Chapter 25
The housekeeper lingered long after the last carriage had rattled away, sweeping up crumbs and collecting half-drained glasses with the weary efficiency of someone who had done this too many times before.
Mother bent over her notecards at the writing desk, recording which guest had brought which gift, her pen scratching briskly across the page.
Comfort was busy lifting vases of flowers from the tables, their water already cloudy.
Cynthia and Algernon were nowhere in sight.
I bent to gather scattered napkins and abandoned cutlery, my arms filling with the clatter and weight of it. As I carried them toward the back of the house, a voice reached me—raised, sharp, unmistakably heated.
“But Dad, you don’t understand!” Cynthia’s words rang down the hallway.
“What is it I don’t understand?” Algernon’s voice was calm, but the weariness beneath it was audible even from where I stood.
“She didn’t even accept my apology. She screamed at me and at her mother—your future wife! She said terrible things.”
Algernon gave a long sigh. “I would be angry too, if I had been through what she has, only to be ridiculed and called ugly by my new stepsister.”
I froze in the shadows, barely breathing. They were talking about me.
“But no one ever even told me what she looked like or why she looks that way!” Cynthia snapped.
“Nobody said a word, and then she just waltzed in with her face all—” She cut herself off, then pressed forward in a rush.
“It was shocking, Dad! Anyone would have been shocked. You should have seen her. It was like she was trying to look bizarre on purpose. She looked better this evening, but it really was awful this afternoon.”
“Enough, Cynthia.” Algernon’s voice dropped low. “I may as well tell you. Lenora hoped Truly would share it herself, that speaking of it might be healing for her. But under the circumstances…”
The air left my lungs in a rush.
“Truly and her father were in Avivia, delivering supplies to the villages on a goodwill mission,” Algernon continued.
“A mob attacked the wagon train. Her father was killed and Truly was taken and—” His voice caught for just a moment.
“They tortured her. Half her face and most of her hair were destroyed before the guards could rescue her. She is still healing from it.”
The words ripped me backward through time. I saw the mob again, their jeering faces. I smelled the pitch of the torches and felt the blistering fire pressed against my skin. My breath hitched as if smoke still filled my lungs.
Algernon’s voice tugged me back to the present. “So, if she was brutalized, scarred, and then hears her stepsister call her ugly the first time she works up the courage to leave her room…how do you think she would feel?”
There was a pause. Then Cynthia’s voice, trembling with frustration: “Dad, you know I never would have said it if I’d known!
It caught me off guard. You need to understand my point of view too.
She looked scary and I reacted poorly. You say everyone makes mistakes, and I did go back and apologize.
Lenora told you that, didn’t she? Or did she make it sound like I was some monster? ”
Algernon sighed, long and weary.
I should have moved on. I knew it was wrong to listen. But my body was rooted to the spot, my ears straining for every word.
“Cynthia,” he said gently, “some wounds aren’t mended by a single apology.
Lenora told me how traumatizing the past year has been for Truly.
She has hardly stepped outside for all that time.
She’s learning how to live again. And that will take patience and kindness from us.
You’ve never faced anything like what she has but you can learn to show her grace. I know you can.”
“You’re taking her side?” Cynthia’s outrage cracked her voice. “Dad, you aren’t being fair! What about Comfort? Aren’t you going to scold her for throwing ashes in my face and screaming at me? What she did to me was just as bad, and what Truly said too! Why aren’t you yelling at them?”
“I’m not yelling at you. I think everyone made mistakes today,” Algernon said, the exhaustion plain in his voice. “You shouldn’t have said what you did. Truly shouldn’t have shouted. Comfort shouldn’t have lashed out. But none of that changes what Truly has endured.”
“I’ll never forgive Comfort!” Cynthia snapped.
“Maybe you just need sleep,” Algernon tried. “You and Comfort have been best friends for months. You’ll make up.”
“We won’t!” she shouted, stamping the words into the air. “She betrayed me. And now you’re betraying me too! You’re choosing your new family over me.”
“That’s not true.” His voice softened into something unshakable. “I couldn’t love them more than I love you. You’re my daughter, Cynthia. That love won’t change, not ever.”
The silence that followed was thick, but I could hear Cynthia’s ragged breathing begin to ease.
“And I’m sure,” Algernon added carefully, “that Lenora and Comfort feel the same about Truly. They’ve suffered with her, and they want to protect her from any more pain. Try to understand. We’ll talk again tomorrow, okay?”
“Fine,” Cynthia muttered, sulky but subdued.
That was my cue. Forcing my leaden feet to move, I crept away, heart hammering, vaguely aware as I dropped my burden on one of the side tables I passed.
Emotions battled inside me. Part of me burned with hatred as Cynthia’s mocking words replayed like a knife twist in my gut.
But another part pitied her. She hadn’t known.
She’d been horrified, yes, but then she had come back to apologize, however clumsily.
And I certainly hadn’t helped things along when she did.
My fury began to ebb, leaving only a hollow ache. Cynthia had had a bad moment, and now found herself feeling like she lost both her father’s approval and her best friend’s loyalty in a single day.
I pressed my palm against the wall for balance, my head spinning. I couldn’t forgive her quite yet, but I could understand her, at least in some small way. At the bare minimum, I owed her an apology in the morning.
Maybe, with time, we could laugh about our disastrous first impressions of each other.
Maybe.