The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue - V. E. Schwab Page 0,98
and grime.
She runs her hand through the dust, watches it gather again in her wake.
How long has he been gone?
She forces herself back out into the yard, and stops.
The house has come to life, or at least, begun to stir. A thin ribbon of smoke rises from the chimney. A window sits open, thin curtains rippling softly in the draft.
Someone is still here.
She should go, she knows she should, this place isn’t hers, not anymore, but she is already crossing the yard, already reaching out to knock. Her fingers slow, remembering that night, the last one of another life.
She hovers there, on the step, willing her hand to choose—but she has already announced herself. The curtain flutters, a shadow crossing the window, and Addie can only retreat two steps, three, before the door opens a crack. Just enough to reveal a sliver of wrinkled cheek, a scowling blue eye.
“Who’s there?”
The woman’s voice is brittle, thin, but it still lands like a stone in Addie’s chest, knocks the air away, and she is sure that even if she were mortal, her mind softened by time, she would still remember this—the sound of her mother’s voice.
The door groans open, and there she is, withered like a plant in winter, gnarled fingers clutching a threadbare shawl. She is old, anciently so, but alive.
“Do I know you?” asks her mother, but there is no hint of recognition in her voice, only the doubt of the old and the unsure.
Addie shakes her head.
Afterward, she will wonder if she should have answered yes, if her mother’s mind, emptied of memory, could have made room for that one truth. If she might have invited her daughter in, to sit beside the hearth, and share a simple meal, so that when Addie left, she would have something to hold on to besides the version of her mother shutting her out.
But she doesn’t.
She tries to tell herself that this woman stopped being her mother when she stopped being her daughter, but of course, it doesn’t work that way. And yet, it must. She has already grieved, and though the shock of the woman’s face is sharp, the pain is shallow.
“What do you want?” demands Marthe LaRue.
And that is another question she can’t answer, because she doesn’t know. She looks past the old woman, into the dim hall that used to be her home, and only then does a strange hope rise inside her chest. If her mother is alive, then maybe, maybe—but she knows. Knows by the cobwebs in the workshop door, the dust on the half-finished bowl. Knows by the weary look in her mother’s face, and the dark, disheveled state of the cottage behind her.
“I’m sorry,” she says, backing away.
And the woman does not ask what for, only stares, unblinking as she goes.
The door groans shut, and Addie knows, as she walks away, that she will never see her mother again.
New York City
March 17, 2014
XIII
It is easy enough to say the words.
After all, the story has never been the hard part.
It is a secret she has tried to share so many times, with Isabelle, and Remy, with friends and strangers and anyone who might listen, and every time, she has watched their expressions flatten, their faces go blank, watched the words hang in the air before her like smoke before being blown away.
But Henry looks at her, and listens.
He listens as she tells him of the wedding, and the prayers that went unanswered, the offerings made at dawn, and dusk. Of the darkness in the woods, parading as a man, of her wish, and his refusal, and her mistake.
You can have my soul when I don’t want it anymore.
Listens as she tells him of living forever, and being forgotten, and giving up. When she finishes, she holds her breath, expecting Henry to blink away the fog, to ask what she was about to say. Instead, his eyes narrow with such peculiar focus, and she realizes, heart racing, that he has heard every word.
“You made a deal?” he says. There is a detachment in his voice, an unnerving calm.
And of course, it sounds like madness.
Of course, he does not believe her.
This is how she loses him. Not to memory, but to disbelief.
And then, out of nowhere, Henry laughs.
He sags against a bike rack, head in his hand, and laughs, and she thinks he’s gone mad, thinks she’s broken something in him, thinks, even, that he is mocking her.