Chapter 9
Chapter
Nine
ANABELLE
Ifind myself in the stables, working alongside Mr. Potter. I have a feeling he’s here with me at the behest of his wife since I’m sure he has better things to do—given that he’s in charge of all the grounds and all the people who work on it.
By late afternoon, my arms feel like Jell-O from shoveling shit and hay all day.
“You want to come help me brush some of the horses?”
I spin around toward where Mr. Potter stands at the entrance to the stable. “Sure thing, Mr. Potter. Just let me finish up here.”
“What did I tell you about the Mr. Potter thing? It’s Jack.”
I chuckle. “Okay, Jack. I’ll be right there.”
He seems like a nice man, and I understand how he and Mrs. Potter got together. They’re alike in that way.
Once I’ve finished, I leave the stables and head to where Jack stands with a mahogany-colored horse in one of the paddocks, brushing it. Off to his right is a black horse with a gleaming coat.
“Wow, he’s beautiful.” I approach the huge beast slowly.
Jack chuckles. “That he is. This here is Poe. You can brush him, just take it slow and let him get used to you first.”
I’ve been around horses before. We used to have some on the estate when I was growing up, but I never got that into them, so when I was in my early teens, my dad sold them. The thought that perhaps my dad sold them to pay off a gambling debt taints the memory now, and I press my lips together.
“I’ve never seen a horse with a coat like this.” It almost looks metallic.
“That’s because he’s an Akhal-Teke. They’re the only breed in the world with a coat like that.”
I slowly reach out a hand, and when the horse doesn’t give me any indication that I shouldn’t touch him, I press it gently on his neck and run my hand down. “You sure are handsome, aren’t you?”
Poe nickers as if he understands me.
“Why Poe? Does it have anything to do with Edgar Allen Poe?” It’s the first thing that came to mind when I heard the stallion’s name. I bend down to pick up the brush.
Jack shrugs and keeps on brushing the other horse. “Not sure, you’d have to ask Asher.”
I still. “This is his horse?”
“Yup. Been his horse for a while now.”
I straighten up and start brushing, not saying another word about Asher Voss.
We’re quiet as we rhythmically brush out both horses. I don’t want to be impressed by Asher Voss’s horse, but it proves impossible. He’s a gorgeous creature—massive and beautiful and a little dangerous, just like his owner.
“He likes you.”
Jack’s voice startles me from my thoughts. “I’m sorry?”
“Poe likes you.”
I don’t know why Asher was the first thing to come to mind. Of course he meant the horse.
“He’s not usually this amenable with new people,” he continues.
I smile at the black beauty as I work the brush over his coat.
The silence stretches between us again until I realize that Jack probably knows whoever found my father’s body on the Voss property, or he may have even found him himself. He could have seen my father’s body before the authorities arrived.
I don’t want to put Jack on the spot, but I feel like I need to know. It feels like the thing between us that isn’t being said.
“Can I ask you something, Jack?” I let my arm drop from brushing Poe, cringing at the pain in my shoulder.
It’s like Jack senses what I’m about to ask, because he stops working on his horse and turns to me, eyes full of remorse. “Of course.”
“Did you… were you the one who found my father?” My chest feels as if a hole is burning through it.
Jack gives his head a small shake and frowns. “No, that was Don, who works for me. But I got the call from Don and went out there.”
I don’t know what I was hoping that information would give me, but all it does is bring back the image I’ve had in my head since the day I got the phone call—my father’s ravaged body lying in blood-soaked grass.
We had to have a closed casket because the funeral home told my grandmother that the injuries were too great for an open casket.
I squeeze my eyes shut against the unshed tears that burn my eyes, then suck in a breath and look at Jack. “Do you think… he suffered?”
Jack softens his expression as though he wants to wrap me in a hug as if I’m a little girl who needs consoling after a bad dream. But this is my new reality. My father is dead, and my mother has essentially checked out. I lost both my parents in one fell slash of the Grim Reaper’s scythe.
“I don’t think so. I think as far as these things go, it was a pretty clean death for him.”
I don’t know whether he’s saying that to try to make me feel better or whether he believes that, but I choose to take him at his word.
The official cause of death for my father was listed as an animal attack, though there didn’t seem to be any agreement over what kind of animal. A bear? Wolf? Something else? Not that I suppose it matters either way.
We go back to brushing the horses in silence until the words I probably shouldn’t say slip from my mouth. “My father isn’t the only person who has died at Midnight Manor.”
Jack stills, glancing over his shoulder at me. “We don’t talk about such things around here, Anabelle. If you’re smart, you won’t either.”
It’s obvious from the look on his face that this is the end of any conversation between us, and I continue brushing the stallion while loneliness settles in around me, threatening to suffocate me.
I have to work hard to regulate my breathing as the grief of losing my father hits me all at once.
Since the funeral, I’ve been pushing against it, erecting a wall in my mind to keep it away.
The household needed running, and my mother’s recovery felt more important.
I’d already lost one parent. I didn’t want to lose another.
But being away from the estate where my family lives has left me more time with my thoughts, and those walls I’d so perfectly built are crumbling into ruins.
Now, being alone in this enormous estate, under the thumb of a man who disdains me, I feel as though I have no one in the world. That I’m truly on my own.
I cry myself to sleep that night while despair covers me like a weighted blanket, holding me down.