Wonder Show by Hannah Barnaby Read Free Book Online

on the eve of your wedding, darling. What would your mother say?”
    Just then Caroline began to convulse again, worse than before. Her back arched, her limbs flailed as if they were trying to detach themselves from her body, and her eyes rolled back in her head.
    “She’s sick!” Portia cried. “She’s not behaving. Look at her!”
    “I can see what she’s doing,” Mister said, sneering. “And that isn’t all I see.” He bent down and reached under the bed. His hand came back holding a brown glass bottle. The label had a red bar at the top with a skull and crossbones.
    Look, look. The voices hissed and crackled. Look what you’ve done.
    “I see someone found Mother’s medicine.” Still holding the bottle, he leaned over Caroline’s thrashing body and murmured, “Naughty girl.”
    Portia tried to throw herself between them, but Mister grabbed her arm and tossed her to the other side of the room, where Delilah was huddled in the corner, watching Caroline and Mister with huge, unblinking eyes. They stayed there, waiting, watching, as Caroline’s back arched and arms and legs grew quiet, as her rasping breath slowed, and then stopped.
    “No,” Portia pleaded, “no, no! Come back!”
    This time Mister did not stop her. She pushed at Caroline’s chest where she thought the heart might be, hit it with her fist, shook Caroline’s body with all her strength.
    But it was not enough.
    “I suppose I knew this would happen,” Mister said. “She wasn’t ready to leave her family, and they weren’t ready to take her back. For my part, I wasn’t ready to give up their money. Our marriage might have been just the thing for everyone.” He turned and, feigning sadness, said, “Alas, our Caroline took matters into her own hands.”
    Then he grinned and said, “Ah, well. A funeral’s just as good as a wedding.”
     
    Portia’s skin felt like fire. She wanted to kill this man, to see him suffer, burn, bleed to death, anything. He was the one who should have died. Not Caroline.
    It’s all your fault, the voices said. You gave her the poison.
    Portia’s thoughts fired back. I told her how to use it. To make Mister sick. To protect herself, not to kill herself!
    You should have known she would do this. You put it in her hand. You killed her.
    No! Portia’s mind was reeling, spinning in weakened circles like a top spun by a child. She wanted to cry out, to make the voices go quiet. But she held her tongue. And the voices kept on.
    Murderer, they whispered.
    Murderer.

The Funeral
    It was dusk, when the processions met.
    A train of battered trucks, patched with rust and the wrong colors of paint, limped up the road like a company of wounded soldiers. They were evenly spaced. Some of them towed silver trailers; others hauled only themselves and the people inside, most of whom were concealed by hats or veils or the falling shadows of the trees.
    A herd of girls in matching gray dresses, silently marching down the road, followed a single car that had carried Caroline’s body to the graveyard. They walked together behind the empty car, each one wondering, Would I have done the same thing? What if that was me in the box? For some of them, the thought was not totally unpleasant.
    The carnival and the wayward girls eyed one another with naked curiosity. They recognized themselves as compatriots in some foreign country, a country made of many islands, each one so tiny that it held only one person at a time. The carnies and the girls on the road knew exactly what separated them from other people. They knew, at that moment, precisely how much distance was between them.
    The last truck in the line looked newer than the rest. It was red. Portia watched as it passed. She couldn’t quite see inside because the setting sun cast such a glare on the glass, but there was a thin opening at the top of the passenger-side window, and something flew out of it. It landed in the truck’s dusty wake and lay there like a calling card.