Page 47 of The Narrow

“Come in,” she says at my knock. She’s sitting on the couch, her legs crossed and a cup of coffee balanced on one knee. Her hair is up in a casual bun and she wears little makeup, but it doesn’t matter—she was born for the screen, and she’d look glamorous in a cow pasture wearing flannel.

“You wanted to talk?” I ask politely.

“Have a seat, Eden.” She gestures toward the big red chairs that sit at off angles to the couch. I have to sit crookedly to face her, and fold my hands tightly in my lap. She sets her cup of teaon the small table beside her, mouth pursed. “You’ve been spending a lot of time with Delphine.”

“Isn’t that my job?” I ask. It’s the wrong note to hit.

“Delphine’s circumstances would be difficult for anyone. And she’s a very sensitive girl to begin with,” Madelyn Fournier continues, as if she hasn’t heard me. “Sometimes she acts out. It’s important at those times not to let her do anything drastic she will later regret.”

“Ms.Fournier—”

“Madelyn, please,” she interrupts.

I straighten my shoulders. “Madelyn. Delphine asked me to cut her hair. I was only doing what she asked.”

“It’s not your place to decide that sort of thing,” she says.

Anger simmers in my chest. I struggle to keep my voice steady. “I don’t think it’s my place. But it is hers,” I say. “It’s her hair.”

“Delphine has no experience of the world. She doesn’t know what she wants,” Madelyn says.

“Have you ever asked her?” I ask, startled by my own vehemence.

Madelyn is surprised as well—I see the spark of fury in her eyes and brace myself, expecting to be thrown out immediately—but she sighs. She bends forward, covering her face with both hands, and her shoulders sag.

“I’m sorry, Eden. You’re right. You only did what she asked.” She rubs a hand over her mouth, looking off toward the corner of the room. “You can’t imagine how helpless I feel. You’re supposed to make a good life for your children. You’re supposed to protect them, and you’re supposed to help them grow up and go out intothe world. But the world is deadly to her. And she’s so... sodiminished. I can’t help her. I can’t free her. All I can do is keep her safe.”

She’s right—I can’t imagine what she’s been through. The decisions she’s had to make. But Delphine? I can imagine what it’s like for Delphine.

To be alone. To be trapped. For it to feel like time has stilled, all of existence frozen in one wretched moment with no hope of it ever changing. I found my escape. Delphine hasn’t. “Aren’t there any treatments?” I ask, leaning forward in my seat.

“To treat something, you have to understand it,” she says, gesturing helplessly. “No one can offer up an explanation. Most of the doctors who have examined her have insisted that the effect is psychosomatic. That it’s all in her head. But then how is it that even when she’s under anesthesia, her heart starts to fail if we take her away from here?”

A sharp shock goes through me. She seems to realize what she said, and her head whips toward me, her jaw tensed.

“She can’t leave,” I say. The surgery she had—she wondered why they couldn’t keep her at the hospital, even protected. They rushed her back here. “That’s why you kept her enrolled. That’s why you renovated Abigail House instead of taking her home.”

“She stops breathing. Her heart stops beating. Even a few hours away, and she starts to die,” Madelyn says. Her shoulders bow inward, making her seem uncharacteristically small. “No one believes me. Not the doctors. Not my parents or my friends. I know what people say. Some of them think I’m making it up. Some of them think I’m doing it to her.” Her voice cracks at thewords. She sounds defeated as she continues. “I would do anything to protect her. But nothing I do seems to matter.”

“She told me about her brother. Her twin,” I say.

Madelyn’s breath catches. She gives me a piercing look.

“I can’t imagine how hard that was. Losing one of your babies. How scary it has to be thinking that it might happen again.”

“Yes,” she says haltingly. “Yes, the fear of losing a child is a terrible thing.” She looks like she wants to say something more, but she only looks away, touching a knuckle lightly to her lips.

I want to ask her about the Drowning Girl and about Aubrey and the Narrow and all the rest, but I hear the fragility in her voice. If I push, she’ll realize she shouldn’t be talking to me at all. “You’ve done everything you can,” I say instead. “You’ve kept her safe this long.”

“At what cost?” she asks. Then she shakes her head a little, as if to clear it. “I’m sorry for giving you a hard time about the hair. It’s between me and Delphine to talk about—we shouldn’t be dragging you into our mother-daughter quarrels. Just, maybe next time she asks you to pierce her belly button or something, tell me first?” She picks up her coffee and sips it, her cheerful armor sliding back into place.

“Of course,” I say. An easy promise to make, and an easier one to break. “I’m sorry, I’m supposed to be meeting my friends.”

“Oh, go on! Don’t let me keep you,” she says. Too loud and too bright. She’s regretting telling me as much as she did.

Everyone is keeping secrets.

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