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“The regular factory workers weren’t supposed to touch any of it, of course. It was only for the fancy-pants boss-types and the politician’s team. But Mama managed to sneak one little cherry off the edge of the tray and pop it into her mouth without anybody noticing. She said it was the sweetest, most beautiful moment of her life.”
Cherry rubbed the back of her hand across her eyes and gave an oddly wet-sounding inhale through her nose before continuing. “She said that me being born was the only thing that had ever eclipsed the experience of eating that cherry. Her new most beautiful moment.” She laughed shakily. “Plus, my face was as round and as red as a cherry when I was born, so I’m sure that contributed to the name choice.”
She cleared her throat and blinked many times. Then she sighed and said, “If I’m talking too much, you just let me know, Silar. They used to call me Chatty Cherry at school. It won’t hurt my feelings if you tell me to shut my trap, I promise.”
It was good she knew how to set traps for vermin, though I pondered what this might have to do with her propensity to fill near-every moment of quiet with chatter. All this talk in that high, pretty voice was loud and strange and not exactly comforting, but…
I could not ever see myself telling her to stop.
At my lack of reply, she sent me a questioning look.
I cast about for an appropriate response. “They call me Silent Silar,” I told her at length.
A smile unfurled, slow as sunrise, as she took that in.
“Sounds like we could be a perfect fit, then,” she said. “Just like this hat!”
A perfect fit. Maybe this really would work out. Maybe, after the thirty days were up, I would not have scared her off and she would stay with me. She would really be my wife.
At least, that’s what I thought.
Until she broke all those thoughts apart and ground my brain to a halt with what she said next.
“So, was this your parents’ ranch, then?”
She gazed up at me innocently as I felt my eyes blaze hotter white, my entire frame bristling with tension. My parents’ ranch?
“I mean, since you’ve been here since childhood,” she explained, her brow now puckering at my expression. “You said this was your hat from when you were a kid, right? Were you born here?”
She came here without knowing this is a penal colony.
And perhaps even worse than that…
She married me without knowing that I’ve killed a man.
How could she not know? How could she not have been told? Was this because she’d come here so early, before the others?
Would she still have married me if she knew?
Questions pounded through me while hers hung unanswered in the air.
I have to tell her.
And I would. I knew I would. Just…
Maybe not quite yet.
I would use my thirty days to show her how calm, controlled, and decent I could be. To prove just how hard I’d work to take care of her. I’d show her who I was, besides a convicted murderer who apparently wanted to do unnaturally perverse things to her backside, that is. If she could learn to like me, or at the very least respect me, before I told her why I was here, then maybe she would stay…
I did not say any of this to her, of course. I simply shoved her bag at her, told her to “take this into the house,” and immediately stalked stiffly away to inspect the property’s fences. I retreated into the monotonous safety of physical labour, telling myself it was because I was going to work hard for my wife.
I ignored the fact that work – even the hardest, most tail-breaking work – was just so much easier than the truth.
11
CHERRY
My face felt hot and my stomach hollow as I stumbled towards the house, clutching my bag to my chest. He’s your husband, I told myself fiercely, he doesn’t have to be your friend.
