to Mona, brusque and warm. Honey, honey, honey means Mona, Rowan, or Mary Jane, or any female being perhaps.
Would “honey” have been appropriate for the dead thing, buried in the hole with its father? Christ, if she had only laid eyes on one of them, for just a precious second! Yeah, and every Mayfair woman who laid eyes on him during his little rampage had paid with her life for it. Except Rowan….
Whoa! Rowan was lifting the glass. Mona watched with a fearful fascination as she drank without ever moving her eyes from the distant flowers. She did blink naturally and slowly as she swallowed, but that was all. And the frown remained. Small. Thoughtful.
Michael stood watching her, hands in his pockets, and then he did a surprising thing. He talked about her to Mona, as if Rowan couldn’t hear. This was the first time.
“When the doctor spoke to her, when he told her she should go in for tests, she just got up and walked off. It was like a person on a park bench in a big city. You’d think someone had sat down beside her, maybe too close to her. She was isolated like that, all alone.”
He collected the glass. It looked more disgusting than ever. But to tell the truth, Rowan looked like she would have drunk anything that he’d put in her hand.
Nothing registered on Rowan’s face.
“I could take her to the hospital for the tests, of course. She might go along. She’s done everything else I’ve wanted her to do.”
“Why don’t you?” asked Mona.
“Because when she gets up in the morning she puts on her nightgown and her robe. I’ve laid out real clothes for her. She doesn’t touch them. That’s my cue. She wants to be in her nightgown and her robe. She wants to be home.”
He was angry suddenly. His cheeks were red, and there was a frank twisting to his lips that said it all.
“The tests can’t help her anyway,” he continued. “All these vitamins, that’s the treatment. The tests would only tell us things. Maybe it’s none of our business now. The drink helps her.”
His voice was tightening. He was getting angrier and angrier as he looked at Rowan. He stopped speaking.
He bent down suddenly and set the glass on the table, and laid his hands flat on either side of it. He was trying to look Rowan in the eye. He drew close to her face, but there was no change in her.
“Rowan, please,” he whispered. “Come back!”
“Michael, don’t!”
“Why not, Mona? Rowan, I need you now. I need you!” He banged the table hard with both hands. Rowan flinched, but did not otherwise change. “Rowan!” he shouted. He reached out for her as if he was going to take her by the shoulders and shake her, but he didn’t.
He snatched up the glass and turned and walked away.
Mona stood still, waiting, too shocked to speak. But it was like everything he did. It had been the good-hearted thing to do. It had been rough, though, and sort of terrible to watch.
Mona didn’t come away just yet. Slowly she sat down in the chair at the table, across from Rowan, the same place she’d taken every day.
Very slowly, Mona grew calm again. She wasn’t sure why she stayed here, except it seemed the loyal thing to do. Perhaps she didn’t want to appear to be Michael’s ally. Her guilt just hung all over her all the time these days.
Rowan did look beautiful, if you stopped thinking about the fact that she didn’t talk. Her hair was growing long, almost to her shoulders. Beautiful and absent. Gone.
“Well, you know,” Mona said, “I’ll probably keep coming until you give me a sign. I know that doesn’t absolve me, or make it okay to be the pest of a shocked and mute person. But when you’re mute like this, you sort of force people to act, to make choices, to decide. I mean, people can’t just let you alone. It’s not possible. It’s not really kind.”
She let out her breath, and felt herself relax all over.
“I’m too young to know certain things,” she said. “I mean, I’m not going to sit here and tell you I understand what happened to you. That would be too stupid.” She looked at Rowan; the eyes looked green now, as if picking up the tint of the bright spring lawn.
“But I … ah … care about what’s happening to everybody, well, almost everybody. I know things. I