Every life led to a series of quiet epiphanies—or at least to opportunities for epiphanies—and Chyna was washed by a poignant new grief when she thought about this grim aspect of the Templeton family’s interrupted journeys. The kindnesses they might have done for others. The love they might have given. The things they might have come to understand in their hearts.
Vess finished the breakfast clean-up and returned to the table. “I have a few things to do upstairs, outside—and then I’ll have to sleep four or five hours if I can. I’ve got to go to work this evening. I need my rest.”
She wondered what work he did, but she didn’t ask. He might be talking about a job—or about his dogged assault on Ariel’s sanity. If the latter, Chyna didn’t want to know what was coming.
“When you shift around in the chair, do it easy. Those chains will scrape the wood if you’re not careful.”
“I’d hate to mar the furniture,” she said.
He stared at her for perhaps half a minute and then said, “If you’re stupid enough to think you can get free, I’ll hear the chains rattling, and I’ll have to come back in here to quiet you. If that’s necessary, you won’t like what I’ll do.”
She said nothing. She was hopelessly hobbled and chained down. She couldn’t possibly escape.
“Even if you somehow get free of the table and chairs, you can’t move fast. And attack dogs patrol the grounds.”
“I’ve seen them,” she assured him.
“If you weren’t chained, they’d still drag you down and kill you before you’d gone ten steps from the door.”
She believed him—but she didn’t understand why he felt the need to press the point so hard.
“I once turned a young man loose in the yard,” Vess said. “He raced straight to the nearest tree and got up and out of harm’s way with only one bad bite in his right calf and a nip on the left ankle. He braced himself in the branches and thought he would be safe for a little while, with the dogs circling below and watching him, but I got a twenty-two rifle and went out on the back porch and shot him in the leg from there. He fell out of the tree, and then it was all over in maybe a minute.”
Chyna said nothing. There were moments when communicating with this hateful thing seemed no more possible than discussing the merits of Mozart with a shark. This was one of those moments.
“You were invisible to me last night,” he said.
She waited.
His gaze traveled over her, and he seemed to be looking for a loose link in one of the chains or a handcuff left open and unnoticed until now. “Like a spirit.”
She was not sure that it was ever possible to discern what this thing was thinking—but right now, by God, it seemed to be vaguely uneasy about leaving her alone. She couldn’t for the life of her imagine why.
“Stay?” he said.
She nodded.
“Good girl.”
He went to the door between the kitchen and the living room.
Realizing that they had one more issue to discuss, she said, “Before you go…”
He turned to look at her.
“Could you take me to a bathroom?” she asked.
“It’s too much trouble to undo the chains just now,” he said. “Piss in your pants if you have to. I’m going to clean you up later anyway. And I can buy new chair cushions.”
He pushed through the door into the living room and was gone.
Chyna was determined not to endure the humiliation of sitting in her own waste. She had a faint urge to pee, but it wasn’t insistent yet. Later she would be in trouble.
How odd—that she could still care about avoiding humiliation or think about the future.
*
Halfway across the living room, Mr. Vess stops to listen to the woman in the kitchen. He hears no clink of chains. He waits. And still no sound. The silence troubles him.
He’s not sure what to make of her. He knows so much about her now—yet she still contains mysteries.