Page 101 of Chaos

The younger kids, Auden included, have toys spread out near the fireplace, where Pearl sits with her knitting, dogs and one cat lounging at her feet. The older kids are on the other side of the room—Ephie and Shane shoulder to shoulder inone of the tall, glittering windows. He’s dressed in military formal dress, navy and gold and dashing. She’s wearing a purple dress that suits her. When she sees me looking at them, her smile falters.

I manage a smile that doesn’t feel fake.

Thornewood, for the first time since I got back here, feels like home again, like a beautiful place full of endless possibility, a place Ruby would have approved of, like the inside of a treasure trove, or a sorely needed holiday for people clinging to life after the end of days.

It’s a good party.

And it’s served its purpose. The soldiers are laughing, dancing, full of food that doesn’t taste like hell. This feels like a place worth fighting for, a place to protect, a place to want to belong.

Too bad I don’t intend to stay long.

“Blondie, blondie, blondie.” Church appears almost instantly.

He’s wearing military dress too, white pants, a navy blazer, a shed-load of ribbons and medals and fancy gold shoulder epaulets that is an unmissable reminder of the war, of the things he saw that most of us didn’t. “Can you dance?”

“CanI dance?” Shasta’s lips, the exact shade of burgundy as the backless blouse I helped her pick out, curl in a feline smile. “Have we met?”

He takes her hand in his.

“Have fun,” I call after them. “Don’t let her fall.”

Some things you really don’t need to see to do, and dancing, like bossing people around in a kitchen, is clearly one of them.

When I leave them, she’s rocking her hips, her head tipped back, the sunglasses mirroring back the twinkling lights, a smile on her face.

I work my way through throngs of people, seeing Jacquetta buttoned primly into her dress uniform, wearing heels, laden with medals and ribbons of her own. Colleen andVenus are dancing with May and Lyle. Ty and Alice have baby Sella between them. Mitsy is there, wearing a tiny pink confection of a dress, her blond hair all fluffed up, her eyes narrowed into slits. Some of the other ex-townees, the ones like Duane, lingering along the edges of the party like a dark cloud.

When a cluster of laughing soldiers let me pass, I get my first, devastating glimpse of Yorke in formal military wear and forget about Mitsy and Duane and everything else entirely.

I assume he got it from Church or Jacquetta. A navy jacket with thick gold buttons and a belt at his waist, a rainbow of striped ribbons and golden medals decorate his chest and sleeves, golden epaulets make his shoulders look wider than usual, and his massive hand makes the water glass he’s holding look like a tinker toy.

I gawk, there’s no dignified word for it.

He breaks off mid-conversation with Wendell and Gus, his brows lifting as he takes me in, and excuses himself.

People part naturally for him.

Maybe because he’s several inches taller than most of them.

My low abdomen clenches up.

He is undeniably a magnificent beast of a man.

He stops in front of me, his shiny black shoes nudging up against the tips of the heels I put on. They're the same ones I wore for Thanksgiving, gaudy and bohemian, ribbons and bows that anyone would say clash with the emerald green drapey duster I’m wearing over my ivory dress, but I don’t care.

I rise up on the tippiest of the tippies, my lips not coming anywhere close to his ear, and I have to brace myself against his chest so I don’t tip over. “I can’t believe I got to make a baby withyou.”

He touches the fake white and green magnolia flower I found in one of the basement storage rooms and tuckedbehind my ear, taking in my braless breasts in the thin silk of my dress, the necklace, always around my neck, and back up to my lips. “Very pretty, Reynolds.”

I touch a gold medal, one of many, with a triangle in the center of it, that sits over his right pectoral. “Fancy.”

“Jacquetta thought the army could use a reminder that I’m army, too.”

“Are they real?” I slide my finger along the embroidered threads that make up one of the many ribbons.

“Yeah. They took a big box from the Glenn.”

“No … I mean, are they the same ones you had? Ones you were given? Ones you earned?”

---