Chapter 20
20
SAMANTHA
M eals become fraught at Thornfield.
Fiona’s at breakfast every morning, glorying in a cup of coffee, refusing the food Braiden requires the rest of us to eat. It’s like she doesn’t hear Birte chanting her little rhymes. She doesn’t see Aiofe’s suspicious frowns. Fiona borrows sections from Braiden’s newspapers, turning pages too quickly to actually be reading. More than once, I catch her staring at me over the rim of her mug, eyebrows raised in silent study.
I miss lunch for an entire week.
On Monday, I’m down in Dover, working with Sonja Heller. The ethics board has issued another round of questions, focusing on my application to law school and my activities while taking classes in New York. After scorching my ears with a thorough dissection of the board members’ preferred sexual acts, Sonja fires off a letter of protest, saying the board has overstepped its bounds. She says we’ll likely lose that argument—the board has virtually unlimited power to ask about my past. But at least we’ve delayed the process for a short while.
On Tuesday, Liam drives me to an office tower in downtown Philadelphia. I meet Teddy Newland, the criminal attorney Sonja recommended to assist me with the police inquiry into That Night. Teddy looks like somebody’s absent-minded grandfather—he has a fringe of gray hair and glasses that slip down his nose, and there’s a stain on his Harvard tie.
Looks are deceiving. He grills me like he’s paid by the Spanish Inquisition, going over every detail of That Night once, twice, three times, four. Only after he’s convinced my story won’t change does he call Detective Tarrant to schedule a meeting for Friday.
On Wednesday, I take online meetings at home from ten in the morning till six at night, trying desperately to catch up with my work for the freeport.
On Thursday, I meet Alix and Trap in New York, delivering a new-client orientation for a reclusive billionaire who hasn’t left her Upper East Side condo in twenty-seven years, not even to see museum exhibits of the German Expressionist paintings she collects.
On Friday, the first episode of Mousetrap airs.
I told Sonja I didn’t want to listen to the podcast. She said I didn’t have a fucking choice—the details will become the basis for yet more questions from the ethics board, from Detective Tarrant, from the world at large.
So I listen to it, every word. I learn more about my father’s career as one of Antonio Russo’s lieutenants than I ever cared to know. I begin to understand why Zia Sara and Zio Matteo were always so cold to me, how they had to answer to Russo for taking in the daughter of an executed traitor. The nun who taught me catechism says I fell asleep in class. Former teachers—at least the ones featured in the recording—remember me as lazy, shifty, untrustworthy.
The podcasters are experts at foreshadowing. They bring my cousins Elisabetta and Giorgia and Gianni to life. They make a long-forgotten parking ticket sound like proof that I was a reckless driver from the instant I got my license.
And the podcast finds its audience.
By Friday night, a group of protesters sets up camp outside Thornfield’s gates. The group of podcast fanatics holds up signs: Pay the Price. Justice for Giorgia and Gianni. A Murderer Lives Here. Shame, Shame, Shame!
The reinvigorated paparazzi have a field day. They conduct interviews and they film protests, gaining valuable footage even when I don’t set foot outside the gate.
Birte seems oblivious to the changes outside her home. But Aiofe glances at the windows often, and more than once I catch a worried frown creasing her forehead. Braiden swears and calls a local official on his payroll. Sadly, every time the crowds are dispersed they return within an hour.
Fiona has a field day.
She comes to dinner late three nights in a row, shrugging and saying she couldn’t get her Cooper Mini through the throng. She laughs when she finds an online article with the headline Known Mobster’s Daughter Holing Up at Murder Mansion.
She offers to address the press on my behalf: “I’ll be your surrogate,” she says, all the while eyeing Braiden. When I clench my fist around my wedding band and coldly refuse, she laughs.
Braiden puts me in my collar on Tuesday, and on Thursday, and again on Friday night. He measures out my punishment with a fierce determination. He leaves me aching and breathless, a soaked cloth wrung out so thoroughly that each individual fiber threatens to fray. He comes as hard as I do, calling me his piscín , insisting I’m his chailín maith.
And every night, I go back to the pool house, where my angry, frustrated tears can leak silently into my pillow.
After a week of hell, another Sunday morning dawns cool, like the middle of April should. The sky is a piercing blue, without a cloud in sight. House rules be damned, I have stacks of work to do for the freeport, and I’m hoping my piles of correspondence will distract me from all the things I can’t control. I’ve just pulled on yoga pants and an ancient cashmere pullover when I’m startled by a sharp knock at the pool house door.
I open it to discover a yellow chick and a snow-white rabbit. Or, rather, to find Aiofe and Birte, with brightly colored Easter masks strapped to their heads and wicker baskets gripped in their hands. Grace Poole stands behind them, holding a third mask—a curly haired lamb—along with a headband sporting bunny ears.
“Ya’ve got a choice,” she says. “Lamb or rabbit.”
I smile, even though it sounds like she’s reading from a menu. “Sorry, ladies,” I say. “I have work to do.”
Aiofe shakes her bright yellow mask so vigorously her hair billows around the elastic strap. With her free hand, she points to Grace’s hands and then to me. Someone has to complete the happy foursome.
I make my words gentle. “I wish I could, Aiofe. But I have to finish my assignment. Same as when you do schoolwork for Mr. Bell.”
But Aiofe just digs in her wicker basket until she produces an Easter egg decorating kit. I haven’t used one since I was her age. Maybe younger.
“Colored eggs,” Birte says suddenly, like she’s just awakened from a restful nap. “Move your legs. Aiofe begs.”
Taking her cue from her aunt, Aiofe clasps her hands in front of her heart. She turns her masked face up to me as if I’m the sun, the moon, and the stars in her little world.
The freeport work can wait until tomorrow.
“Okay,” I say. “Easter eggs it is. I’ll be the bunny.”
Birte claps. Aiofe lets out a high-pitched squeal of excitement, the first sound I’ve ever heard her make. Grace hands me the bunny-ear headband and leads the way to the kitchen in the main house .
Aiofe turns out to be a vicious little general. Fairfax has left us three dozen eggs, already hard boiled. Even without words, Aiofe makes it perfectly clear that we’re supposed to start with solid colors, then we’ll do a batch that are part one color and part another.
Halfway through the second dozen, Aiofe picks up a white wax crayon. She labors over an egg with intense concentration, drawing something on the surface. When she finishes, Grace dips the egg in green dye.
While we’re waiting for the color to set, Birte reaches for the crayon. She folds her fingers around it and holds it in front of her, as if it’s a candle. Bowing her head, she mutters a long prayer in Irish, ending with amen .
Did she say a prayer when she lit the candles she placed against Braiden’s office door? Did she call on God when she tried to burn him alive?
“What were you thinking, Birte?” I ask, not truly expecting an answer. “The day of the fire?”
She continues to finger the crayon without looking at me. But her humming changes to a soft sing-song. “Day of the fire,” she says. “Song of the choir. Punish the liar.” She seals her lips and goes back to her hymn for a few bars before she chants, “Punish the liar, punish the liar, punish the liar…”
Her soft voice raises goosebumps on my arms. I glance at Aiofe and Grace, but they’re intent on the masterpiece Grace is fishing out of the green dye. It’s a portrait of Coinín the rabbit, bright white against a grassy field.
“Fire,” Birte says, loud enough to make me jump. “Choir. Liar.”
Braiden has to be the liar. He’s the one who said he’d always love her and honor her, protect her and cherish her.
Aiofe looks up from her eggs, her lips trembling inside the cut-away of her plastic yellow-chick mask.
“Fire!” Birte shouts again .
Aiofe covers her ears, striping her masked cheeks with blue and green food coloring.
“ Fire! ” Birte hollers.
Aiofe folds her arms around her waist and rocks back and forth, sending the nearest flat of eggs flying. Bits of colored shell scatter from the stove to the window, and her clothes are streaked with bright dye.
“ Fi— ” Birte starts again, loud enough to hurt my ears.
“What the hell?” Braiden shouts from the doorway.
Fiona’s behind him, looking like a refugee from a fashion shoot. She’s wearing black leather pants and a scarlet corset that matches her slick lips, every hair perfect in her sleek black bob.
I wonder what the two of them were doing, why they’ve arrived in the kitchen at the exact same time. I wonder if house rules apply to Fiona, if she’s forbidden from working because it’s Sunday. I wonder if I’ll be able to draw a full breath against the spike of jealousy piercing my lungs.
Aiofe runs to Braiden, burying her face against his side. He smooths her hair automatically, apparently oblivious to the streaks of color she smears on his crisp white shirt. Birte falls silent mid-shout, like someone pulled the plug that animates her. Grace mutters over the broken eggs, as if she’s casting some wicked spell in words that might be English, might be Irish, might be known only to her.
“Samantha?” Braiden asks, bewildered.
“We were dyeing Easter eggs,” I say, as if that’s any explanation at all.
Braiden’s large hand settles on Aiofe’s head, soothing, calming. Birte starts a new chant: “Liar. Liar. Liar.”
Braiden scowls. “Grace,” he says, without raising his voice. “Birte is obviously overtired. Get her upstairs for a kip.”
Grace takes Birte’s hand, more gentle than I could ever be. She leads the chanting woman out of the kitchen, trying to avoid the larger pieces of boiled egg.
Braiden waits until they’re gone before he produces a snowy linen handkerchief from his pocket. Pushing Aiofe’s yellow mask up to her forehead, he wipes tears from her cheeks. Then he holds the cloth to her nose and waits for her to blow. “There’s my girl,” he says in a soothing voice. “Now upstairs with you, and change into clean clothes.”
She obeys him without looking back.
Only then does Braiden grimace at the mess left behind—eggs and cups and brightly colored water all over the counter and floor and cabinets. Fiona follows his gaze, but she steps back as if her Manolo Blahniks might catch fire.
“It’s half past three,” she says. “Da will be done with his Sunday roast and expecting me to call.”
“Call, then,” Braiden says, already rolling up his sleeves.
Fiona glances at me. Her thoughts might as well be written in letters ten feet tall: Samantha can clean this mess .
“Don’t let us keep you from your da,” Braiden says.
Fiona opens her mouth. Closes it. Judging by her outfit, the afternoon has just taken a dramatic turn from whatever activity she was doing—or intended to do—with her would-be fiancé.
But she’s boxed herself in now. She turns away, head held high, gaze straight ahead. Her steps on the kitchen tile sound like gunshots.
“I’ll get the broom,” Braiden says.
“A mop might work better,” I say.
“Mop it is, then.”
And he handles the clean-up as efficiently as he does everything else.
It’s only as I put the few surviving eggs into the fridge that I remember I’m still wearing bunny ears. But Braiden hasn’t forgotten. He nuzzles the back of my neck, and the heat of his body kindles something deep inside me. “Come upstairs,” he says.
“Aiofe,” I reply, because I don’t want the child watching me trail into his room.
“She’ll be drawing, or reading her books.” His fingers slip beneath the elastic band of my yoga pants, and I catch my breath at how quickly he can set a rhythm that drives me mad.
“Fiona, then,” I gasp.
“She’ll be taking orders from her da.” He turns me around, pressing my shoulders against the cold fridge door. He pins one knee between mine.
“Not here,” I say. Not against the refrigerator. Not over the granite counter. Not on the hard tile floor.
He could order me to stay here and, collar or not, I’d obey. I need him, even though I’m still sore from all the other punishment I’ve had this week. I’m starving for him, like I starve for the air I breathe.
But he listens. He cares. He half-pulls, half-carries me into the mudroom. I don’t see which coats he tosses onto the floor. I only know that he covers them with a green plaid blanket, the one Fairfax keeps on hand for picnics.
After Braiden shakes out our makeshift bed, he tugs me down, covering my lips with his, smothering my body with his, matching all his roughness to the soft, wet heat inside me.
And through it all, he tells me I’m beautiful. He tells me he needs me. He tells me I’m his.
And I drink down every word, grasping every urgent syllable, as if they can drown out Birte’s evil little whisper at the back of my mind: Punish the liar. Punish the liar. Punish the liar.