Chapter 20
XX
EDEN
Iwake up drowning.
Not in water, but in sweat—in heat, in something suffocating and sickly that clings to my skin like guilt. The hours in the shower last night did nothing to help the rotting feeling I felt seeping into my bones.
My sheets are tangled around my ankles. My nightgown sticks to me like a second skin, and my throat feels as if somebody hollowed it out with a paring knife. The morning light filtering through the curtains is soft and golden, but it makes my head ache.
It takes me a moment to realize that my body isn’t just hot.
It’s burning.
I press the back of my hand to my forehead, bones creaking. My skin is fever-warm. Maybe hotter. Maybe I’m on fire from the inside out, and this is what it feels like to be punished by God. My ribs protest as a hacking cough tears through my lungs.
When I sit up, the room tilts sideways.
The edges of the dresser blur. The rug ripples like it’s breathing.
Something is wrong.
My limbs feel like someone else’s. My body feels like a borrowed vessel—no, a broken one.
One God wants back, quickly. I’ve been sick before, but it has never felt like this.
There are moments I swear I see things out of the corner of my eye—shadows crouching in the wallpaper, eyes behind the mirror.
Maybe it’s the fever.
A call to Miss Durell has a bowl of chicken soup, sourdough and a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice brought to my room within the hour.
I can barely make it to the door to take it from the housekeeper, so she serves me in bed.
I thank her profusely, and she thanks me with a smile.
A real one—not the kind they give my mother.
The food helps.
It’s fabulous, actually. Just what I needed.
I’m finding my strength when there’s another knock at my door.
“Come in,” I croak, taking another sip of orange juice hoping that it will help my parched throat. My hands shake slightly as I hold the glass.
First a tiny foot appears.
Then, William makes an appearance.
Without Andrew, which is stranger than the fact that he’s dressed like Miles Morales.
“Are you okay?” William’s voice is strained and filled with concern.
I tilt my head, moving the breakfast tray and setting my glass down on it. “Just a little bug. I’ll be fine,” I say.
“No,” William says. “Not that.”
He shuts the door behind him and tip-toes over to me like his very presence in my room is a secret. “I heard Papa and Mum arguing about you. Are you sure you’re well? They made it seem like something had happened to you.” Then with a sigh he says, “Mum called you unmanageable.”
Before I can stop myself, I find my body moving toward William.
As much as my brothers have annoyed me, as much as my mother has made me their scapegoat, I do love them. When they’re older and able to understand, I hope they’ll remember me as a good sister. “I’m alright, Wills. Life is just…strange right now.”
“So you’re not leaving the family?”
My eyes widen. “Who said I was?”
“Mum.”
“Where did you hear them arguing?”
“In Papa’s study.”
I give William a tight hug and rush to throw on my robe and grab something from my dresser. “Thank you so much for coming to tell me, Wills. I love you, and everything is going to be alright, so don’t worry.”
I leave him standing in the room as I walk as fast as I can to my father’s study.
My joints ache, my throat feels tight—but how I’m feeling comes secondary to what I have to do.
I need to confront them both—and doing so in the same place where they made a decision set me on a path that would ruin my life feels like poetic justice.
When I get to the study, I can hear them through the door, just as William said.
Raised voices—sharpened like knives. My mother’s tone is clipped and venom-laced, the way it gets when she thinks she’s losing control. My father’s is lower, harder to catch, but the strain it pulls me like a string. I know that sound.
I heard it the night he saved me from Silas, too.
It’s the rare creak of a man who’s spent his life swallowing words.
My hand trembles on the doorknob. I shouldn’t be here. I should be in bed, curled up and obedient, waiting patiently until either of them decides to speak to me about what happened last night. But something in me refuses.
Maybe it’s the fever.
Maybe it’s the truth rotting inside my chest like spoiled fruit.
Maybe it’s the pile of letters and photographs I’ve read a dozen times in the dark last night from Magnolia’s journal, each one whispering the same blasphemy.
I throw open the door.
The wood slams against the wall with a crack, and both their heads jerk toward me.
Evelyn’s lips part in horror, then narrow into a scowl. She turns to face me, ready to reprimand me. But I’m done playing by her rules. My father—standing near the hearth, with a glass of brandy in his hand—blanches.
“What are you doing in here, you insolent child?” Evelyn snaps.
“You should be packing your bags. You’ll return to Augustine this evening.
I’ve arranged for a car to take you. Whatever happens to you there is none of my concern because of the disgraces that you’ve brought on this family. You made a mockery of us and—
“Don’t.” My voice is hoarse, but it cuts through the room like a blade. “Don’t tell me what I should be doing. Not you. Not anymore.”
I step inside, closing the door behind me like I might never come out again.
She moves to slap me across the face but I pivot out of her way. I always could’ve. But some fucked up part of me believed that this was my destiny. That punishment from my mother was Holy, and accepting it would bring me closer to God.
But I’ve cried far too many tears.
Heaven is empty.
Evelyn lifts her chin. “You’ve embarrassed this family beyond comprehension.
What would you have us do with you then, Eden?
Parade you through society after you brought the Lockhart name into such disrepute?
” She’s shaking with anger now. “You made international news. People who’ve never heard of us know how stupid you are.
” Then she adds with a huff. “The family cannot live this down with you as a part of it.”
“You’re the one who forced me into finding a husband,” I spit. “I didn’t ask for any of this to happen.”
“And yet here you are,” she says coldly, “infecting this household with scandal. Bleeding all over our name.”
My fingers tighten around the object I’ve been holding this whole time.
Magnolia’s journal.
I walk over to the desk and throw it down.
It lands with a thud. Papers scatter. Photographs slide like snow across polished wood.
Evelyn’s face goes still.
My father looks down—and pales.
“What is this?” I demand, my voice shaking now.
My father doesn’t respond. Neither does Evelyn.
“Tell me,” I hiss. “Do you recognize her?”
I point to the photograph of Magnolia Thompson—young, dark-haired, with a face so much like mine it physically hurts to look at her. She’s dressed in an immaculate Augustine uniform, her arms wrapped around the waist of a man who is obviously my father.
Evelyn is the one who speaks first.
“You don’t understand what you’re doing.”
I round on her. “No, I do. For once, I do.” My voice rises with each sentence.
“You lied to me. You both lied. My whole life!” Pain swells all over my body but I need to get this out.
“You’ve paraded me like a symbol of virtue while hiding the fact that I’m—what?
Some bastard you didn’t have the spine to send away? ”
Evelyn’s face twists. “Do you have any idea what happens to illegitimate children in our world? We protected you—”
“That’s not what her journals say,” I spit.
“She was with father first. But you stole him from her. She didn’t have the stomach to play the same dirty games you did.
” Tears spring from my eyes as Evelyn’s face blurs.
“When she realized she was pregnant with me you were already married to father, and because you care so much about your reputation you took me and made your own sister disappear.”
“You have no idea—” But I cut her again.
“No,” I say, fury boiling over. “You manipulated me into believing I was worthless unless I followed every rule, obeyed every command and prayed the shame away. But the shame was yours. Not mine. You stole your sister’s destiny because you’re nothing more than a jealous hag.”
There’s a long, quivering silence.
Evelyn is facing me. Her fingers twitch. But I’m ready. In fact, I want her to try to hit me again. Adrenaline is coursing through every nerve in my body. I feel like I could rip her wide open if I tried.
Then—
“Magnolia and I dated briefly,” my father says, his voice a crack in the tension. He looks like he’s in pain, and it’s so obvious that he’s lying. “I chose to marry your mother, and we adopted you so you could benefit from being a Lockhart.”
“Yes,” Evelyn snaps. “You would have suffered as an illegitimate child, but we took you in so you could experience the luxury of love.”
“Love?” I laugh mockingly. “Who was I loved by? By you? You never touched me if you could help it. You controlled every second of my life like I was some porcelain doll on display. I was your penance, wasn’t I? The price you had to pay for this life.”
I turn to my father, and for the first time in my life, I see him clearly—not as a figurehead, not as Evelyn’s echo, but as a man.
A man hollowed out by silence.
“Where is she?” I demand. “Where is my mother?”
No one answers.
“Answer me!” I scream.
Every bone in my body rattles, but I’m tired of holding back, of making myself smaller, of contorting my every desire into something more palatable. My rage is valid. My anger is true.
I don’t have to make anything I feel digestible.
Who I am is enough.
“You have no idea the sacrifices I made for you. I should have left you with her to die, maybe then—”
“No,” my father says suddenly, cutting her off. “No more lies, Evelyn.”
We both turn to him.
He looks at her, his eyes as hard as steel. “She deserves the truth.”
Evelyn stares at him like he’s grown another head. “You made me swear…” She huffs. “To protect her. You did all this to protect her.”
“Not like this,” he hisses. “We agreed on our honeymoon that we would tell her one day.”
Ah. That’s why she wanted to marry me off.
He faces me.
Shame creases his features. “Your mother, Magnolia Thompson, is Evelyn’s younger sister. She left England after we adopted you, and we haven’t heard from her in years.”
I feel the ground shift beneath me.
I’m not who they say I was.
I’m not who I thought I was.
Everything—the parties, the faith, the expectations—they weren’t mine to begin with. I never felt Evelyn’s love because she didn’t love me. I was just a reminder that her sister managed to get pregnant before her, forever tying herself to the man she wanted for herself.
I was a placeholder that became the bane of her existence.
My legs nearly give out. I brace myself against the table. Cold sweat starts to wash me again. No one moves, they only watch—my father with eyes so concerned as if he’s afraid I might break if he touches me.
“I hate you,” I whisper. “Both of you.”
My father lowers his head. But Evelyn, she doesn’t flinch. Instead, there’s a passiveness on her face that I can only liken to relief. For all her theatrics, I’m sure she’s happy that it’s all out in the open now. I’m not her daughter.
I’m her niece.
It’s perfectly acceptable to hate your niece.
Your daughter? Not so much.
My mind is unravelling. My pulse is wild. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know who I am. But I know where I need to go. I know who I need.
“I’m going back to Augustine,” is all I say before leaving the room.
I take my mother’s journal with me.
It’s all I have left of the woman who gave birth to me.
The woman whose face I wear every day. The woman my father fell in love with.
I knew he only said those things because Evelyn was present.
But my mother’s journals were filled with love letters written in his elegant script. I know men lie, but he wasn’t lying.
He proposed to my mother first.
But Evelyn—ever the scheming snake—managed to weasel her way in between them with lies and secrets. Her plan worked spectacularly well.
Until my mother realized she was pregnant.
As I walk back to my room, I think of burning the whole house down.
But I won’t. Instead I’ll pack my bags and head to Augustine to find the only person who ever looked at me like my fire didn’t scare them.