Chapter 33 Nancy
THIRTY-THREE
NANCY
Icouldn’t go home.
Not to the silence and his scent filling every inch of the house. Not to the dip in his side of the mattress.
I couldn’t face the reality of his death yet.
Marney told me to take a few days off, but to do what? Mourn the man who impregnated his niece? It was all fucked. The moment Ginny was dragged into the asylum, my world imploded.
The address from Marney’s office pulsed in my head like a heartbeat.
Marsh Ranch. Old Farm Road. Marsh Ranch. Old Farm Road.
Without making a conscious decision to go there, I found myself heading out of town toward the rural area where old wooden fences caged farms like rotting skeletons.
Three stops for directions later, and I hoped I was headed the right way. The last farm I’d mistakenly trundled onto ended with me being threatened with a shotgun.
The road dwindled the further I went, narrowing to little more than a dirt track. The hedgerows thinned and trees leaned in over the road like creepy old crones. By the time the house came into view, a deep sense of warning filled me.
The farm sagged against the thick grey sky, all bent and broken.
The roofline buckled, slates missing like gapped teeth.
Sharp jagged glass filled the lower windows, put through by local children perhaps.
Weeds clawed over the porch steps, trying to claim the building back to nature.
Fences leaned uselessly, crossbeams flapping in the growing wind.
Ginny had only been in Wellard for a few weeks, but the farm looked like it hadn’t been lived on for years. Had they raised Ginny in a place so full of neglect? And Robert had come here and impregnated her rather than helping her escape the abuse? I swallowed down a mouthful of vomit.
Mud sucked at my wheels as I parked, my shoes squelching as I stepped out. The air hung with the impending storm, already misting my face with water.
There was no resistance when I pulled the door open. It was as if they’d fled in a hurry, leaving it unlocked.
Inside, wallpaper peeled in long ribbons, with water stains spreading over the ceiling.
But signs of recent occupancy existed. The electricity remained on, so bills must have been paid in the past few months.
Every board groaned under my weight, each creak echoing through the silence.
The wall calendar was turned to the current month, dates filled with scratched writing.
Unwashed dishes bathed in moulding water, stagnant but not yet evaporated. The smell was old iron and mould.
Furniture sagged with damp, dust coating every surface in the sitting room. On an ancient table photographs lay scattered, their edges stuck together with mildew. I pulled one out.
The photograph trembled as I lifted it.
Robert.
Younger and smirking with his arm slung around another man. His brother I imagined. The resemblance was clear. The same smug tilt of the jaw. The same dark eyes.
My stomach turned to stone.
It wasn’t a lie.
She hadn’t made it up.
I set the photo down, fighting the urge to tear each one into a thousand tiny pieces. The same way they shattered my fucking heart.
The stairs loomed. The creak of the lowest stair made me shudder. The hairs on my arms stood on end, yet I pushed upward.
Her room was at the end of the hall.
I knew it before I touched the door. The air leaked through the gap beneath, sour and metallic, faint but undeniable.
Iron.
Blood.
The door creaked as I pushed it wide.
Inside, the air was colder and heavier. Words gouged over every wall, carved deep enough to splinter plaster. MY BABY. MY BABY. ELIJAH HELP. The phrases etched across every surface. A plea. A curse.
Pink ribbons fluttered in the musty air. Tangled in heaps across the floor, and knotted around nails hammered into the walls, stuffed into drawers that burst with their weight. Many were stained dark with old blood, stiff and crusted, their sweet pink dulled.
Opening a stiff dresser drawer, I found bundles of shorn blonde hair, the ends cut ragged. Long and tied neatly with pink bows. Cuttings arranged like trophies. Did she cut it off herself, or did someone do it to punish her?
Tears sprang at the devastation in her room. At the years of torment covering every inch. My heart broke for the child Ginny had been.
On the bed, a teddy bear slumped. Its seams had been cut open crudely and restitched with red thread. A symbol of softness amongst all the destruction. It crunched as I picked it up. My hands shook as I pried it apart, wondering what secrets it held.
Polaroids spilled out.
Dozens.
Babies. Tiny and swaddled, their faces pink and wrinkled. Healthy. Alive.
Newborns, no older than a few days. Each photograph framed by the same crumbling walls.
Robert, grinning like a proud father. Robert, holding a baby against his chest. Robert, with his arm around Ginny, her face pale and vacant. Her hair cut short and her dress askew.
So many tiny babies. With Ginny and Robert getting older, but the babies never ageing. Always brand new.
They fluttered across the floor as I dropped them, spinning like dead leaves.
The room tilted.
‘Oh God,’ I whispered, clutching the wall for balance. My heart hammered so hard it ached.
He’d lied about it all.
He’d told me it was only one pregnancy. Only for me. That it was for us. But he had lied.
Ginny hadn’t lied.
Not about the babies.
Not about Elijah.
The words carved into the plaster seemed to grow around me. MY BABY. MY BABY. ELIJAH HELP.
But where had the babies gone?
Adopted? Sold?
A sob choked me as I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to keep myself from falling apart completely. Ginny was in the asylum because she was truly unwell, but it was Robert who’d broken her over the years. Forced her to have babies and then taken them away.
If he’d taken them, where were they? Certainly not in our home.
I needed answers.
And I already knew I wouldn’t like them.