet, as smoothly modulated as her VA psych. “Carl took her away until it’s safer.”
“She wouldn’t leave me!” Her mother wouldn’t let her move into her own condo; no way she’d disappear. Theresa squeezed deeper into the corner. “You’re lying!”
“Dr. Chiesa.” Arms crossed, a man in a gray suit stood like a steel girder behind Wulf. Illuminated from below by lamplight, his face had eerie shadows and crags. “I apologize—”
“Who are you?”
“Ivar, son of Wonred.”
“My big brother.”
“Your mother and Carl are hiding, not dead. Your stepbrother and cousin are indeed deceased. Wulf brought you here because your condition precludes easy concealment.”
Instead of using euphemisms like condition, he might as well have called her useless to her face. They all knew what she’d become, and it wasn’t strong or tough or heroic. In plain English, she was a burden.
Ivar must’ve mistaken her silence for doubt. “I do not lie.”
Curled with her knees to her chest and her face buried in her arms, she heard Ivar’s footsteps leave the room, but she sensed Wulf waiting. Waiting, like her, until finally the pins and needles shooting through her good leg demanded that she shift positions. Damn my legs, both of them. She didn’t want to eat the carpet, which might happen if she stood too quickly, so she paused like a dancer doing a weird stretch. Damn you and your brother, and damn crazy immortals. And damn everything that had led her to be stuck clinging to an end table.
Silently, Wulf scooped her in his arms and laid her on the bed. Like everyone else, he acted as if she was a doll, as if her ability to take care of herself had been lost with her leg.
Her clenched teeth blocked the profanities she wanted to yell. She knew she had to make her point slowly and clearly. “I don’t want help. Don’t baby me, don’t coddle me, don’t touch me. Not ever again.”
“As you wish.” His flat tone conveyed hurt, but her own pain filled her too much to care.
When the door closed behind him, the flimsy box she’d constructed around her fears finally split. The room filled with a ragged tearing noise that sounded like packing tape pulling off cardboard. Despair stung her eyes and tasted salty on her lips. Covering her mouth with her fist wasn’t enough to stop the sounds, so she buried her face in a pillow and tried not to listen to her own sobs.
* * *
In contrast to the darkness swirling inside Theresa, the next morning was one of those glittering winter days with a blue sky and no clouds. No one could stay in bed with that much sunshine, no matter how much she wanted to hide, so she gave up and dragged a desk chair to the bathtub. Maneuvering in and out had become less challenging after months of therapy. Afterward she found black yoga pants stretchy enough to slide over her stump sock, a T-shirt, and a man’s periwinkle cashmere cardigan piled inside the bedroom door. A gym bag she recognized as her own held underwear and her ankle charger. Wulf must have gathered them before they left the house.
As she haltingly descended to the main floor, the art collection in the stairwell temporarily diverted her from seeking a telephone. Was it Ivar or Wulf who liked sketches of dancers? She recognized the work of several Impressionists and Cubists, and suspected the others were also by artists she should have known. The money hanging on this wall alone was more than three years of medical school tuition. What had Wulf flung at her during their argument at Camp Caddy—the people in these brownstones have problems like everyone else? Right.
It had been months since she’d walked through a house unaccosted by someone trying to make her eat or drink or talk or do something. Her mother definitely wasn’t there, which made her stop and close her eyes to hold back tears. She’s fine. Ivar said so, and he presumably doesn’t care enough to lie. It has to be true.
A swinging door led to the kitchen, where a dark-haired woman turned from the counter. “Good morning!” The greeting and grin belonged to the reporter from Afghanistan, the one who’d known Wulf. “Dr. Chiesa, right? Can I call you Theresa?”
“Um, sure. You’re...” She searched for a name. “Laura?”
“You remembered! Wasn’t sure since we met so quickly.” The other woman fiddled with a chrome espresso machine. “Coffee?”
“Please.” The kitchen’s dark wood cabinets and shiny appliances were as sleek as the coffeemaker. Mica flecks in the countertops and a row of white dish towels contrasted with the rest of the dark palette. It was the complete opposite of her mother’s terra-cotta-and-fruit themed kitchen. It was cold.
“Glad to see the stretch pants work. Wulf asked for a skirt, but I didn’t have one.”
Learning that Wulf had asked to borrow Laura’s clothes for her felt odd. Unsettling. “You live here too?”
“I’m not in town enough to get a place of my own, and my grandfather works for Ivar.” She pulled half-and-half and strawberries out of the refrigerator. They looked lost on the long counter. “Hopefully I’ll be gone next week.”
“You’re returning to Afghanistan?” Watching Laura dart around the kitchen stirred a cauldron of emotions, but she didn’t want to dig too deeply to figure out whether she was more jealous of the darting, the job or the familiarity with Wulf’s home.
“Afraid not. I’m persona non grata at the military embedded media program.” Laura found bowls, a chopping board and a knife without having to search. “Feels like I’ve been stuck with lawyers for months, but it’s bogus to charge me with revealing classified information for exposing a crime, so I imagine I’ll be cleared soon.”
“What’ll you do? If you can’t go back?” How could Laura be so casual about losing her career?
“There’s a dozen other conflicts to cover besides Afghanistan and plenty of soldiers who aren’t Americans. Maybe I’ll head to Africa.” After rinsing the last strawberry, she set bread and butter on the counter. “What would you like for breakfast?”
“You don’t have to wait on me.”
When Laura froze, hand partially inserted in the bread bag, to stare at her, Theresa realized her words had emerged louder and more defensive than she’d intended.
“I’m sorry. That was—” She didn’t have a chance to finish before Laura waved her off.
“No offense. I know I tend to roll over people.” She gestured at the fixings. “Please.”
They settled on opposite sides of the kitchen island. Sharing the newspaper with Laura, who refolded each section as she finished, was pleasant enough that her shoulders relaxed. She drained her coffee and turned a page. The photo of a large colonial-style house surrounded by emergency vehicles was typical inside-page fare.
Second Tragedy Strikes Senator’s Family. This was the home of the senator who’d died next to her in Afghanistan. She dropped the paper and pressed against the stool’s backrest, almost tipping, while the black letters grew and swam on the page. Three dead. One daughter missing. Not more death. Not another family.
Wulf hadn’t known this family, and he hadn’t drawn Unferth to them.
“Oh.” Looking from the paper to her, Laura asked, “You okay?”
Without words to describe how or why a crushing weight had lifted from her chest, she nodded. This black-and-white picture forced her to be honest. Wulf wasn’t responsible for what had happened to the senator in Afghanistan, or to his family, or even to Ray. The blame belonged to Unferth.
“I got the short version from Wulf.” The reporter patted her jeans pockets and then squinted and shook her head. “That sucks. I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.” Right now she’d welcome a new subject. “How’s quitting?”
Laura snorted. “This is my third try. Maybe fourth.”
“Ouch.” A rumble from the kitchen alerted Theresa to another door past the refrigerator.
“Car in the garage. Wulf went shopping.” Laura’s eyebrows rose suggestively. “I suggest you prepare to be inundated.”
Seconds later, he shouldered through the door with a computer-store tote in one hand and department-store bags in the other. “Good morning. You found the clothes.”
Intellectually she understood that he wouldn’t be wounded, and she’d seen him recover other times, but his perfect smile was such an unsettling contrast with last night’s gruesome wounds that she didn’t know where to look or how to reply.
“I bought a few things that might fit better.”
“Thank you.” His presence heated the kitchen until she almost felt like she was back in the sandbox.
Laura tidied her mug and bowl into the dishwasher and headed for the door. “Sorry to miss this, but I have legal bills to go incur.”
Her departure didn’t make speaking easier. After rejecting him last night, Theresa wasn’t sure how to cross this distance. Her arms ached to wrap around him, but she hugged the blue sweater closer instead. It smelled faintly of evergreen.
“So.” Outwardly he looked and sounded calm, but his tight-fisted grip on the shopping bag handles hinted that, like her, he was nervous this morning. “Maybe you’ll prefer these.”
The new clothes wouldn’t hold his essence.
“Did Laura show you this?” He opened a third door she’d assumed led to a pantry or a powder room and revealed a blue-and-white-wallpapered nook. Sun streamed through a window to an enclosed courtyard, highlighting a toile-patterned chair and ottoman. “We eat at the kitchen bar or in the dining room, so I thought you might like to use this space.” As he unpacked a laptop, she recognized her Beowulf books and biology texts already on the table.
Had he truly given her a room of her own? A mug filled with pens and highlighters, a printer with paper, even fresh flowers—he’d thought of everything.
He stood up from the floor where he’d plugged in the computer and rubbed his hands on denim-covered thighs.
A braver woman would have told him that last night she’d been too afraid, too devastated, to be kind. She’d been cruel when he didn’t deserve it, and she owed him an apology. She let him turn toward the door.
A phone rang, and she jumped.
Even before Wulf gave her the handset, the familiar piercing request for The-reeee-sa filled the room.
“Mom?” She held her breath until the answer confirmed her hopes.
“Sweetie? Thank God, you’re fine. You’re fine, right?”
“What about you? Where are—”
Wulf sketched a half bow and silently left. He could take the clothes and the computer and office; she wouldn’t miss them, because he’d provided what she wanted most.
“Carl—no, wait, I can’t say that. Can you imagine now I have to remember to call him Lou, just like if he’d gone to the feds? He says I can’t tell you anything. Nothing.”
“It’s okay, Mom. I’m so glad to hear your voice. I’m glad you’re b-both—” Thinking of the two of them, alone somewhere, blocked her voice in her throat.
A public address system in the background garbled whatever her mother said next.
“Mom?” The phone she clutched wasn’t warm or strong, wasn’t her mother’s hand.
“Lou’s telling me to keep it short.”
She wanted to yell that she wasn’t ready. Two sentences wasn’t enough.
The background noise grew muffled, as if she’d cupped a hand over the mouthpiece, and her mother’s Jersey accent strengthened the faster she spoke. “It hit him this morning, that Ray’s gone. I have to keep pushing, or he slumps over and I doan’ know what to doooo.” Her voice rose, panicked.
“You can hold him together, Mom, like you did for me.” Since she’d come home hurt, her mother hadn’t faltered. Not once. “You can. You will.”
“He says we’ll be moving a lot, and I can’t call for a couple weeks. Take care of yourself and don’t worry about us, you promise?”
“I promise.” As if that were possible. “I love you, Mom.” Her words came out fierce and strong, filled with the need to make her mother understand how much she loved her. “Stay safe. You’re the best mother in the world. The best.” She’d never let it go unsaid again. “I love you.”
Her mother’s I love you too sweetheart rang in her ears long after they’d both hung up.
As exhausted as if a whole day had passed, she couldn’t believe her watch indicated barely ten in the morning. Wulf and Laura, and presumably Ivar, were very quiet or else this house was very big. The rustling as she opened shopping bags seemed unnecessarily loud, but she needed to fill time. What she didn’t need to do was replay last night until she paralyzed herself.
The heavy bag didn’t contain clothing. Wulf had bought more versions of the legend.
He wanted her to pursue the threads she’d started to unravel.
* * *
At Camp Caddie’s running track, Wulf had told her people who lived in multimillion-dollar brownstones had problems like everyone else. Studying Ivar’s art collection, she’d disagreed, but after three and a half days sharing the house, she knew the brothers had problems completely different from regular people’s worries over debts, love or jobs. Ivar flinched at noises, so the others living with him strove to be extremely quiet. He also consumed collegiate levels of beer and whiskey, which Wulf explained as an efficient source of calories, but which seemed to her to fulfill a more traditional desire for oblivion.
For his part, Wulf apparently suffered from an epic case of insomnia. Every morning she found a warm dent in an easy chair by her bed, and the cushion smelled vaguely woodsy like his soap, but she never caught him. When she left her office by the kitchen, he materialized with whatever she sought, whether it was towels or her water bottle. In short, he hovered, but other than one accidental brush of her arm, he hadn’t touched her since the first night.
She hadn’t summoned the nerve to touch him either.
Tonight, like on other evenings, she joined Ivar and Wulf for an eight o’clock dinner in the dining room. Unlike on other evenings, Laura had plans with a group of photographers. Without a partner in small talk, she spent the soup course studying Ivar. His pressed suit contrasted with his hunched shoulders and determined drinking. His hand was out of sight, but she’d noticed earlier that his fingers resembled bleached, shriveled beans.
A question had nagged her for three days. “Have you always had your arm injury?”
Both immortals froze, spoons in air, until Ivar slowly replaced his on the charger under his bowl. “No.”
“So it’s from your imprisonment?”
“Yes.”
She’d immersed herself in academic abstracts on the internet, taken notes on DNA replication, read about starfish and salamander regeneration and studied retroviral drug treatments. Anomalies led to breakthroughs. “What’s different this time?”
Ivar squeezed his eyelids shut, and his good hand pinched the bridge of his nose. Wulf neither spoke nor moved. The silence stretched.
“I’m sorry.” Of all people, she knew how uncomfortable others’ curiosity could be. “I shouldn’t pry. I—”
He made a cutting-off gesture. “A valid question. I should answer.”
Theresa felt Wulf’s gaze. Turning, she received an almost imperceptible nod, as if he too wanted his brother to open up.
“Unferth’s scientists removed my forearm. I’ve lost limbs in battle. Bone regrowth aches for an hour at most.” Ivar’s monotone betrayed nothing. “However, they applied an ointment to the stub and the bandages. My healing radically slowed.” His words scraped along her nerves, like a metal pick on ice. “Every time my arm and hand regrew, they cut them off.”
Phantom pain had been common for her first months of rehab. Sometimes charley horses in the missing ca
lf had been so strong she’d woken in the night, but lately they’d decreased. The sympathetic pain that Ivar’s words caused surprised a gasp from her.
“Each time, it took longer. And less of the hand grew.”
She covered her mouth to keep from making another sound that would interrupt him. His emotions were so raw, his anger so palpable and yet so contained, that she wondered how he could sit at the table without destroying every dish and glass set in front of him.
“I lost count after the sixth amputation.”
* * *
Next to her, Wulf made a sound between a moan and gasp, and she gripped his thigh below the table. It was the first touch they’d shared in several days.
He laid his palm, warm and firm like an anchor, over hers and squeezed. Out of nowhere she thought of cookies, Cinderella and the first time they’d held hands. Her own leg pain, or not-leg pain, lessened.
Lifting from his shoulder, Ivar raised his sling above the edge of the table. The bloodless fingertips resembled a cadaver’s, only smaller and flaccid. His other hand was hard and fit where it lay alongside. “This took nearly a week to regrow, and I still do not have muscle control.”
“A growth retardant?” she asked, more to herself than to the men. “Something that affects nerve regeneration?”
Released from his retelling, Ivar shrugged and reached for his whiskey.
“I’ve been reading that echinoderms—starfish—regrow to complete size from one arm and a portion of the central disk.” That had been one of her more interesting discoveries.
“I’d rather not picture six more big brothers.”
“Don’t be facetious.” She glared at Wulf as Ivar drained another glass. “I’m thinking about how to fix his arm.” Ideas welled up like lava, the hot excitement of untangling a research puzzle filling her the way it always had when she’d walked into her thesis advisor’s lab. “There’s a study that shows that an injection of a single-strand type of RNA molecules can enable live chicks to regenerate a wing.”
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