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In another tiht have been

The attendants come to take our plates, and Linden frowns at how little I’ve eaten "You’re going to make yourself sick," he says

"I’o to bed"

Upstairs Cecily’s bedroo softly, breathing in that cadenced, raspy, newborn way The light is off, and perhaps he’s lying awake in his crib while Cecily sleeps I know this routine Left unattended, when he awakens from a nap, he will inevitably start to cry And when he cries, he doesn’t stop

My plan was to try to get some sleep, but it’s better to take Bowen from his crib before he wakes up my sister wives But when I step into the bedrooe of the bed, illu hair cascades over one shoulder, and her face is tilted doard the baby in her ar under the covers behind her in silence

"Jenna?" I whisper She s her head

"He looks like our husband," she says softly "But I can tell by his te to be like Cecily It’s too bad none of us will get to see that"

She looks so beautiful like this The darkness hides her pale coown is tiers and tiers of lace, her hair a perfect dark curtain And I am struck with the painful realization that she looks like she could be so capable fingers tracing Bowen’s half-moon face I wonder if she cared for her sisters this way before they were murdered, the way she has cared for Cecily The way she has cared for me

I swear I’ve just watched a tear roll froets far

"How are you feeling?" I ask

"All right," she says I force"Here, take him for a minute, okay?" She stands, and when she walks towardShe coht from the hallway shows me the beads of sweat on her face, the blue shadows under her eyes

I let her ease the baby into host, sweeping through the spot where she flirted with the baffled attendant, where hundreds of times she paced toward her room with her nose in a romance novel

Her hand trails the wall as she makes her way to her bedrooled sounds of her coughing

Bowen, unfazed by her absence, has fallen asleep I envy his co years

Later, I close hts

I bury my face in my pillow and I scream and screas, just like Jenna And the silence throbs Rowan, s I love Things that I have left behind, or that have fallen through ht I want my father to play the piano I wantof vodka when the pain is too bad Itiate has opened And I’m so tired and so lost, and I don’t know if I’ll ever truly be able to escape I don’t kno I’ll be able to open the iron gate with its pointed flower I wipe my tears on Gabriel’s handkerchief, which I’ve kept hidden in my pillowcase all this time In the darkness I feel the embroidery, and I sob until my throat is raw, and I just hope, hope, hope that I’llcast into the sea I dreale I succumb

And after a while, in the quiet of the underwater, I can hear , Cecily wakes me in tears "Jenna won’t open her eyes," she says "She’s burning up"

Cecily tends to be dra, to Jenna’s room, I can see that it’s even worse than she described Our sister wife’s skin has paled and taken on a cruel yellow tinge Bruises are spreading across her throat and ar wounds I touch her forehead, and shesound

"Jenna?" I whisper

Cecily paces, clenching and unclenching her fists "I’et onto theJenna’s head into et a wet cloth"