Maplecroft by Cherie Priest

work with her scientific processes. I would conduct those same processes upstairs, then, and report in such a fashion as to please her.
    “I’m very sorry, I didn’t intend any offense or concern, it’s only that in those last days, before their deaths, I had seen little of Abigail and less of your father—but . . . but when I crossed their paths, I . . . I could only fear for their constitutions. Theyseemed terribly sick, if you don’t mind my suggesting it.” He was speaking too fast again, my stammers feeding his stammers, spiraling us into social worry and sensitive concerns.
    “No, please. No offense taken. It’s only that you’ve caught me by surprise. You’d think such a common subject of gossip would rear its head more often in this parlor, but”—and I paused to cough, not quite so hard, with not quite so much mucus—“our visitors are few and far between. Please, could you explain what you mean? We were all feeling . . . strange. Back in those dark days,” I added. I might have concluded, “Before they became darker still,” but that crept too close to the secret Lizzie and I hold close, so I did not utter it.
    “You must understand, I cannot divulge too much of another patient’s condition,” he said by way of retreat.
    “Naturally.” I nodded, allowing him to withdraw as far as he felt he needed. “But share what you can, and I’ll see if I can help.”
    He fidgeted with my handkerchief, and then it occurred to him to return it. As he did so, he said, “There’s a faraway look to him, as if he’s not quite present. A vacant appearance, combined with a certain . . . slowness of his motion. As if his motor skills are deteriorating, but he hasn’t noticed, or doesn’t care. I watched him . . . ,” he said, his own gaze becoming far away, but he was looking for some way to explain himself. Hunting for the right words. “I watched him, and he moved clumsily, and at such a tedious pace. All the while, his head was cocked toward the ocean, like a child holding a shell to his ear. But there were no shells,” he said, coming back to the moment. To me. “Nothing beyond him but the water.”
    I considered this, and recalled with some displeasure theweeks leading up to my father’s and stepmother’s deaths. What the doctor described was not dissimilar from the changes that had overtaken them. “My father and Mrs. Borden had fallen ill, that’s true,” I said carefully. “We wondered about it ourselves, my sister and I—we worried that we might come down with the same affliction. It was a source of tension between us, toward the end.”
    Eagerly, if unhappily, he leaned forward. “So you know the changes I’m referring to? The blank eyes, the paleness, the doughy flesh?”
    “Indeed, though at the time we would not have put it that way. It came upon us gradually, you know; and by the time we noticed something was amiss, it was all that we could see. And all we could do was wonder how we’d successfully ignored it up to that point.” The words were tumbling out. I wanted to rein them in, but I nattered onward, haltingly, stopping myself when I feared I might go too far.
    “Truly, and often—I have thought the same thing.”
    “At first we thought it might be a problem with the family diet. But the family was also . . . in distress over other matters. There were arguments, as I’m sure you know. The whole neighborhood must’ve heard them. So after a while, Lizzie and I took up residence in a separate part of the house. We had our own apartment, with its own washing room and kitchen, so we saw our parents less and less. Virtually never, for four people who lived in the same home. From then on, my condition—and Lizzie’s—improved . . . even as our parents’ worsened.”
    “You separated yourselves. Separate meals, separate living quarters, and that’s when you recovered?”
    “Insofar as I ever recovered, I’m afraid.” I sighed. “Maybe Iconsumed