I have been stirring the pot, but now I collect my henley fromthe back of a chair. Using twine, we work together to tie strips that will remain white up and down the arms while leaving the body of the shirt to become completely blue. Meer is meticulous, measuring the distance between each piece of twine. “Is symmetry important to you?” he asks. “I have two inches between each.”
“Not at all.”
“It’s important to my mother,” says Meer.
“Symmetry is calming and centering,” says June. “It gives us a sense of balance. You’ll find Hidden Beach is symmetrical—four towers. And it has many symmetries within it. They contain and balance the chaos that lives in your father. That’s why we built it.”
I lower my henley into the vat of dye. Meer comes to look over my shoulder. “When this dries—I mean, when you wear it—you’ll look like one of us,” he says.
It’s true. I have come deep into Hidden Beach already, almost without realizing it.
I haven’t eaten or unpacked. I haven’t toured the castle or slept a night here. But my arms are indigo, up to my elbows. Like Meer’s. Like June’s. Like Brock’s. My henley will dry into the same family of blues as theirs, all born of the same pot.
My head begins to spin, the walls close in, and I pass out.
16
I open myeyes to find myself lying on a soft couch covered in worn velvet. I’m in a small room adjacent to the kitchen, a kind of breakfast nook. A round table is surrounded by built-in benches.A cutting board holds what looks like home-baked bread, partly sliced and gone gray with mold in the summer humidity.
June touches my forehead with a blue hand. Then she touches behind my ears, briefly. “You okay?”
“I think so.”
“I’ll make you a tincture.” Above me on the couch is one of Kingsley’s paintings. June notices me staring at it. “It’s calledCliffside Gothic,” she tells me. “Don’t let it depress you.”
The painting looms over the room, framed in black wood.
—
Cliffside Gothicshowsa family of five:
a man, a woman, and three teenage girls.
Together, they stand at the edge of a cliff.
The wind is gusting, catching clothes and hair.
The girls are white and blond, all looking like
old money and lilacs, their
jaws strong and their
figures willowy.
They have serious eyes and are
dressed in white cotton.
They’re in front of their parents with their feet at the edge of the cliff, so close that if any one of them takes a step, she will plummet.
Look a little closer, and you notice that while two of them wear dainty ballet flats,
the eldest girl is
barefoot.
Her feet are black with
