I really have to stop sleeping through breakfast.

Today Bayan leaves me a muffin, and I pick at it, and then go down to the library. I find Nua inside, and he shows me some of his favorite books. We talk a little, but mostly read, and after a few minutes he stretches and says he’s going to the bathroom. I nod and keep reading.

I hear the door open a moment later, but I don’t look up until I hear someone storming down the aisle towards the back of the room, and then back to the front. Suddenly, Miss Lilly appears between the bookshelves.

I close my book and look at my mother-in-law, and she sighs. “Where’s Ava?”

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. I just shake my head.

“Go find her, please, Aber, and tell her to come see me.”

And with this, Miss Lilly is as gone as soon as she had arrived. She meets Nua outside the door, but doesn’t say anything to him, and he raises his eyebrows at me as he comes back in.

“She wants me to find Miss Ava,” I say. “Where is she?”

“Probably in her room,” says Nua, settling back in his chair. “Don’t call her Miss Ava, and don’t go in unless she says you can.”

I snort, thinking of my interaction with her the day before, but still trudge up the stairs to my wife’s bedroom. I raise my hand to knock, then hesitate. I hear voices from inside, and then a shriek of laughter. If I didn’t know better, I’d think it’s Ava.

It is, though. I hear her say something afterwards and then a low masculine voice responds. I don’t think either Nua nor I could make her laugh like that. I’m uncomfortable, knowing I’m about to walk in on something I shouldn’t. I knock.

Inside, they quiet. Then the low voice says something and Ava says, “Yeah,” in response, then calls, “Hold on.” She sounds breathless, and after a moment the door opens a crack and she looks out. “Oh.”

“Who is it?” says Keol’s voice from inside, and I fight the urge to cringe. Ava says, “Just…”

“Aber,” I supply when she trails off, trying to fend off anger. Who cares if she doesn’t pay attention to me? Let Keol have his fun and distract her from me. She smiles in response. It’s almost gentle. “Aber,” she repeats to him, then says it again to herself. “Aber.

“What?” she asks after a moment, opening the door a little wider, and I try to not look at her breasts, which are covered only by a slipping piece of fabric. “Your mother asked for you.”

She smiles again, nodding, and under her breath says, “She’s a bitch.”

She turns and goes inside, letting the door swing open, and grabs a sweater that’s hanging over the back of the couch. Keol’s laying spread-eagle on his back in the middle of the bed, and props himself up on his elbows to watch. He’s not wearing a shirt, just pants, and his rope-belt is gone. Then I see that it’s not; but tied around his ankle instead of his waist, and the other end is knotted fast around the bedpost. Ava sits on the edge of the bed to button the sweater, then trails her finger down his stomach. He grins at her. His hair is even more on edge than usual. Then they both look over at me, and she stands. “I’m getting the sense that this is more awkward than it really should be.”

She’s right, of course. She’s our wife, and she can have her fun with any of us. I should be used to the idea by now of her and Keol together, especially since she seems to only do it with him as if he’s her only husband. But I still feel heat rising to my cheeks as I try to not think about what I know they were just doing.

Ava laughs again slightly, going into the bedside table and pulling out a carton of cigarettes. She leans over Keol and he lights it for her, and after she exhales smoke she says, “But it seems more like a problem for you two, so I suppose I’ll leave you to it.”

With that she leaves the room, stopping to kiss me on the cheek on the way out, and I feel the spot where her lips touch my skin burn when Keol stares at me. I clear my throat once we’re alone, and he says, “What are you still doing here?”

I raise my hands in defense, thinking that he’s probably itching to storm out of here himself but unwilling to attempt to free himself with my eyes on him. He flops back down onto Ava’s bed, staring at the canopy as I turn and leave the room. I should leave the door open to be malicious because he can’t get up and close it, but I shut it softly behind me, shuddering once I’m alone in the hall. That woman confuses me so much.

Neither Ava nor her mother come down for lunch, but Bayan still doesn’t stay with us. I wonder what he does all day. Nua and I return to the library and stay there until dinner, where we’re greeted with both our wife and our mother-in-law when we go to the dining room.

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Keol is relaxing in his chair at Ava’s right hand, and the women are both standing, their hands braced on the table as they glare down the length of it at each other. But when Nua and I come in, Ava looks at us, and her eyes soften, and she sinks into her chair. Miss Lilly follows suit.

Bayan serves. Miss Lilly makes casual conversation with her daughter, who does not seem prone on answering. Ava has a job, I remember. It doesn’t seem like she works much. Keol actually answers some of the questions that she avoids, meanwhile helping himself to seconds from the turkey on the table. Miss Lilly doesn’t comment on any of this. Ava just pushes her food around her plate, leaning her head on her hand, until finally Miss Lilly asks, “What are you mad about, darling?”

“I don’t want him here, and I didn’t want him gone,” she answers.

I don’t understand this, but it seems that everyone else in the room does. I’d understand if she’s speaking of me as the one she doesn’t want here, but who is it that she didn’t want gone? Miss Lilly, however, does not seem perturbed. “Ava, we’ve discussed this.”

“We never really did,” she says shortly, and Miss Lilly sighs. “Not at the dinner table, dear.”

“Not at the dinner table, not while you’re reading or working, not at night or so early in the morning, never, is it? We’re never going to talk about it?”

Miss Lilly sighs. “Why now, Ava?”

“Because it’s my birthday,” she says, standing up once more, and I widen my eyes, and then look down at my plate. Miss Lilly just raises her eyebrows. “July 5th.”

“You forgot,” says her daughter.

“No,” says her mother calmly, standing as well. “I just don’t particularly have a mind to care.”

She leaves the room through the kitchen, and after a moment Bayan peeks out. Ava stays standing, staring after her, and I lick my lips. That was rude, even for Miss Lilly.

“Can we keep eating?” asks Keol after a moment, and Nua rolls his eyes. Ava glares at him, and then her eyes dart around at all of us; she exhales sharply in a quiet humorless laugh and reaches for a cigarette. I see Keol glare back at her. She doesn’t notice until she’s lit the thing and taken a drag from it, but when she looks back over at him she freezes for a moment.

He raises his eyebrows.

She exhales in frustration and taps it out on the ashtray next to her. “Why are you asking me?”

“I dunno,” says Keol, making a face at his plate. “Aren’t you supposed to be in charge of us?”

I stare at the turkey at the table, and no one speaks for a moment. Then Ava slams her hands on the table, her index finger starts tapping, and Nua swallows next to me, but doesn’t speak.

When I risk a glance over at her, she’s staring at Keol, who’s staring right back. She takes a deep breath, then grabs her lighter off the table and stalks out of the room. Another cigarette is lit and being inhaled before the door swings shut behind her.

The three of us are left alone, just like lunch, and after a minute Keol reaches over with his fork and pulls an asparagus off Ava’s plate. Nua grins slightly, and starts to eat. I glance towards the head of the table in slight fear for a second, where Miss Lilly’s plate sits going cold, and then tentatively pick up my fork and knife.

Neither woman comes back down for the half-hour we spend sitting around the table, although since neither of them are there to ring for Bayan no dessert comes. After Keol’s decided he’s had enough he stands up, stretches, and then wanders a little bit, Nua and I following him until he falls onto the big plush couch in the second floor living room.

“Well, then,” I mutter, and Nua grins at me, sitting down in an armchair. “How did you get her to put out the cigarette?”

Keol grins. “Told her a few days ago I hate it when she smokes.”

“And she listened?” I say incredulously. Keol laughs. “She’s not as bad as you think, Aberworth.”

I clench my fist around my thumb until the knuckle cracks and Nua grins at me. “Honestly. She can be lenient sometimes.”

“Won’t even let us leave the damn house without her,” I mutter, pushing myself deeper into the crook between the two cushions, and Keol laughs. He’s lounged across the couch across from me, taking it up all to himself, and says, “Because you’ve been here a week. Once you earn her favor-”

“You’re the prominent and we all know it,” snaps Nua. He rolls his eyes to me. “Keol thinks just because he has all the privileges we do, too.”

“You can go outside,” says Keol, and he shrugs. “Not without her permission. Aber can’t at all unless she’s with him.”

“How long have you been here?” I ask suddenly, and they speak at the same time. Nua says, “Ten months.” Keol says, “Two years.”

“Two years?” I ask quietly, and he shrugs. “Almost three, by now, I think. How do you think I got to be the favorite?”

Nua rolls his eyes, and his laugh is as humorless as Ava’s. “He wasn’t the favorite, until the favorite died. And then he was the only one for a few months, and then she got bored.”

“The favorite died?”

“Oh, that’s a story for a different time,” says Keol, stretching, and coughs a little. He catches my eye and laughs. “I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re thinking. I don’t like Ava enough to be jealous for her. There was simply an incident. We both married her at the same time and she had always liked him better anyway and so he was the prominent for a few months until…he wasn’t.”

“She just gets bored,” says Nua in slight contempt. “Got bored with Keol and set him as free as possible so she could play with me, and now the cycle’s going around again.”

“At least you’re not dead,” Keol reminds him, shooting another suavey grin at me before swaggering out of the room. Nua says something under his breath that sounds like, “Wish I was.”

“I’m off to bed, then,” he says louder so I can hear, and I stand up too. If he leaves without me I’d never be able to find my way back to the bedrooms. Nua glances over his shoulder at me as I follow him, and when he waits for me to catch up I say, “That’s why she has four diamonds.”

He tilts his head, then looks down at his finger. “On her ring, yeah. One for each of us.”

“Was she talking about me? At dinner?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” says Nua, not looking at me. “I don’t think she wants you here any more than you want to be here, but there are…things that she and her mother know that we don’t.”

I twist my mouth, and brush my teeth. Nua stays up a little bit reading, but I just roll away from the lamp and close my eyes, delving into nightmares again. In this one, Miss Lilly is after me and Keol, through a forest thick with thorns. He gets caught in her trap but Ava saves him. I want him to save me, I don’t want to be stuck in the dark woods with Miss Lilly, but in the end Ava is the one who pulls me out as well.