Page 93 of Necessary Cruelty

A strange feeling builds in my chest, pressure that makes my heart ache. There has always been a link between Vin and I, but until this very moment I imagined it as some sickly and twisted thing that burrowed into my chest like a knife.

But it isn’t pain that makes my heart race and robs me of breath.

It feels like hope.

And maybe even a little bit of love, because sometimes I see in him the boy I used to know.

There was a time when we didn’t hate each other. When I was his only friend, the only one who ever saw him at his weakest. He let me past the hardened shell that is all the rest of the world gets to see, so I know somewhere in there is a beating human heart.

I wish I didn’t remember, but I do.

* * *

Ten Years Ago

I likedthe outside of Cortland Manor much better than the inside.

The moment we pulled up to the driveway, I sucked in a huge breath. I wouldn’t let it out until I had hurried through the massive foyer, past the kitchen, and out the French doors that lead into the gardens.

I wouldn’t breathe until I was back outside again.

Vin hadn’t been in the wheelchair for very long, and there were good days when he was able to walk. He really wanted to make sure I knew that.

Mama said he had been able to walk when she first started working at the manor, but she didn’t know exactly what was wrong with him. Something to do with a weak heart, maybe. She got annoyed if I asked too many questions and would change the subject.

I used to wonder if it was the house itself that made him sick. The air inside the manor was so cold that it burned my lungs if I inhaled. It felt like poison. Even then, I knew something about that couldn’t be right.

But it wasn’t the air I should have worried about.

At some point, instead of already waiting outside at the garden table, the tea set and tray would be sitting on the edge of the counter in the kitchen, waiting for me carry it out.

I held my breath as Mama explained it, fidgeting from one foot to the other while my lungs burned. I had managed to convince myself that something terrible would happen if I took even a single breath inside of the manor. What started as a child’s game had morphed into a true phobia.

“There is medicine for him in this cup, so make sure that one goes to Vin.”

Vin never drank or ate anything in the garden, until I started bringing out the tea. That first day, he warily eyed the cups as I set them on the table. But when I sat down and took my first sip, so did he.

“It’s bitter,” he complained. Then dipped the frosted cookie in the tea to sweeten it.

Mine didn’t have a bitter aftertaste, but I assumed that had to be the medicine Mama mentioned.

For weeks that summer, every day it was the same.

Eventually, she no longer had to remind me. Rushing into the kitchen, I would scoop up the tray and carry it outside, exhaling a desperate rush of air the moment I passed through the French doors.

The black cup was for him and the white one for me.

One day, things were different. When I raced for the kitchen, the tray wasn’t on the counter waiting for me like it should have been. Mama grabbed the back of my shirt and held me back when I tried to run outside without it.

She made me wait while she made up the tea. I fought so hard not to breathe, chest burning as I silently begged her to hurry. It would have cost too much of the little air I had left to speak. It seemed like it took so much longer than it should to pour hot water into the delicate ceramic pot and drop little bags of tea into each cup.

I wouldn’t remember until later how odd it was that Vin’s medicine was in an unlabeled bottle kept under the sink. Mama seemed to hesitate before pouring a generous amount of it into the black cup without bothering to measure. Then she adjusted the cups on the tray once. Then twice. Then again.

I wanted to scream at her to hurry up, but all I could focus on was how badly I needed to breathe.

It took too long for her to finish preparing the tray. I didn’t have any choice but to inhale a lungful of frigid air that did nothing to relieve the burning in my lungs. My hands shook when Mama finally gestured at me to take the tray outside.

I should have known then that something terrible was about to happen.

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