Last time on Wither, Jenna finishes up her withering.

We are very nearly done. There are three chapters to go, but this chapter is as long as the next two put together.

In the month before my escape, I spend all of my time outside. There’s still some snow on the ground, and I wander the orange groves. I play mini-golf alone. And bit by bit, the month passes by.

That’s right, we just skipped over the whole month. Why the book had her wait a month before leaving is beyond me. Before I was assuming the time thing was related to the author needing to blow through Cecily’s pregnancy, but what the fuck is going on now?

Anyway, now it’s the day she’s planning to escape on. Cecily comes to see her.

“I really didn’t think she was going to die,” she blurts out. “I thought she had another year, and by then there’d be an antidote, and . . .” She trails off. I lie on my back and watch her breath and mine fade into the cold air.
“Cecily,” I say. “There is no antidote. Get that through your head.”

It’s the last day she’ll ever see Cecily, and Rhine needs to get in as much abuse as possible.

Cecily isn’t talking about her firm belief in the antidote. She’s talking about how she can’t believe Jenna’s dead. People express disbelief about the fact someone can die all the time. In fact, I’m having a hard time thinking of when I have thought someone would die, even under situations were it was far more obvious, and it had nothing to do with being under the impression people were immortal. I’m unable to drop the image of Rhine angrily telling me that people die, get it through your head, what did you really think they’d discover some magic cure?

But back to this terrible book, Cecily tells Rhine not to be pro-naturalist, which as a term is starting to piss me off in the same way pro-life does. Science is nature, nature is science. It’s not naturalist to believe it’s impossible to go back to the natural way humans used to function. They’re pro-suicidalists who happen to be too stupid to look up “natural” in a dictionary.

Cecily says evil mad scientist is smart and has an idea.

a theory that the problem is that the first generations were conceived artificially. So if a baby is born naturally, that baby can be fixed through”—she pauses, trying to remember the words, then she says them carefully, like she might break them—“external intervention.”

One of the various problems with this book is that the author has fucked up the setting in every conceivable way, then compounded her screwup by making a character who we’re supposed to assume is lying all the time.

Is this true? Who the fuck knows. As I mentioned, it actually is plausible that being born naturally might correct whatever’s gone wrong with the gametes, but connecting this to medical treatment after birth makes no sense. There’s also the fact that, as I brought up on, what, chapter two? that the first generations aren’t hit by the problem, so if artificial conception produces superbabies, the solution is just more artificial conception.

Also, bear in mind this is a completely separate from the idea of a cure, which is meant to fix the current, second-gen people. Is that meant to be a sign he’s given up on saving his son and, in the process, the wives? Is he lying to Cecily about why he’s taking the baby? Does the book not even realize this is a contradiction, given it pales before the baseline fucking idiocy of this being a genetic disorder that isn’t found in the genes and also is a virus?

I laugh cruelly. I don’t tell Cecily that my parents devoted their lives to finding an antidote, and that I have a hard time believing Vaughn could possibly have the same motives that they had. I don’t tell her about Rose’s body in the basement, and that Jenna is probably down there too, locked up in a freezer or dissected into unrecognizable pieces.

“I don’t tell her anything, and then I hate her for not knowing these things.”

Cecily insists he’ll find a cure. Rhine understands that she believes it because Her own son’s life depends on Vaughn’s imaginary antidote because now that she’s produced a male child, all that matters is the boy. The idea Cecily might be invested in it because she doesn’t want to die, or doesn’t want Rhine to die, or doesn’t want the other kids she knew back at the orphanage to die – nope, the boychild. The narration earlier was speculating that evil mad scientist would only care about the grandchild if it was a boy, and I assumed this was supposed to be a sign he was a bad person, but no, it’s just because the book itself only cares if it’s a boy. It’s a good thing Rhine’s twin is male or she’d have no motivation to leave at all.

It turns out Rhine was being too charitable and stupid Cecily hasn’t realized this yet, because indeed, her next comment is telling Rhine not to go so she’ll get the cure. Dumb Cecily, no one cares about girls! I suppose this is a sign of how egotistical and bratty she is, refusing to realize XX chromosomes like her are a sign of worthlessness.

“I know you’re planning to run away. Don’t think I don’t know.”
“What?” I say, sitting up.
She grabs my hand in both of hers and leans closer to me in earnest. “I know all about you and that attendant. I saw him kiss you.”

Hey, remember when Rhine was insisting Cecily was evil and she wanted nothing to do with her despite not having any reason to? Now we’re seeing why that is. Even thought it makes no sense.

Why the fuck do people write like this? Do they think it’s how foreshadowing works? Are they pathologically incapable of having the character not be right for a chapter, or is it that they’re incapable of not having the narration bash the character they’ve decided is bad and they need the main character to hammer it in?

But yeah, so it’s Cecily’s fault.

“He was distracting you from your duties as a wife. I thought that once he was gone, you’d realize what a good husband Linden is. You would see things more clearly. And you have, haven’t you? You’ve been having fun at those parties?”
It hurts to breathe, suddenly. “You’re the one who told Housemaster Vaughn.”
“I did it to help you,” she insists, squeezing my hand. “He and I were only looking out for your best interests. That’s why Housemaster Vaughn had the attendant reassigned to another part of the mansion.”

So, let’s consider this.

Cecily really does believe being here is good. Rhine wouldn’t tell her about her life before, because Rhine doesn’t tell Cecily things. So from Cecily’s point of view, it isn’t that Rhine will never like the rapist and always means to escape (…and Rhine does actually like the rapist, anyway) it’s that Rhine is trying to be a good wife but she’s starting to crush on an attendant when she’s already married. And in this light, Rhine’s desire to escape looks like a desire to run off with the hot servant boy.

Under the circumstances, everyone’s being really restrained about how Rhine is trying to cheat on her husband. If you start making out with the pool boy and your husband fires the kid, that’s actually pretty reasonable.

Obviously in actual reality the rapist is just someone who bought her and stuck a ring on her finger, but the book has been spending all its time insisting that it’s a legit marriage and he’s her husband. And it’s made it clear that Cecily is even more deluded about relationships than the book itself is.

Rhine starts to flip out. Cecily says she’s not as stupid as they think, she knows they were keeping secrets.

I know she was helping you to see that attendant. And that’s no good. Don’t you see? Linden loves you, and you love him! He’s good to us, and Housemaster Vaughn is going to find the antidote and we’ll be here for a long, long time.”

It does not, and by appearances will never, occur to Rhine that any of this could have been avoided by not lying to Cecily constantly. She competed with Cecily for the rapist’s attention as if she actually liked him. The book hasn’t been able to shut up about how jealous Cecily is of the favoritism Rhine’s shown – in light of this, it’s really hard to believe Cecily would have objected that much to Rhine leaving and removing herself from the competition if Rhine had just made it clear she had a reason (be it because the rapist is a kidnapping murdering rapist, that she misses her brother, or just that her own life didn’t suck as much as Cecily’s did). Rhine was outwardly acting exactly like someone who was just making a lot of bad decisions.

So Rhine starts screaming at Cecily that she, personally, killed Jenna.

He was looking for a reason to do her in, and you gave it to him. And Gabriel is stuck alone in that . . . awful basement, and it’s all your fault.”

Not the fault of the person who did it. The fault of the person who had no intention or even a way of knowing it as a possibility. (Bonus, Gabriel working down there is exactly as important if not more than the fact Jenna was murdered.)

The reason Rhine is so confident the guy is evil is because she saw Rose’s body. This does not make sense, but even if we accept it does, Cecily was never told about that or any of the various other proofs that let Rhine come to this conclusion. Yet it’s Cecily’s fault for not just knowing it anyway.

Cecily tries to say that’s not true, it was the virus. The book doesn’t even try to argue she secretly suspected and should have known better. Cecily is the crass little slut. Why should you need another reason to throw all the blame on her?

“Jenna was only nineteen,” I say. “She was dead in a week. Yet Rose was alive for months. If your Housemaster Vaughn is such a brilliant doctor, explain to me why she was gone so quickly on his watch.”
“E-every case is different,” she stammers. And then she says, “Wait! Where are you going?” because I can no longer look at her

This is not Rhine being upset by the fact Cecily didn’t realize. It’s not even her being upset by the fact she’s denying it. It’s her hating Cecily because she personally is the only one to blame for everything that happened.

See, being innocent about the fact crying girls aren’t there willingly or fucking thirteen year olds is wrong is a sign you’re a great person. Being innocent about the fact someone you had no way of knowing was bad was bad…

I push her off of me so hard she falls into a snowbank.
“You’re just like him!” I say. “You’re a monster just like him, and your baby is going to grow up to be a monster too! But you won’t even get to see him grow up, because in six years you’ll be dead. You’ll be dead and Linden will be dead, and Bowen will be Housemaster Vaughn’s new toy.”

This is not Rhine losing her temper an being irrational. She says Cecily denies it But she understands that I’m right. This sentence is not after the initial bit about Jenna dying. It’s after saying Cecily is a monster.

Rhine tells us she can how much Cecily regrets what she’s done, but she runs off before I can lose control and do something awful to her. Because Cecily is a monster. Even if she couldn’t possibly have known. Even if she never intended that. Even if she’s devastated to learn the truth. She’s a monster just like the actual murderer and Rhine is showing how wonderful and kind she is by not brutalizing Cecily as Cecily deserves.

But it’s this fucking book. So it gets worse.

My last day in Linden’s mansion. Or maybe it’s Vaughn’s mansion. He’s the one who made it what it is, and Linden is just a pawn like his brides. It would be easier if I could maintain my original hatred for Linden, to escape his cruel tyranny without ever looking back. But I know in my heart he isn’t an awful person, and the very least I can do is say good-bye to him.

…

Later, the rapist asks why Cecily didn’t come down to dinner, and asks again if Rhine thinks she’s been acting oddly and I say she’s doing as well as can be expected, under the circumstances. The book informs us that the rapist doesn’t understand why they’re grieving over Jenna, so this is a good excuse.

Linden hardly knew Jenna, and I no longer think Vaughn captured three brides for his son’s benefit. I think he just wanted an extra body for his antidote. Jenna was the disposable one. Cecily is the baby factory. And I was supposed to be the apple of his eye.

The rapist picked them out of more than a dozen girls. Vaughn didn’t capture three, and he didn’t pick any. The rapist went to whoever he wanted, and he wanted those three. But that was wrong, so obviously it wasn’t really the rapist who did it. Perhaps before we finish the book we’ll find some way it was really Cecily’s fault.

Rhine decides to branch out in awfulness.

I call Deirdre to draw one of her chamomile baths for me. She’s somber, though. After Jenna’s death, Adair was sold off in an auction. So I’m not the only one who has lost a friend.
…
She sits on the edge of the bathtub and tries to smile a little. But the overall feeling of sadness on the wives’ floor has even spread to her.

She’s not sad because her friend is gone. She’s sad because Rhine’s so special people are sad when she’s sad, of course. Because the world revolves around Rhine.

“You aren’t like the others, are you?”

So, so special.

She explains that everyone’s been happier since Rhine came here, mostly the rapist since he’s the most important. Luckily, Rhine’s general disregard for others manages to outweigh the book’s insistence the rapist is a woobie. She feels bad she’ll be leaving him, but whatever. Besides, Cecily’s more suited.

Cecily is so devoted to him that she would rat out Jenna and me to Vaughn

No. Cecily is so devoted to you that she would go behind his back to his father to try to cover it up before he found out.

That’s the really sick part of this. Cecily could have used this to get rid of her competition. I don’t think Cecily’s characterization is intended at all, it’s just happening this way because the author can’t let anything bad happen to her little sue so other characters are warped around that, and because the author is the sort of petty monster she accuses Cecily of being, it doesn’t occur to her to even consider that this leaves her punishing characters who haven’t actually done such terrible things – they opposed the only person in the world who matters, of course they’re evil. Hell, for all I know the author also thinks Cecily’s terrible for conspiring to cover things up and keep Rhine’s secret from the rapist, because since when has this book had any sane morality?

they are both so painfully oblivious, that maybe they’ll be good for each other.

Rhine does not go on to consider that if the rapist’s obliviousness can be used to excuse the horrible things he’s done, Cecily’s should as well. Instead, she claims she’s not a good wife for the rapist: I’m full of atlases and maps. which would be a better argument if the book hadn’t repeatedly told us that she didn’t bother learning about the world and just liked the pretty pictures, and that it was her brother and her other male love interest that actually looked at those books.

But still, she wants to say goodbye to the rapist, who unlike Cecily isn’t a monster and isn’t to blame for anything. So she gets all prettied up and calls him and says she wants to see that veranda Rose mentioned ages ago.

The verandah is a simple porch with a love seat and wicker chairs that face the orange groves. Linden dusts away the snow, and we sit on the love seat together. The snow falls around us

…Wikipedia?

A veranda or verandah is a roofed opened gallery or porch…The word “verandah” is a malformation of the original Sanskrit word that somewhat survives in Bengali. The word is a culmination of two words: “Vahir”( “?????” /Outside) and “Awndar” (“?????” /inside a room). It means something that is considered outside but situated inside a room (or covered area)

It’s impressive how dedicated the author is to fucking up everything, down to the smallest of details.

Rhine advises the rapist that it’s okay to miss Rose and he shouldn’t try to find her in someone else, because he never will.

He smiles at me, and for a moment I see the glint of gold in his teeth. When I first met him, thought they were a symbol of power and status. But they are just scars, the result of a fragile little boy whose teeth succumbed to an infection. He’s not menacing at all.

Yes, I’m sure the rapist’s comments about how Jenna didn’t seem to like him had nothing to do with his father viewing her as disposable, just as the fact his teeth are full of gold while kids starve in the streets has nothing to do at all with his power and status. Rich white men are exactly the same as everyone else.

“I still don’t know where you came from,” he says. “Some days it’s like you just fell from the sky.”
“Some days I feel like I did,” I say.

It’s interesting to consider that Rhine has spent the book lying about this and other things, always to spare people and protect their feelings. The only time she’s behaved differently is earlier, when she told Cecily the truth about the one thing that would hurt her most and that knowing wouldn’t do any good.

Rhine then says she hopes that he’ll die peacefully and happily, without missing her. She does not rescind her hope that Cecily spends the next six years of her own life feeling like she’s being slowly murdered until finally she dies.

I hope Vaughn is not as heartless as I think, and that he’ll commit his son’s body to ashes unmarred, whole

This is the old fundy trick of insisting everyone Just Knows what proper morality is and only deviate because they’re deliberately evil.

I’ve never understood the idea making an exception is somehow a virtue – to me, if you do horrible things in the name of the greater good, but make sure those close to you are spared while you tear other people and their families apart, you’re a greater monster. But I’ve never been much for ingroup loyalty, which this is tapping into.

She thinks about going home.

And with Gabriel, maybe. I’ll try to teach him as much as I can about the world, so he’s able to find a job

He’s already employable as a servant, and it’s not clear what skills she has to teach – surely he can already answer phones and move boxes. The economy in general makes no sense here, all the jobs we see are unskilled labor yet the book insists most people aren’t qualified for them.

She wants him to have a job because she’ll be dead and he’ll need something to do. As she thinks about such cheery topics, she gets tears in her eyes and the rapist notices, once again demonstrating how he’s obviously lying about somehow not noticing the girls were unwilling kidnapping victims and not happy brides.

He’s looking at me the way he does when he asks for my thoughts on his building designs. Like he wants to cast himself into my mind. He wants to understand, and be understood.

No, he doesn’t.

Rhine wonders again about what he’d be like if things were different and less horribly dystopic. This time, she realizes this is stupid, because they’re only together because of the horrible dystopic kidnapping thing.

And he wouldn’t be trapped in this mansion.

For the last time, he’s not trapped.

She makes excuses about how she’s just thinking about his pretty houses, and he says he’ll show her some later.

“It’s nice to see the changes people make, the pets and swing sets and evidence of life.

Who the fuck is buying these houses? Who makes swing sets when they’ll be dead before their kid is old enough to use them? Who has pets, we haven’t had a single reference to anyone actually owning a pet and if people are so desperate they’d probably steal or kill and eat pets left out in the yard.

They say goodnight and Rhine thinks about how she and the rapist will never see each other again…

The door to Cecily’s bedroom is ajar, and I see her on the rocker in her bedroom. She’s got her nightgown open and she’s offering her bare breast to Bowen, but he’s thrashing and whining. “Please, please take it,” she’s sobbing in a hushed tone. But he won’t. Vaughn was lying about there being a wet nurse. I saw him giving Bowen a bottle, and once a baby has the sweet taste of formula, it never returns to the breast. This is something I remember my parents telling me, when they worked in the lab. But Cecily has no idea. Vaughn is taking her son away slowly, beginning to control him the way he controls his own son. Vaughn wants Cecily to think her own child doesn’t love her.
I stand in the hallway for a long time, watching her.

Even if her insistence that Cecily killed Jenna was a valid excuse, you can see here that she didn’t just find this out. Rhine’s known this for some time and didn’t tell her because I guess Rhine also thought it was funny to watch Cecily slowly break down over the idea her kid didn’t love her. But hey, who cares, Cecily’s a monster so she deserves it.

It’s also complete nonsense. Breastmilk tastes better (and literally sweeter) than formula, as well as being significantly better for the kid. If he’s concerned for the kid’s wellbeing, he’d have hired a wet nurse and just kept the baby with her.

But hey, thanks for reinforcing the myth that if you give your baby any formula it’ll stop nursing! Because god knows people need to be more confused and worried about this subject.

I remember the day she tumbled from the diving board, and we swam through the tropics and reached for imaginary starfish. That’s my best memory of her, and it’s an illusion.

Not by any stretch of imagination can the world illusion be stretched to mean that, but sure, shit on Cecily more.

Eventually I walk away, as quietly as I came, and leave her to the life she was so eager to have.

To remind everyone, that is Cecily crying because her baby won’t nurse and she thinks it hates her. But it’s okay, Rhine says that eventually she’ll probably stop hating Cecily. Not in time to do any good for Cecily, but she’s just so nice like that.

But when I look at her, all I see is Jenna’s cold body in the basement, under a sheet and awaiting the knife. And that is Cecily’s fault. And I do not forgive her.

She does not say she hates the person who actually killed her.

Finally, she goes into Jenna’s room. She doesn’t consider if this is what Jenna would have wanted her legacy to be, hurting Cecily in every way available to Rhine. Rhine instead thinks Jenna would tell her that she needs to hurry and escape. Because who else matters?

Rhine also calmly considers that Jenna may be replaced with some other girl. She doesn’t care, but then, she never really did.

And she leaves.

Would that this were the final chapter, but as I said, still two more to go.