In Her Skin(24)

“Listen to me. Being Vivienne Weir gives me a home. A real home, Wolf! And a life. Already, they want to keep me safe. I told them I was abducted and kept in a shed, but they’ve got me changing my story because they don’t want the police bothering me about catching the perpetrator. They have private security because Mr. Lovecraft is a big deal in this city, he’s built the whole skyline, and he’s had threats, and they worry about their daughter, too, since the real Vivi disappeared from their own house, this house, seven years ago.”

“It’s only a matter of time before the police dissect your story and trip you up. It’s too complicated. Keep the con simple. You told me that one yourself. You’ve already forgotten the rules of being Jolene Chastain.”

“That’s because I am Vivienne Weir.” I say it in my head two more times, and Wolf is talking, but I can’t hear him.

“You might be a good con. But you can’t keep it up. Then your cover will be blown and they’ll throw you back out on the street.”

“I won’t blow this.”

“You think I’ll be there when you wake up from your pretty dream, but maybe I won’t be.”

“There’s no waking up from the return of Vivienne Weir! I am the living, breathing happy ending to a national tragedy. Jolene Chastain is dead. She has to be dead.” I reach up on my toes and move hair from his eyes. “Please, Wolf. I need this.”

Wolf pulls away and walks past the dresser, pauses, and I wince, waiting for him to smash the glass cloche. Instead he moves to the open closet and inspects the prim, pretty clothes and the clean shoes set on the floor beneath. He turns to face me, and I brace myself.

“What happens when this family figures out you’re not Vivienne Weir?”

How do I explain the Lovecrafts to Wolf? The safety in Mr. Lovecraft’s broad-shouldered disinterest when men have never been disinterested in me. Mrs. Lovecraft’s warmth and ready closeness, her animal protectiveness of me, and of her daughter. The promise of Slade’s easy violence. And then I think of you. Of the sense of being off-kilter and alive. You who gets me, who says it’s better with me here. You who has the potential to be my first and only friend, a friend to fill the lonely space I didn’t know existed until you filled it.

Who till they died did not alive become.

The idea of being ripped from the Lovecrafts is already too much to bear. Muscle ripped from tendon, the stripping of skin. This is my new fear: not Momma’s murderer. I won’t admit this, because I will hurt Wolf, and I am the only thing in this world that hasn’t hurt him.

“Jolene.”

“I don’t know,” I whisper, my voice catching on a sob.

Wolf cups the back of my neck and pulls me to his chest. I breath in smoke, city, skin. My hunger for Wolf will fade; hunger always does.

“You’ll need a plan if they find out,” he says near my ear. “You’ll need to disappear.”

What Wolf doesn’t know is that I’ve already disappeared.

“Promise me if you get in trouble, you’ll send me a signal,” he says.

I laugh sadly against him. “Sure. I’ll beam my bat signal onto the night sky.”

He pushes me away and rifles through his jeans pocket, finds a burner phone and presses it into my hand. “Take this.”

I stare at the phone. “I can’t have this. I don’t own anything; everything is theirs. They’ll find it.” This is my second lie to Wolf. Truth is, I don’t trust myself not to go back to him, and the phone is a temptation I can’t risk.

“Hide it wherever you hide that knife you were ready to cut me with.”

I grimace and shove the phone back at him.

“Fine. Tie that hideous sweater to the fire escape. That’ll be our signal.”

“Jolene Chastain doesn’t needed rescuing.”

“But Vivienne Weir might.” He tosses the phone onto the bed and turns to go, stopping once to look over his shoulder, waiting for me to ask him to stay. The pain in his eyes is dizzying. I bite my lip hard until he leaves, climbing back through the window, shoulder blades jutting through his jacket. I breathe only after he leaves; as he came, on shaking metal scaffolding, hours closer to the pain he seeks.

In Tent City I had a dream that kept coming back, where Momma’s last boyfriend and Wolf were sitting at a table set with china and flowers, and there was classic music, and Wolf was cutting off parts of himself and offering them to the Last One, and he was eating, and it was very civilized, and I would wake drenched in sweat with my heart beating inside my chest to be let out, grabbing under the blanket to feel Wolf’s arms, hands, legs, ears, making sure the parts were attached.

Tonight, I wake twice from that same suffocating dream. Except this time, we are in the Lovecrafts’ dining room, and I am with you, Temple, and we are eating as old-fashioned music plays, and I am afraid of what I am eating, but it is delicious, and I eat until I am full.

*

We are crammed in the detective’s paneled office: Detective Curley behind the desk; Ginny, who has taken ownership of me since I entered the room, with an arm around the back of my chair; Mr. and Mrs. Lovecraft, him standing, her seated; and two men, the Lovecrafts’ attorney, Lawyer Gene, and a stooped man named Harvey Silver, who knows Lawyer Gene and who seems to be on the same payroll, and by that I mean the Lovecrafts’. It turns out Harvey is a psychiatrist and a trauma specialist who has diagnosed me with dissociative amnesia along with repressed memory even though we met in the parking lot twelve minutes ago. Everyone is talking at once but me. It’s a scene out of a black-and-white movie, when the bank is closing and everyone’s about to lose their life savings.