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 calf 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?”