White Ivy(108)

After breakfast, they went around his old stomping grounds in Cambridge. Gideon got a double scoop of mint chocolate chip at J.P. Licks and then they went up to the Lowell House bell and rang it, sharing nostalgic stories of their college years. The view from the tower looked out onto a snow-covered courtyard and steepled rooftops of brick buildings where bundled students hurried in and out of revolving doors. It seemed to Ivy a world in miniature, but the cold, the wind, the height gave her a sickening sensation that she’d been here before. She quickly descended. Over dinner, Gideon handed her a book wrapped in tissue paper. “It’s not much…” It was a journal, not a book, bound in calfskin leather so buttery Ivy’s bare fingers scuffed the brown cover just holding it. Her name was engraved on the lower right corner. “You’re figuring a lot of things out now,” said Gideon, “and I thought it would help to write down your thoughts.”

Ivy took his hand over the table.

“Today’s been…” She started again. “I’m so lucky to have you.”

“We’ll be married soon.”

“Yes.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Wonderful. Amazing. I can’t wait to be married to you.”

He seemed on the verge of saying something, but then a look of resolve came over his face.

“What about you?” she asked quickly.

“I feel the same way,” he replied, squeezing her fingers. Again that flicker of hesitation. “It’s just I want you to be sure,” he said. “It’s been a whirlwind and I think this is a good time to catch our breath. Check in with each other.”

Ivy’s acutely tuned ear heard the doubt in his voice—it was he, not she, who wanted to be sure—and responded to it by clinging to him even more tenaciously: staying over at his house, cooking him breakfast, greeting him after work with bottles of wine and elaborately plated cheese boards. She was desperate, she’d lost the ability for subtlety. She felt her sins must be leaking out of her and causing Gideon to have these second thoughts.

One night, she woke up as if someone had screamed in her ear. Her breath came in shallow gasps. A small reading lamp was on; Gideon was working on his laptop beside her.

“Did I wake you?” he asked apologetically.

“No.” Her trembling hands clenched into fists underneath the linen sheets.

“You were talking in your sleep.”

Ivy stilled. “What’d I say?”

“Something about cats. It was cute.”

She made a meowing noise, nerves coloring her cheeks a pretty pink. They laughed easily and he went back to his laptop.

The next day, Ivy went to a sleep specialist.

“I have nightmare disorder,” she said, rattling off the symptoms she’d looked up on the Internet. The doctor prescribed her two hundred milligrams of trazodone. Ivy doubled the dose, just to be safe. She stopped dreaming entirely, but the downside was that time now passed by at the speed of molasses dripping down a windowpane. She no longer liked to leave the house. She had the newspaper and groceries delivered to Gideon’s apartment, and subscribed to a wine-of-the-week club in his name.



* * *




THREE WEEKS LATER, she saw an article about it in the Boston Globe. “Missing Hiker Fell to Tragic Death.” Panting, she scanned the pages.

It was all there, the details she’d planted and some she hadn’t considered: Roux Roman, a thirty-one-year-old restaurateur, went hiking in the southern end of the White Mountains, where he fell to his death in a hidden ditch. They’d discovered a frozen-over car parked by the side of the road. The highway snow patrol phoned the police when the driver failed to come back after two days. When they went to the address listed on file, no one was home. The obvious conclusion was that he was still in the mountains somewhere and had never made it back to his car. They sent out a search team to cover the vicinity of the mountain. Nothing was found. The snow had covered all the tracks.

It wasn’t until the snow melted that another hiker stumbled upon Roux’s location. A fifty-year-old native of New Hampshire explained that his dog kept barking at this one ledge, and, curious, the man had walked over and seen an empty bottle of Dalmore and a man’s wallet on the edge of a cliff. He reported it to the park rangers, who matched the driver’s license to the man who owned the car. That was how they were able to use a rope to lower down the side of the mountain and spot the frozen body of Roux Roman, exactly where Ivy had left him.



* * *




“DID YOU HEAR about Roux?” Sylvia asked. Her honeycomb eyes were glistening with tears, the skin pink and swollen, casting her peaky face with a girlish innocence. “I can’t believe it—I can’t believe it.”

“Sib—breathe. Tell me what happened.”

Sylvia thrust the paper into her brother’s concerned face. They scanned it. Ivy allowed her expression to sink. “Oh no,” she said. “This is awful.”

Gideon went to his sister, who cried on his chest, her hands curled into two little fists tucked under her chin.

“I don’t understand. What was he doing hiking? He hates hiking. He hates leaving his house. I just can’t believe it.”

Gideon soothed Sylvia, motioning for Ivy to hand him the box of tissues on the side table. From the sharp pressure in her chest, Ivy knew she was suffering. But unlike the suffering of before whenever she witnessed the bond between the Speyer siblings, now her pain seemed beside the point. It was a matter of contrast. People could almost always adapt to chronic pain.