Page 100 of The Manor of Dreams

The medicine cabinet in the kitchen was littered with bottles for muscle aches and headaches and blood pressure. Now she reached for a long-expired prescription bottle for heart medication at the back and shook out an unmarked pill.

Vivian had planned out how she would do this long ago. She had thought about it constantly. It surprised her now that she had been able to delay it for so long. But there had been reasons to stay. There washer Ada, but also other joyous and fleeting moments. She’d been in the hospital when her granddaughter was born; she’d held Madeline in her arms, small and wailing with all her might. She’d felt a strange joy that blossomed so fiercely in her that she thought her heart would seize up right then and there. She’d become a grandmother, against all odds. Her granddaughter was so very perfect, free of the terrible history that hung over the rest of their heads. How she wanted to give Madeline all her love. She’d visited briefly. She’d brought her to the park and taught her how to fold dumplings. But mostly, she stayed away. She wanted to keep her granddaughter far from her own rotted fate. She visited each of her children separately, afraid that if they were under the same roof again, something terrible might happen. She watched Madeline grow through photos, and it hurt her more than anything. She saw Lucille march, tight-fisted, through her life as she always did. And she watched Renata fade from her. Her calls coming less frequently, until they didn’t come at all.

But this was the end.

Vivian wondered if she should call her daughters. What would she say to them? What if they didn’t pick up? If Vivian told them,I love you, would they be tipped off?

It was better to slip away. Vivian looked at the capsule in her palm.??, aconite. The Chinese name meantdaughter root.What was once a beautiful violet flower now filled the contents of the pill. Just the same as she’d given her husband. A life for a life. She swallowed the pill.

She had often thought of that fateful, fatal decision. She should have done it differently. Or she should have not done it at all. How many times had she wondered what would have happened if she had just proceeded with a divorce instead? In so many ways, her life now was worse than she could have ever imagined. All that was Vivian Yin now lay around her in shambles.

It was no use dragging all this back up. The sun would dip below the horizon soon, and she wanted to see it. She said her daughter’s name and turned.

There Ada was, in the waning light. She smiled, and Vivian’s heart broke for the last time.

“I’m sorry,???.” Tears slipped down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry.”

“You tried everything you could.”

“No,” Vivian whispered, shaking her head. “I’m sorry for what I did to you. Will you forgive me?”

Ada said nothing, but held out her hand. Vivian took it. Ada’s grip felt cool. They walked toward the terrace. Vivian felt a tug at her wrist.

Her daughter said, “Don’t go into the garden.”

“I know,” Vivian said. Ada had said this to her so many times before. “I won’t.” She looked back at her daughter, her flesh and blood. She said in Mandarin, “I love you. More than anything in this world.”

Ada nodded. “I know.”

Her grip eased. Vivian walked out onto the stone terrace and looked out over the rotting mass. Once this had just been a grassy field that she took her young daughters to. She was going to build a house that was big enough for their dreams. They were going to live a better life than she ever did. They had struck gold.

Now she saw that she had spent decades trying to prove herself to this place. She’d given it everything: her ambitions, her youth, her children, her sense of self, and still it held its mouth open for more. She thought of her ancestors who’d come in search of gold; of the people who made it in, only for their bodies to be blasted through mountains. If you could survive this place, you got to dream. That was the privilege you fought for. It was never a done deal, and it would never be enough. You would bury yourself, hoping that under the weight of it all, your roots would grow strong enough that your children might be able to reach toward the sky.

She had clung to her dreams for herself and her children for so long. She had wanted to give them everything: this house, a good education, this life she thought they had secured the moment she married Richard under that summer sky. In the end, she had killed for it, rather than risk it being taken from them. And even then, when her daughters had been in pain and at a loss, she had kept pushing them—away from her and toward some unknown, better thing. She had cut herself out of their lives so they wouldn’t have to bear the burden of doing it themselves. Wasn’t that why she had exiled them from this house? So they could excise the poison of this place and continue onward?

Now, far too late, she saw that the rift she had forged had broken her children, too. She couldn’t expect them to understand she had done it all out of love, when she had never told them the truth in the first place. But there was no going back now. All she could do was try to save them one last time by offering herself to this place. And maybe this time, it would be enough.

Vivian was ready to die. She opened her eyes to the setting sun and braced herself for the pain.

thirty-eight

AUGUST 2024

DAY 7 IN THE HOUSE

LUCILLEate dinner by herself. Madeline got some food at some point and slipped back upstairs without speaking to her. Rennie didn’t come down at all. Bloated wine corks lay in the sink. Mud bubbled up through the drain. A green tendril had emerged.

Now plants were growinginsidethe pipes? Lucille hosed it with brown water that spurted erratically through the tap. She reached to yank it out, but when she blinked it was gone. All that remained was the mud.

Was this what happened to old houses? She had never lived in one. Come to think of it, the house felt strangely hot and damp today. It had begun to truly stink with mold and mildew, though there hadn’t been a weather change outside.

Lucille was on her way upstairs to change into something lighter when she saw Elaine at the top of the staircase facing Lucille’s bedroom door. Elaine turned. Dark circles ringed her eyes. Limp, stringy hair hung around her face. Her nostrils were crusted with dried blood.

“Jesus.” Lucille switched on the hallway light and it flickered above them. The harsh light made Elaine look even more ghastly. Why was she up here? “What do you want?”

“Your week is up.” Elaine approached and flapped a sheet of paper. The one they’d both signed a week ago. “You leave tomorrow morning.”

Lucille frantically flipped through the days in her head. She hadlost track of time. How could she let herself do that? “Only if we found no evidence of wrongdoing.”

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