Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Her uncle's confession played over and over in her mind as she stared in shock. Charlotte felt like her entire world was crumbling around her. Surely, she could not have heard him right. What did he mean by saying that he killed her mother?
For years, although she had told no one what she thought, she had always had the conviction that something else had happened on the day her mother passed. But this…?
When the unwanted memories crawled through her thoughts, she didn't have the power to stop them, and for a second, she went years back.
Charlotte had been downstairs laughing with her father while her mother had remained in her room alone to read like she usually did. She remembered the feeling of unease that had settled in her, causing her to look toward the stairs every few minutes. As if expecting her mother to walk down.
Charlotte had been at the bottom of the staircase when she heard a door open and close. She remembered how excited she had been, thinking that her mother was finally done reading and she could now join them for some family time.
Yet, she never came. Charlotte went upstairs to see what was taking so long, but when she opened the door to her chambers, she saw an empty room with the rocking chair next to the window, going back and forth gently.
She had been standing there, wondering where her mother could have possibly gone, when she suddenly heard a scream.
Charlotte had been unprepared for what she saw. Looking out the window, she felt her mind go blank when she saw her mother splattered on the ground. It was a memory that would never leave her mind.
"Mama!" Charlotte let out a scream of anguish as her grief caught on with her.
Her mother was gone. She brought her upper body out of the window, reaching out for her mother as she screamed repeatedly for her to wake up.
If she could just get to her… What if she wasn't gone?
Maybe she had just had a terrible fall and if she could reach out to her just in time, then her mother would be all right. If she could only reach her.
Her tears blinded her eyes as she stretched out the window even more.
Charlotte refused to accept what she knew to be true.
She couldn't. She wouldn't. Her mother would not just leave her like that.
There were still so many things they had to do together.
Her mouth opened in a silent scream when she tripped because of standing on her toes, and she fell through the same window her mother had just fallen out of.
She felt hands grab her and drag her back into the room just as she closed her eyes, ready to accept her fate.
"Charlotte, stop it! What do you think you are doing?"
Charlotte opened her eyes to see her uncle holding onto her.
She kicked and wriggled her body, trying to escape his hold.
She wanted to see her mother. No, it was not a want.
She needed to see her mother. She needed to see her and confirm that this had all been a dream or some weird imagination she had cooked up in her head.
"Let me go!" she screamed at him. "Please let me go. I need to see her. I need to see my mother." Charlotte broke down in tears when she tried to get out of his grasp, to no avail.
"You should not have seen that."
"Charlotte! Charlotte, what is going on?
" She whipped her head around when she heard her father's heavy-set footsteps hurriedly run up the stairs.
The sight of him bursting into the room looking panicked brought her to tears once again.
The drops flowed from her eyes without stopping.
How would he take the news? He ran up to her, looking her over as if to see if she had been injured or hurt herself.
"Are you all right? Why did you scream? Brother, what is going on?" he asked quickly, looking around the room to see what had set her off like that.
As she watched her father, this man who deeply loved her mother, look her over, she knew that if he saw her body splattered on the floor, he would be broken, yet there was nothing she could do to stop it from happening.
"Answer me, Charlotte. Has anything happened?" he questioned her once again. "Where is your mother, anyway? I thought she would be here."
Charlotte whimpered when she heard her mother being mentioned. She thought she could protect her father from the sight, but there she was, unable to utter a single word.
"What happened, Alexander? Why is she crying?
Do you know what happened?" he got up from where he had kneeled in front of Charlotte and went to stand in front of his brother.
And then Charlotte noticed the instant he saw her mother, his wife, on the ground below them.
She noticed the falter in his steps. She noticed him stumble and fall.
"Wh-what happened?" he muttered over and over again.
Charlotte wished she could go to him and console him, but her uncle held on to her again when she tried to run for the window.
She cried for her father as she watched him crumble into pieces.
She had never seen him cry until this very moment, yet here he was, crying like she had been just some moments ago.
"I do not know what happened, brother. I came in when I heard Charlotte scream and held her back from jumping right after her.
" He cleared his throat as he paused, stopping himself before he said anything else.
Charlotte watched him close his eyes as if to steady himself.
He let go of her suddenly and this time she did not move from her spot.
She watched as her uncle lifted him onto the floor where he sat, bawling his eyes out and pat him on the back.
"We need to get Charlotte out of the room before she does anything stupid," he said.
Horror filled her when her father nodded in acquiescence to his brother's suggestion.
"No! No! Please don't. I want to see mama!
" Charlotte screamed over and over as her uncle picked her up.
This was the last time she would see her, and she needed to be with her at least this once.
Didn't they understand that? Why were they choosing to take this away from her?
She wriggled and screamed, calling out for her mother.
"Charlotte, Charlotte, please stop it!" she stopped when she heard the deep anguish in her father's voice, and she allowed her body to go limp in her uncle's hands as he took her to her room and left her in the care of a maid before rushing off to his brother.
Charlotte's eyes watered as she came back to present day.
She looked at her uncle now and started thinking, picking up on clues she had failed to see in her grief as a child.
How had she never thought about this before?
She had always suspected that something else that they did not know had happened, but that was all.
Questions came up in her mind that should have on that fateful day.
Why had she not thought of the fact that she had heard her father's footsteps, but not her uncle's? Where had he come from before he grabbed her? Her uncle was heavy-set like her father, and if he had run into the room when he heard Charlotte scream, she would have noticed him.
Why was her uncle so close to what was happening?
Who had opened the door? It could not have been her mother, so someone else had to be.
That was the nagging feeling Charlotte had always felt whenever she thought about the day her mother had died and how she had fallen from the window.
It should not have been so easily accepted, because she had never been careless or clumsy.
Her mother just liked to sit beside the window in her rocking chair whenever she read and there was no way she could have tipped off and fallen out through the window.
If her uncle was the one who pushed her, then it would make sense that he was there.
It would make sense that the door shut just moments before she came in.
Charlotte had never suspected him to be in the room with her, but that was the only way she could perceive that he would be able to grab her so quickly.
She figured she had arrived too early and foiled his escape plan, so he had probably been hiding when she came in.
She had not looked around much so she would not have seen him.
There were so many things that made little sense.
But, in her mind as a child and with the trauma of seeing her mother, her brain pushed everything aside without really thinking about it to protect her.
Her father, in his grief and the knowledge that he had to take care of his young daughter, must have done the same, accepting the easiest excuse to be the truth.
Charlotte glared at her uncle. She was in pain.
Her heart hurt from having to relive the beginning of the worst days of her life over and over, and there he was, standing before her, looking emotionless.
She saw him in a different light now. As a monster.
Of course, she had known he was a wretched man for years.
But Charlotte had always assumed that his motives for doing what he did, locking her away and treating her so harshly, had been fueled by greed.
Now, however, she saw him as a murderer.