Chapter XVII. 2007
CHAPTER XVII
The days in Paris passed like a fever dream.
Glittering fragments of silk and lace and Pilates sweat and massages and glasses of champagne as Camilla trotted out her broken French.
A fresh cut and color at one of the top salons, courtesy of her father.
A facial. A spray tan. Her beauty laid out like a mechanism.
So many moving parts that were the summation of her ability to attract a husband.
“Don’t want to bloat right before the Ball,” he said, and nodded his approval when she didn’t finish her plate.
In sleep and in daylight, she dreamed of the tree and the Sisters.
The sharp scent of blood thick in the air as she prostrated herself before them.
Her body and heart a blood offering if it meant they would absolve Brianna and her mother of their illness.
There were daily check-in calls from the nurse, but if her mother spoke with her father or asked to talk with Camilla, he kept that to himself.
She wouldn’t let herself think her mother had already died, and her father was keeping it from her so it wouldn’t spoil the trip.
If she let herself, she would not be able to continue the farce that was her daily routine with her father.
On their last day, her hands trembled as she dressed for the trip home.
Their bags were already packed and carried downstairs by the porter, and she listened to the faint rise and fall of her father’s voice coming from the suite’s living room.
It was still too early to be rightfully considered morning, but he’d been on the phone for most of it, and she’d had coffee alone, relieved by his absence.
In less than twelve hours, she would be home. In less than twelve hours, she would go to the tree. She repeated it in her mind: a litany that soothed her.
“Bad news, hon.” Her father appeared in the doorway, his phone clenched in his hand.
“Our flight was cancelled. Some problem with the plane. I’ve called in every favor I have, but the earliest I could get us out was this evening.
Good news is that I got us flatbed seats, so we can at least get some shut-eye. ”
Her skin went cold. They would not be home until the following day. She would not be home in time to go to the tree. Another delay. It was as if he had known what she planned. As if he were taunting her. She tucked her hands under her thighs so he would not see them tremble.
She would have no way of telling Brianna and Noah about the delay. She could only hope they would figure it out and not do anything stupid.
“Don’t you worry though; your daddy will still get you home in time for the Purity Ball.” He laughed and tweaked her nose. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. We’ll be fine. Everything is all set. We have the dress. Hair and makeup people all set. You just have to show up and look pretty.”
After he left the room, she took his unused coffee cup, the porcelain so thin she could practically see through it, and wrapped it in a napkin.
She waited to hear his voice again, another phone call among the many, and then made her way to the bathroom where she placed the wrapped mug on the floor and stomped on it, the porcelain shattering.
A bloodless violence that did nothing to cool her frustration.
She spent the hours wandering the hotel shops in the effort of not being locked in a room with her father, and only once they were on the plane, her father once again distracted by his phone, did she feel the coiled nerves in her muscles relax the smallest amount.
Finally, they were ready to take off. The plane rumbled beneath them, a monster mimicking the anxiety that slept in Camilla’s blood, and her father turned to her. “Try and get some beauty sleep, hon. Don’t want to look tired at the Ball,” he said, before tugging an eye mask on.
Sleep was an impossibility. Instead, she counted down the hours on her watch.
She couldn’t allow any more time to pass.
After the Ball was over, once everyone was home and sleeping off the excess of champagne, she would go to the tree.
Her father would be tired from the travel, from the business of the day, and his guard would be down.
Still, she would have to be careful. She couldn’t afford any more time lost to her father sending her on Retreat.
The drive home was a continuation of the flight. Her father alternately dozed between answering calls, and she kept her gaze trained on the passing trees as the driver carried them toward home.
She had barely stepped foot inside the house—no time to retrieve her hidden cell phone or see her mother—when the makeup artists descended on her with their brushes and sprays with the intent of a miraculous transfiguration.
Everything pastel and pretty. Nothing that would give the implication of makeup.
Nothing distasteful. They would make her into something holy. Something pure.
“We’ll have to go heavier on the concealer,” one of the artists said, patting beneath her eye. “Goodness gracious, did you sleep at all?”
She gave in to the push and pull of their hands, their intentional reshaping.
An easy thing to float out of her body with the assurance that she only had to play this part for a few more hours.
As she stepped into her dress, as they bound the yards of cream and ivory tulle tight enough to limit her breathing, she felt herself put on the mask.
The pure, chaste supplicant. The good daughter.
“Look at you.” Her father stood in her doorway, his suit a dark hunter green that only served to make his eyes brighter and his hair somehow more golden.
He waved a finger in the air, and she obeyed, but the twirl was awkward and bumbling, the dress an uncomfortable weight against the insubstantiality of her body.
“Breathtaking,” he said, and she offered up a weak smile.
“Thank you, Daddy.” She smoothed her hands over the voluminous skirt, hating how it limited her movement with its cinched waist and masses of pleated tulle. How like a fifties housewife it made her feel.
“I have another surprise.” He paused for effect. “Your mother wants to see you.”
Blood rushed through every part of her, leaving her arms and fingers tingling. “She’s awake?”
“Go!” He chuckled as she struggled through the door, the dress catching at the frame, and then she was out, running as best she could in her four-inch heels, hoping her mother hadn’t already faded back into sleep.
At the threshold of what had become her mother’s sickroom, she slowed. Pulled herself in tight so she was small and then smaller. She would not bring anything other than calm into that space. She entered slowly. The nurse, thankfully, was nowhere to be seen.
Her mother sat upright, an enormous stack of overstuffed pillows behind her, but her head lolled, her eyes vacant as she gazed straight ahead.
“Mom?” Camilla’s voice broke through the room’s silent skin, and her mother’s eyes snapped to her, her gaze traveling the length of her dress before finding their way back up.
She took two steps forward and then another, but everything she wanted to say would have to remain locked behind her teeth.
It made her want to weep, but she could sense her father’s presence behind her, how he watched this orchestrated moment between mother and daughter.
Her mother reached for her, trembling as she tried to gather Camilla to her, but there wasn’t enough strength in her arms. She let them drop, her fingers contorting painfully as she gripped the sheet.
“It’s okay—” Camilla began, but her mother lurched forward, the sheet pushed aside to reveal her wasted body, the sores on her lips weeping a baby-pink fluid as she clawed at the mattress and tried to push herself out of bed.
Her mouth gaped. A groan that descended into a rattle broke the stillness of the room; tears came hot and fast as her mother repeated the sound.
Again, and then again, the pitch bending and changing into something that resembled a single word.
Don’t.
“Don’t what?” Camilla whispered. If her mother had anything to tell her, they only had seconds before her father was close enough to drag Camilla away.
Her mother’s body twisted violently, and Camilla watched in horror as she pressed a hand to her throat and gagged. The skin there bulged around a solid, twitching mass.
“It’s okay, honey.” Camilla’s father was suddenly there, his hands against her waist as he pulled her away. The nurse magically reappeared and held a basin to her mother’s lips as she choked, the mass working its way up her throat like some great spider.
Camilla let out a sob as she struggled against her father’s hold. “What is that? What’s in her throat?”
Her mother coughed: a deep, wet tearing sound as the mass worked its way past her tongue and what remained of her teeth. Dark strands clung to her lips as she spat it into the basin, and Camilla felt her own throat grow thick as she tried to understand what she saw.
The mass in her mother’s throat was a ball of hair.