“And he’s clever,” Callie says. “Not forcing anything makes him seem like a nicer guy than he actually is. How’s the rest of it going? Are you getting him to trust you?”
“It’s been two days. ”
“I know that, Ivy. But we don’t have the luxury of endless time. Three months, that’s what you’ve got. The clock is already ticking. ”
Three months. I don’t know if it’s too long or not long enough. But it’s the amount of time I have to complete the steps in my father’s plan, the last one being to kill Bishop. President Lattimer’s death will follow, and Callie’s told me that plan is already in motion, cannot be slowed down or stopped. But Bishop has to die first. I don’t know all the details. My father thinks it’s safer if I only have pieces, in case I’m caught. But what I do know is that if I screw up, our plans will be ruined.
“So, are you doing what we told you, getting him to trust you?” Callie repeats.
“I guess so,” I say finally. “I mean, we’re talking. ” I think about the conversation we had last night. “I said something negative about his father, though. I probably shouldn’t have done that. ”
“Oh my God, Ivy,” Callie says, voice raised. “You are supposed to play nice. How many times did we go over this?”
“I don’t think he was mad. He didn’t seem upset by it. ”
Callie rolls her eyes. “Oh, yeah, I’m sure he doesn’t care at all that his brand-new wife is criticizing the man he wants to turn into when he grows up!”
“It wasn’t like that,” I say, my own voice rising. “I mean, maybe he’s acting. But it seems like he just wants to get to know me. ”
“Of course he’s acting,” Callie says, like I’m the dumbest person alive. “All he cares about is keeping his dad in power and you giving him a bunch of sons to continue the line. He’s not interested in you. ”
I shift away from her, fix my gaze on the far side of the pond. I know what she’s saying is true, but it doesn’t exactly feel true, at least not completely, not when I remember the way Bishop asked me about myself, like he really cared about the answers.
“Remember what we talked about? How they’ll try to muddle your thinking? Turn black to white and up to down? Try to make you believe he cares more about you than we do?”
I nod. I know she’s right. I know what the truth is; I know my family wouldn’t lead me astray and everything they ask me to do is for the good of us all. I have to be strong enough to remember their lessons. More than anything, I want to make them proud.
“Don’t let him fool you,” Callie says, and her voice is gentler now. “Don’t forget what they’re capable of. ” She pauses. “Remember what they did to Mom?”
I close my eyes. “Yes,” I say, the familiar anger flowing through my veins. I have no memory of my mother, only a few stories passed down from Callie—how she sang us to sleep at night, how her hair always smelled like lavender. Stories I’ve relived so often in my mind that now they are worn and threadbare. But for everything I don’t know about my mother, the one thing I’m sure of is that my life would have been different if she’d lived. My father quicker with a smile, less instructor and more parent. Callie less bitter and more joyful. All of us whole, instead of forever missing a vital piece. When President Lattimer killed my mother he did more than take her life. He took the lives we should have had as well.
“Keep your eyes on the goal, Ivy,” Callie says. “Don’t let your temper or your mouth get the best of you. You need to manipulate, not confront. That’s how you’ll get to him. ” She scoots closer to me, rests her hand on my back.
“Remember the dog?” she asks. I don’t bother nodding because I know she’s going to tell me the story anyway. “We’d walk to the market past that stupid, mangy dog Mrs. Paulson always had tied to her fence. And every day it would lunge at us and bark and go crazy. I told you a hundred times to ignore it, keep walking. I told you I’d figure out a way to handle that dog. But it made you so mad, that we had to be scared whenever we walked down the street. ” Callie removes her hand from my back and lays it on my arm. “Then one day you’d had enough, and you marched over there and swung your bag at it. ” Her voice sounds amused, but her eyes are serious. “And this is what you got in return. ” She rolls my forearm to the side, revealing the shiny, almost silvery scar tissue, traces her finger over the bite marks, the ripped and remade flesh. “All because you couldn’t bide your time. ” She lets go of my arm. “Who won that day, Ivy? You or the dog?”
I glare at her, hating her just a little bit. “The dog,” I finally say.
“But who won in the end?” she asks. The look in her eyes, a kind of wicked triumph, sends a sliver of unease down my spine.
“You did,” I whisper, remembering the morning, not long after I was bitten, when we walked to the market and the dog lay dead, his chain wrapped around his neck, his tongue black where it lolled out of his half-open mouth.
“Don’t bait him, Ivy,” she says, standing up. “Don’t ruin everything just to make a point. ” She brushes off the seat of her shorts with both hands. “We’re not in this to win a few battles. We’re in it to win the war. ”
Bishop returns home at five, exactly as he said he would. I didn’t bother making dinner because I wasn’t sure he’d be true to his word. He finds me lounging on one of the wicker couches on the screened porch, my bare legs hanging over the arm, feet dangling.
“Hi,” he says. “How was your day?” He’s got a small sack of groceries in one arm. There is a container of strawberries resting at the top.
“Boring,” I tell him. There’s a pause that goes on too long. “How was yours?”
He shrugs, turns to set the bag down on the kitchen table behind him before joining me on the porch. “Fine. Uneventful. ” He takes a seat on the sofa opposite me. “You’re too smart to sit around here all day staring at the walls,” he says.
“How do you know I’m smart?”
He just stares at me. In moments like this, it’s easy to see how he was born to be a leader. His is the kind of face that intimidates simply by existing, so handsome it’s almost scary. He has a strong jaw, with just the barest hint of his father’s cleft chin, high cheekbones, those clear green eyes under straight dark brows. But he doesn’t give the impression he’s affected by his own beauty. It’s impossible he’s unaware of his looks; I’m sure enough people have told him over the years. Or stopped and stared. It’s more that he seems unconcerned with how he looks, the image he sees in the mirror the last thing he’s worried about.
“Okay, so…yeah,” I say, shifting uncomfortably. “I agree. I need something to do. ” Most wives don’t work. It’s not forbidden, exactly, but it’s certainly not encouraged. If they’re lucky, babies start coming right away and that keeps them busy. A few work as teachers or train as nurses, set up small stands at the market if they can’t have children. But reproducing, keeping families healthy and happy, that’s what we’re really expected to do. My father always told stories of the way it was before the war, stories he’d heard from his own father. About women judges and doctors, women running for president, even. Not every woman did that, of course. Some still stayed home and raised their families. But it was their decision, not one made for them. Women had choices back then—who to marry, what to be, free to pick whatever path they wanted to travel. It seems like a distant dream to me.
“You could work in the hospital,” Bishop says. “Or one of the schools. They always need teachers, I know. ” I glance at him, surprised. He doesn’t seem fazed at all by the thought of my working, of trying to forge an identity separate from that of the wife of Bishop Lattimer. Is he as skillful at manipulation as Callie wants me to become?