I nod, reaching up to touch it myself. It feels odd, running my fingertips over the shape of my skull. I wonder how I look.No mirrors in the Bray house, I say to myself. In that moment, I remember about the clamshell mirror I’d told Maria to find in my bag.
“Maria, did you—did you see yourself?”
She nods, her lips pressed tightly together. A tear tracks down her cheek.
“I saw a stranger with brown eyes and no scar where a scar should be. I’m not the girl in that photograph and I’m not Maria Garrison, Andrew’s sister. Am I?”
I shake my head slowly. “It’s why he shaves your head, I think. To stop you noticing that your hair isn’t blond. It’s dark, just like your eyes. It’s why he took away all the ways you might see your reflection, even just a glimpse.”
“He hates me.”
“No. He doesn’t. But there is something very wrong with Andrew, Maria. He has a sickness, deep inside him. It means he does terrible things, but he tells himself it is for the good, because he is doing it for you.”
Maria sits quietly. Another tear slides out from under her eyelid.
I grip her shoulders and turn her carefully to face me. Her skin is waxy and pale. “Let me tell you what I think about your brother, Maria. When I was little, my parents made me have an operation. They did it because they loved me, and they thought they were doing the right thing. Sometimes that’s how it happens. The people who love you make decisions for you, and sometimes they’re good decisions and sometimes they’re not. I think Andrew started making bad decisions and now he doesn’t know how to stop.”
She seems to absorb this as the wind makes husky, whispery sounds at the window.
“And was it? The operation. Was it the right thing?”
“No. It wasn’t. It changed me in ways I wasn’t expecting, and they didn’t even remove everything, not quite. I think they left part of it behind.”
“Like a serving-knee.”
I laugh at that, surprised to find that I still can. “Yes, just like that.”
We both fall silent. Part of me hopes Andrew hits a patch of ice and runs the car off the fucking road. Part of me fears it. Because we’ll die out here without him.
“Hazel?”
I turn to her.
“I was thinking about Scout. About you asking me if he lived. I think there’s a way I can find out for you.” She looks up at the ceiling, as if the answer will be written there. “You have to help me, though. I can’t do it alone.”
35
By the time Cathy picks Scout up from the childminder that afternoon, the snow has stopped. A fine Idless mist drapes over the tops of the pines. Above, the sky is vast and gray. Scout giggles as she hauls his buggy up the steps and into their house, sweating despite the cold.
“Danny? Danny, you home?”
Scout claps his hands and joins in as she unbuckles him, “Annee! Annee!”
Cathy cocks her head, listening. Sometimes she will hear Danny upstairs—the muffled thud of his music or his voice speaking into his computer headset as he blasts his way through virtual warfare. The house is silent. It’s not unusual, but it bothers her in a way she can’t quite pinpoint.
Scout’s chin is shiny with drool. Cathy wipes it absentmindedly, herding him into the kitchen as she fishes her phone out of her bag. It’s been off since she went into work that morning. She tries not to micromanage Danny, remembering how she’d kicked out at the restraints her own parents had put on her at his age, but she wants to talk to him, just to satisfy herself that he is okay. Truthfully, sheis still shaken by how Scout had been that morning, the smell of him, like water drawn up from a deep well.
“Go on and find your toys.”
“Hungee!”
“You’re hungry, huh?” She switches her phone on and puts it on the counter. It’s just gone lunchtime but she has no appetite herself. That visit to the police station that morning has left a bad taste in her mouth. “How about some noodles and then maybe another bath?”
“Nother baff!”
“Yes, Scout, another bath. I’m sorry. Mummy’s just losing her mind, all right?”
She hauls him up and onto her hip, wincing as he grabs a fistful of her hair and tugs.