||Have || No || Shame || [Ro + Sam] ||

Lethe Turner

The slender white stick sat in a cup next to the sink.

Lethe couldn’t bring herself to stay in the same room as it, so she hovered just outside the door, passing back and forth up and down the hall. Jasper stood at the end, but she barely glanced at him and instead counted her footsteps. One—two—three—four and turn and one—two—three—four and she felt his fingers just brushing her long, fluttering hair before she turned again and was off.

The doctor had promised that it would only take ten minutes before one or two magical lines appeared on the screen. But, the seconds felt like hours, snailing by before her. She could feel his eyes concentrated on the ground in shame or anticipating, she couldn’t tell. Her heart was beating rapidly in her throat like the night she came from the Capitol. Physically and emotionally exhausted, feeling as though she carried his casket all the way home from the Capitol, she’d collapsed into Jasper’s arms and didn’t leave his bed for days. Their bed.

He’d been careful with her, stroking her hair gently and sleeping on the couch in the living room, awaiting the first sounds of her stirring to bring her breakfast and to sit, watching, to make sure she ate every last drop. Weeks spent eating minimally as she pressed her face to the television, watching her brother fight for his life and ultimately fail, had rendered her body feeble and thin. Her cheeks had sunk in and her ribs were sharp against her skin. However, several weeks under Jasper’s care had seen to that and he rubbed the feeling back into her prominent cheekbones until she began to feel like herself again…that is, physically.

Mentally, she was a whirlwind. A failure. The Turner had had a quiet funeral, quickly and cleanly, to ensure that Capitol cameras could not follow them, but Lethe had barely been able to bring herself to attend. She’d been a wisp, trailing behind her mother, holding her daughter’s hand. Eden was old enough to understand what had happened, but she didn’t cry until she saw her mother start to. Guilt seemed to be crashing down around her. She could not look her mother in the eye and when it was her turn to throw dirt over her brother’s casket, she stood there for a long time, holding the grainy dirt tightly in her sweaty palm, watching it weep through her fingers. I’ve killed my brother, she couldn’t help, but think.

Weeks came and went. Lethe began to get out of bed and took to visiting her brother’s grave habitually. She began to speak again—but softly lest she hear her brother’s voice resonate within her own. To his credit, Jasper was probably what held her together. He often rubbed her feet when she stumbled in from a long day standing before her brother’s tombstone and took to reading Eden her bedtime story while Lethe hovered in the doorway, watching her baby girl’s full lips smack together in a smile or laughter at her new father.

Her mother was a whole different story. Lethe still could not talk to her, avoiding every possible encounter with her as much as she could. The same for Jasmine, Erebus’s twin. Her mother often sat on the porch of their home in the Victor’s Village, across the way from Lethe’s home with Jasper, and when Lethe forced herself outside with Eden, to blow bubbles or to play a half-hearted game of hopscotch, she focused only on her mother’s swinging legs, drifting off the bench she sat upon. Some days, Lethe glanced at her own daughter and felt her stomach drop out from under her. Mrs. Turner had lost two children, both Lethe and Erebus, both in two different unreachable places. When would the same pain come for Lethe?

Perhaps that was part of them problem. When the fears came creeping for her in the middle of the night, dragging her out of her sleep, with screeching fingers down her face, with her little girl’s name imprinted in her mind, read upon a slip of paper, Jasper came to her bed. Her hunger for comfort had grown from his fingers in her hair to much more.

Now, she tapped the empty box against her leg and glanced at her watch before forcing her eyes up to Jasper.

“I think it’s been ten minutes.”

Her voice felt fragile and she was suddenly reminded of Saskia. Blind, little Saskia, unable to see what Razor and Lethe wished they couldn’t, had sounded like glass anytime she asked what unimaginable horror was before them. Lethe dug her fingers into the box, cardboard splintering, and swallowed hard.

Eden would be delighted, she knew. Her stomach was churning. That was how it all started. She knew what the symptoms were; she’d thrown up for the second time in a doctor’s office. This time, luckily, she didn’t have to watch Sundra Wie die upon television as she vomited. Her doctor had given her the box with the white stick—she’d wanted to do it at home—and now here she was. Eden would love a sibling. Yet, Jasper and Lethe?

The hallway buzzed with their standoff as she eyed him. There was no doubt that he loved Eden, even though she was not his. He’d proved that he was a good father where Lethe failed. Maybe she could do better this time. Maybe she could have a wanted child and love them just as much as she loved Eden. Maybe she’d be able to read Eden’s bedtime story.

Maybe she was replacing Erebus in her mind with a new green-eyed child to coo up at her and speak in his voice and send her flying back into another depression she wasn’t sure she was able to claw her way out of this time.

Lethe forced herself to meet Jasper’s eyes. It was time. She spoke firmly.

“Can you check?”