Nua is wrapped up in his bed still asleep when Bayan wakes me up the next morning with breakfast, which means that Ava is alone.  And I know that she asked to be, but I really don’t think that she should be.  I wonder if she’s showered, if she’s even taken her makeup off.  I wonder if she’s seen Keol since he died. 

I eat slowly, lost in thought, and then go into the bathroom and brush my teeth.  I try the handle that leads to her room.  It turns, and I look inside.  She’s sitting cross-legged on the bed.  Bayan has left a tray with waffles and syrup as well as her yogurt and granola but it’s just sitting on her bedside table, untouched.  She doesn’t look at me when I knock, just keeps staring out at nothing, but nods.

I take that as an okay to come in, and sit next to her on the bed.  Her fingers are drumming on a beer can, and her nails make clicky noises on it.  She raises one hand to brush her hair away, and I see that her fingers are shaking.  

“How long has it been since you smoked?” I ask quietly, and she manages a small smile.  There are dark circles under her eyes.  “Two weeks, four days, and twenty-two hours.”

“Oh.”

“He hid it in my pocket,” she says hoarsely, looking over at her ransacked closet.  “He took my lighter so I’d stop and told me he put it in a place I’d never look.  He gave it back to me when I thought he’d had it all along.”

“He’s a clever one,” I murmur, and she lets out a long, ragged sigh.  “Yeah.”

We sit in silence for a moment.  I’ve never seen her like this, and I remember her at Keol’s side for days at a time as he got worse.  I wonder if she regrets never being nice to him when he could actually comprehend it.  She drums her fingers on her beer can again, and when I look at her nails I see a small white thing clamped around the tip of her finger.  She looks down at it too, and says softly, “Vitals scanner.”

“For you?”

“They’re making me wear it,” she says, taking another sip of her beer, and then finishes it.  “It’s not gonna do anything, it’s just gonna tell them when I’m about to die too.”

“You should take your meds,” I say softly, and she scoffs, rolling her eyes, and tosses her empty beer can to the side.  “What do you want, Aber?”

I sit there for a moment.  She doesn’t look at me, just stares straight ahead, poking the thing on her finger.  Finally I say, “Your mother told me he suggested building the flower garden.”

Her eyes well with tears, and she blinks them away and nods.  

“For your first prominent,” I say quietly, and she shrugs, looking down at the thing on her finger.

“And for Penny.”

She looks up again, still not at me, and then I touch her knee gently.  “Ava, are you sick?”

She doesn’t answer, but after a moment takes a tissue from the bed next to her and holds it to her mouth as she coughs.  When she tosses it on the bed in front of us a moment later, it’s covered in blood, and she exhales, her lips pursed.  I can sense her thinking, “Does that answer your question?”

I swallow.  “Did you get Keol sick?”

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She laughs humorlessly, not looking at me.  “Probably.”

I nod, looking away, and she does too, looking over to the window.  “And you’re wondering why it was just him.  Why my mother isn’t sick, why Nua or Bayan aren’t sick.  What did I have with Keol that I didn’t have with them?  What did I have with Keol that I have with you?”

“I’m not worried,” I say quietly, and finally she looks at me.  “Maybe you should be.”

“You’re not killing us,” I murmur, and she laughs again.  “Things can pass like that.”

“I know,” I say quietly, thinking suddenly of a boy in the shelter who had a disease given to him by his wife.  I shake the thought away.  The symptoms weren’t the same.  “But it’s not your fault.”

“He drowned,” she says suddenly.  “Owen.”

“Your prominent?”

“I knew him before we married,” she whispers, staring at the far wall.  “We were friends growing up.  And we always thought we would get married one day, I always said I would marry him so he didn’t have to marry someone he didn’t want to.”

“And you did.”

“My mother was against it,” she said quietly.  “She didn’t like him.  She only would let me if I married someone else along with him.”

“Keol.”

“She picked out Keol for me.  And I married Owen and Keol on the same day and then afterwards my mother pulled Owen to the side and said that if he didn’t do what he was supposed to she would kill him because she never wanted him for me in the first place.”

“Did she…”  I trail off, and Ava shakes her head.  “He did himself.”

I open my mouth, then close it.  Ava shakes her head again, her eyes filling with tears.  “He loved me, but he didn’t…he didn’t want to have a child with me.  He never wanted to be a husband, even to me.  And he knew that I took him so that he wouldn’t go to someone else, but…he just couldn’t.  He wrapped bags around himself and he filled them with rocks and he jumped into the pool.”

She ends with a shuddering breath, and then closes her eyes.  A tear trickles down her pale cheek, and she whispers, “I wouldn’t’ve forced him.  I just wanted him to be happy.”

“It’s not your fault,” I say quietly, and she shakes her head, opening her eyes but looking away from me.  “I could’ve done more.  I could’ve protected him from my mother.”

“And that’s why you feel you have to protect us.”

“I do have to protect you,” she says quietly.  “If my mother had her way Nua wouldn’t be alive right now and I’d have six more husbands and more children than I could count.  I don’t want any of that and neither do any of you so I have to stand up to her.  But none of that matters anyway, because Keol’s dead.”

Her voice cracks and she twists her fingers so much that I can’t figure out which one is which.  I shake my head.  “But we’re still here.”

“I didn’t get pregnant from Keol,” she whispers.  “I never touched Owen.  I never touched Nua.  I didn’t get pregnant from you.  Maybe I can’t get pregnant.”

“Maybe Keol couldn’t.”

“Maybe I can’t get pregnant,” she says again.  “And I’ll just have to keep trying and trying and everyone will keep dying and dying and it’s all my fault.”

“You can’t control that,” I say as she crumples forward, burying her face in her hands.  She presses her forehead into the comforter, and I can see the bones of her spine in her curved back through her thin dressing gown.  I stroke her hair gently.  “You can’t control that, Ava.  It’s not your fault Owen died, it’s not your fault Keol died, it’s not your fault Nua or I are here, it’s not your fault you’re not pregnant.  You can’t keep blaming yourself.”

“I can get you Abigala,” she murmurs suddenly, and I pull my hand away as if I were burned.  “What?”

“I think I can get you Abigala,” she says again, her voice muffled into the comforter.  “Do you want to see her?”

“Ava,” I say quietly, not finishing my thought.  She coughs weakly, and I can’t tell if any blood comes out.  Her brain seems so scattered right now.  She can’t concentrate on one thing, she’s so wracked with grief and guilt.  I can’t ask for something for myself right now.  “Don’t worry about Abigala.”

“I will,” she says quietly, her voice becoming slightly slurred.  She rolls over, then, so she’s lying on her side, curled in a ball, with her feet near her pillows.  “I’ll worry about Abigala, because I’ll worry about you.  I hope she’s good.”

“Me, too,” I say quietly, stroking her hair again.  Oh, God, I hope Abigala is good.  

“I hope she’s good,” Ava murmurs again.  “She’s like you.  I don’t see why she wouldn’t be.”

Ava looks exhausted, veins and dark circles under her eyes flashing against her pale skin.  Her eyes close and she takes another ragged breath.  “Penny’s better than me, though.”

“I doubt it,” I murmur, lying down across from her with my fingers still running through her hair.  I’m reminded of the time in the car when Keol lay with his head in Ava’s lap and she stroked him.  I thought it possessive, pet-like at the time, but it was right after the protest we got caught in, and Keol was lying with his eyes shut as if he wanted to block it out.  She might have been comforting him.  

After a while she’s asleep again, but coughs slightly in her rest still.  Her body is almost completely motionless otherwise, and if I didn’t feel her breaths moving the mattress, under my hand, I might have thought she was dead.