My mother told me to take cues from my betters. Learn their habits, and track them like deer in a live wood. Keep watch of their movements, and, if it helps, imagine you’ve tied a line of bright yarn to one ankle to make their path clear. Vera puts two spoonfuls of sugar in her tea before even sipping. She and I share a soul, or so Lev insisted. Why not share a little more? I found out yesterday when she went to town for a bottle of wine that she doesn’t carry her passport with her, nor check it for safety upon her return. Easy enough to move it into a clean purse, where I will slide her wallet too. Take her wedding ring from around her finger, though I doubt it will fit on mine. Something to ask a jeweler about when I arrive in France.
A fire in the fireplace might pop and get out of hand. In a place like this, made all of wood, the destruction would be catastrophic. Police, when they come, might find a woman’s body burned clean of all identifying marks, except the locket—my locket—around its neck, and scraps of my clothes melted to the remaining flesh. Why would they look closer? Already they’ll have found my fingerprints on the gun that shot Lev, and it can’t be long before they match them to the set that’s been on file since the orphan boat carried me to America. Remorse, they’ll think. A murder and then a suicide. Not the most shocking idea, when you get down to it.
And then imagine: a woman walks onto an airplane and smiles, ironic and wan. She answers questions from the stewardess with an exhausted non or oui before waving her off and falling asleep with a scarf tied around her hair. I don’t speak French well, but Vera doesn’t talk in excess, and I can pick anything up in time. I will avoid her old acquaintances, if any still remain, and eventually it will be my face that people associate with her name, if only through the force of habit. Not such a strange thing, for a widow to hide herself away, especially when she has her husband’s legacy to maintain. Correspondence. The occasional grieved statement made by postcard. A packet of papers, a yellow old manuscript, locked in a safe underneath her bed. Maybe two packets, if I can’t bring myself to burn these pages after all.
With a bit of effort, a bit of distance, I know this too can be smoothed over. We forget about the atrocities of history all the time, so long as there is a fair conclusion. The poor rising up to take the place of the rich. The dead living on in our earthly memories. Practice saying it: I am Vera Petrovna Orlova. I was born Vera Volkova, just outside Moscow, on an estate that would rival Arthur’s royal seat. I can make things happen with the strength of my mind, the force of my will, and it was my prerogative to disappear. I hold my secrets close, because there’s no one left alive who’ll understand them. No one left at all, but me.
And I am determined to be happy.
Acknowledgments
I’m endlessly grateful to Emma Patterson for her insight, friendship, and forbearance, all of which serve to make me a better and (usually) saner writer. Thanks also to Lea Beresford for being an incredible champion for this book, and for helping me realize its best possibilities. I think we three make a pretty good team.
Thank you to Sara Kitchen, Lauren Hill, and everyone at Bloomsbury USA and UK. I’m especially grateful to my UK editor Alison Hennessey for her enthusiasm and care in bringing this novel to a readership across the pond. To my phenomenal copy editor Janet McDonald: I appreciate you. To Katya Mezhibovskaya: Thank you for designing a cover that is truly better than anything I imagined.
Love and gratitude to Branden Boyer-White (first reader, second reader, hero of my heart), Angie Dell, Rachel Andoga, Lyndsey Reese, Sam Martone, Peter Turchi, Tara Ison, T. M. McNally, and Melissa Pritchard for years of friendship and inspiration. To Reneé Bibby, Lilian Vercauteren, and everyone who is a part of Write Wednesday, for sometimes letting me pick the restaurant. To Lauren Cerand for excellent advice and generosity with her time. To Katie Adams for offering valuable feedback on an early version of this manuscript, as well as her enthusiasm writ large. To Esmé Weijun Wang, for offering joy, sharing John Wick, and being brilliant. To Edan Lepucki and Alissa Nutting for support when it was most needed. To Mairead Case, for being. To Lynn Steger Strong, Katie Coyle, Rachel Fershleiser, Jaime Green, Erika Swyler, and other friends who make my daily life better, even if it’s usually through a crackling digital void.
Heartfelt thanks to the Willapa Bay Artist Residency Program, the Jentel Arts Foundation, and the Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop for offering me space and support while I worked on this book. (To my Launch Pad friends: this may not have been quite what you had in mind, but studying science fiction writers turns out to have been as valuable for me as studying science.) Thanks also to my mother-in-law, Karen Clark, for taking us on a vacation to Mexico where I drafted a huge swath of pages and got a nice suntan, too.
Thank you to my family, always.
Thank you to Dave, especially. I love you.
A Note on the Author
Adrienne Celt’s debut novel, The Daughters, won the PEN Southwest Book Award for Fiction and was an NPR Best Book of the Year and an NYPL Favorite Book of the Year. Her story “Temples” was included in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2016 after originally appearing in Epoch. Celt’s short fiction appears or is forthcoming in Zyzzyva, Ecotone, the Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Esquire, Electric Literature, and Carve Magazine, among others; her nonfiction has appeared in the Rumpus, Tin House’s “Open Bar,” Lit Hub, the Toast, Catapult, the Millions, and elsewhere. Adrienne has an MFA in fiction from Arizona State University, draws weekly web comics at loveamongthelampreys.com, and lives in Tucson, Arizona.
By the same author
The Daughters
Copyright
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First published in the United States 2018
Copyright © Adrienne Celt, 2018
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ISBN: HB: 978-1-63557-152-3; eBook: 978-1-63557-151-6
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
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