Chương 9
“Did you know she would run?” Theodore asked.
“No.”
“You ordered security to stop her.”
“I knew she might act from fear.”
“You paid for her brother’s debts.”
“Yes.”
“You replaced the money.”
“Some of it.”
“You threatened foundation staff.”
“I told two employees that public accusations without documentation would end their careers. One resigned.”
“You loved her.”
Sebastian’s gaze remained on the frozen image of Eleanor’s uncovered hand.
“Yes.”
Theodore expected more. None came.
Naomi placed a folder on the table. “The county needs a temporary responsible adult. Rosalie cannot take custody during rehabilitation. Sebastian is willing to consent to my appointment for sixty days.”
Theodore looked at his uncle. “You’re giving me away?”
“I am agreeing that you should not be required to live with me while you believe I may have helped put your sister in a coffin.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“You helped everything around it happen.”
“Yes.”
Naomi sat across from them. “This arrangement is not a moral verdict. It is paperwork and a pullout couch.”
“I have a guest bed,” Theodore said.
“It contains laundry again.”
Sebastian signed the consent forms.
His signature looked the same as it did on foundation reports, school documents, and birthday cards. Theodore had expected guilt to change the shape of it.
Rosalie left the hospital after twelve days. She could walk short distances but tired without warning. Her voice remained rough, and one side of her throat bore a fading bruise from the satin strip. She moved into Naomi’s house because returning to the estate caused her pulse to spike during a supervised visit.
Theodore gave her the upstairs bedroom and took the room with the laundry.
For the first week, their lives became ordinary in humiliating ways. Rosalie needed help showering but refused to let Theodore assist, so Naomi installed a plastic chair and argued with the insurance company about home nursing visits. Theodore burned toast. Printer stole one of Rosalie’s compression socks. Reporters waited two blocks away and photographed a grocery delivery driver who had no connection to the family.
Rosalie had nightmares but rarely remembered them. She woke with her hands against her mouth. Sometimes she called Theodore’s name before she was fully conscious.
He began sleeping on the floor outside her room.
On the fourth night, she opened the door and nearly stepped on him.
“You cannot stay here,” she said.
“I’m not in your room.”
“You are functioning as a human trip hazard.”
“I heard you.”
“I was asleep.”
“You were choking.”
“I was breathing badly.”
“That is not better.”
Rosalie lowered herself onto the floor beside him, moving carefully. For a while they sat with their backs against opposite walls. The heating pipe clicked. Printer wandered upstairs, inspected both of them, and returned to bed.
“I keep thinking I’ll miss it,” Theodore said.
“Miss what?”
“The next tap.”
Rosalie looked down at her hands. “There may not be one.”
“That’s what everyone thought.”
“You heard me.”
“I almost didn’t.”
“But you did.”
“I almost walked away from the coffin before the second tap.”
“You didn’t.”
“Because the satin moved.”
“Then I am grateful Eleanor chose a cheap knot.”
Theodore turned toward her. “How can you joke about her?”
“I am not joking about her. I am joking near her. She has occupied enough space.”
“You trusted her.”
“Yes.”
“Did you love her?”
Rosalie’s face tightened. “Yes.”
He waited for anger, but what entered her expression was embarrassment.
“She taught me how to drive,” Rosalie said. “Dad shouted whenever I touched the brake. Eleanor took me to an empty parking lot and brought oranges because she thought driving lessons required refreshments. She sat with Mom during chemotherapy. She knew which music made her nauseated. People will want me to say all of that was false.”
“Was it?”
“No.”
“Then how did she do this?”
“I don’t know.”
“That isn’t good enough.”
“It is all I have.”
Theodore drew his knees up. “Sebastian says she acted from fear.”
“She acted from entitlement. Fear explains the speed. It does not explain why she believed my life was available to protect hers.”
He thought about Eleanor beside the coffin, covering her mouth when Rosalie’s fingers moved. Not surprise alone. Recognition.
“Do you think Sebastian heard you before I did?” he asked.
Rosalie’s eyes moved toward him. “Why?”
“He stood near the head of the coffin. Maybe he heard something and told himself it was the building.”
“Has he said that?”
“No.”
“Ask him.”
Theodore did not.
He returned to school three weeks after the memorial. Administrators arranged a private entrance, which guaranteed that every student knew when he arrived. The red message had been removed from his locker, but its outline remained visible beneath fresh gray paint.
Students watched him without appearing to. A girl from chemistry touched his sleeve and said her grandmother had been declared dead for six minutes after surgery. A boy Theodore had never spoken to asked whether the coffin smelled strange. Someone left a toy hammer on his desk.
At lunch, his friend Malik sat across from him and pushed over a carton of chocolate milk.
“You hate this,” Theodore said.
“I hate people watching me drink it. Different issue.”
They had not spoken since Theodore shoved him against a locker two months earlier during an argument about Rosalie. Malik had said Theodore used family emergencies to make everyone forgive him. Theodore had said something about Malik’s father that could not be retracted.
“You don’t have to sit here,” Theodore said.
“I know.”
“Did the principal ask you?”
“No.”
“Rosalie did?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
Malik opened the carton. “Because if I sit somewhere else, people will think I’m afraid you’ll hit me with a mallet.”
“I only use it on coffins.”
“That is what I told them.”
Theodore looked down at his lunch. “I’m sorry about your dad.”
“You were accurate. That was part of the problem.”
“I shouldn’t have said it.”
“No.”
May you like
Theodore waited.
Malik drank the chocolate milk and made a face. “Still bad.”
