Page 52 of The Manor of Dreams

Madeline exhaled. Her eyelids fluttered shut. “Don’t be sorry. Not you.”

“But this shouldn’t be happening. Our families shouldn’t keep secrets from us.” Nora paused. “I can tell my mother’s hiding something too.”

“I always thought they were protecting me,” Madeline said faintly. “But I didn’t know what from. We inherit their history. Whether they know it or not.”

“Whether they want us to or not,” Nora added.

“You know,” Madeline said, pressing closer. “If it weren’t for you, I would think that I made everything up in my head. About what happened the other night.”

“You didn’t. It really did happen.”

Madeline nodded. “I guess so.” She fidgeted with her necklace. Her sleeve fell back, and Nora could see the deep gash on her forearm. She reached out and picked up Madeline’s wrist gently, and Madeline let her. It didn’t look infected, but it concerned her that it wasn’t bandaged when it was still an open wound. “We should do something about this.”

“Well,” Madeline said, “too bad this Chinese family has absolutely no doctors.”

“I’m not quite,” Nora said. “But I am pre-med and I have a first aid kit. Does that count?”

Madeline smiled. “I’ll take it.”

“Okay. Come with me.”

They set their mugs down in the sink. Nora led the way. Behind her, Madeline shut the lights off. Nora shivered. What was it—fear of the dark? A premonition? Some kind of anticipation? Either way, she was wide awake now.

Madeline followed Nora into her room and closed the door behind her. The bedroom was dimly lit by a nightstand lamp between the two twin beds. Nora rummaged around in her first aid kit and found Neosporin, medical tape, and gauze. “I should have done this days ago,” she said. “I don’t know how effective it’ll be now.”

“Worth a try,” Madeline said. She knelt on the floor next to Nora.

“Here,” Nora said. She pushed up Madeline’s sleeve. The other shallow cuts and scrapes were scabbed over and healing, so she didn’t bother with them. She held Madeline’s arm delicately. The skin was hot to the touch. Nora dabbed at the cut with some water and squeezed a bit of gel out of the tube, lightly smoothing it over the wound. They were so close it was unnerving.

Madeline asked, “So why pre-med?”

In spite of everything, Nora laughed. “What is this, an interview?”

Madeline shrugged. “Just curious.”

Was Nora imagining the blush on Madeline’s cheeks? “Well, I like taking care of people and I’m good at my classes, I guess. My mom has always had these paralyzing migraines. I wanted to help her somehow.”

Nora applied more Neosporin. Madeline’s expression didn’t change, except her jaw tightened. Nora taped the wound and wrapped Madeline’s arm in fresh gauze from her kit. “Do I get a question?”

“Seems fair.”

“Why’d you keep walking around that garden?”

Madeline’s shoulders dropped. “I don’t know. I guess I wanted tofigure out if there was a way to fix it. My family said I could help. In case—”

“You got the house back.”

“You make it sound like I’m scheming.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Nora said.

Their eyes met. “It’s not going to happen now, anyway. But—” Madeline hesitated. “Sometimes I think about how beautiful the garden must have been. I can just imagine it. And the thing is, I studied ecosystems in college. How to restore them. And I couldn’tnotthink about it here, you know? How to bring it back to life.” She held up her arm. “Turns out, it is very much alive.”

Madeline said it so calmly it was almost funny. Until Nora looked at the dressed wound and thought, in panic, of Madeline being pulled into the earth once more. “What do you think is out there?” Nora asked.

“It was like something was possessing the vines,” Madeline recounted. “It was… too strong. I could not have escaped on my own. It was going to bury me.”

She said this last part so quietly, it terrified Nora. “Do you think it’s—?”

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