two #2
“Yes,” I say, picking up my glass and taking a gulp of water to wash down the sawdust in my throat. “But then, you already know that, don’t you?”
He exchanges another look with Duke.
I only ever mentioned her to him once, in passing, when I was talking about the founding families in our town.
I didn’t tell him we were friends. He had no reason to think she was any different than DeShaun Rose or Cotton Montgomery or any other founding heir.
She didn’t want to be shared, so I never told him or Duke or anyone outside my family.
My family that worried and threatened and hid her away until I knew not to speak her name ever again.
But I spoke it inside my mind, whispered it like a prayer in my darkest moments.
“If you’re talking about Dahlia Delacroix, I don’t know much about her at all,” Baron says.
I narrow my eyes at him. “Wasn’t that part of your plot to make me crazy?”
He frowns. “No.”
“It didn’t work, anyway,” I say. “I’m not crazy, and I’ll never let you make me think I am again.”
“We’re not trying to.”
I don’t believe him, but when he asks about her again, I know he won’t let it go.
So I shrug like it means nothing, like it’s not a betrayal.
“We were friends when I was a kid,” I say. “I thought she was real, but I guess I made it up. I don’t really know. It was a long time ago, and I don’t have a memory like yours. I remember us being friends, but we weren’t.”
“Why do you think that?” Baron asks, cocking his head.
“I used to write letters to her, at the boarding school where she went,” I say.
“But my parents didn’t like it. They’d always act concerned, I think because she didn’t exist, or our friendship didn’t.
They’d never talk about her, and when I did, they acted all weird.
They told me it was best to leave her behind.
They sent me to therapy when I kept bringing her up.
And when I was older, I sent her a letter, and the boarding school wrote back saying she didn’t exist. Unless you wrote that letter. ”
My heart hammers as I wait for a response.
Duke shakes his head. “We didn’t write any letter. We don’t even know about this chick. Right?”
He looks at his brother. Baron nods in agreement.
They may not know much about her, but she knew, far before I’d so much as guessed, that Baron would destroy me.
She remained hidden in the dark forest of my subconscious like intuition, whispering from the shadows for me to be careful, that we can’t trust anyone.
She wrapped her chubby child-fist around my spine and tugged, filling me with unease, planting the tiniest seed of caution, like the poison mushroom she slipped between the priest’s lips, silencing him forever.
“Okay, so she left that school, or the Delacroixs didn’t tell you where they really sent her,” Baron says. “That doesn’t mean you imagined her. She’s in their family tree.”
“Is she?” I ask, my throat suddenly tight. “Did you check, or did you just believe me when I told you she was one of their kids?”
“Of course I checked,” he says, his dark eyes earnest behind his glasses. “Mabel, you didn’t make up a person. I did extensive research on every founding family in Faulkner. She’s one of our lawyer’s kids. She’s not imaginary.”
She’s real.
My heart pounds erratically. They made me think I was crazy, but it was the other things, the things they didn’t do, that solidified it.
If it hadn’t been for that letter, for the way my family acted when I told them I wanted to contact her again, I might have held onto the thread of my sanity.
I would have known the Dolces were trying to destroy me.
When all of their torture caught up with me, I would have had a lifeline to reality.
When I lost Dahlia, that’s when I realized it wasn’t just these boys trying to drive me mad.
It was my own mind slipping away, already lost.
I spent three years thinking it was all in my head, that she was.
Is this real? Or one more ploy, one more building block in their next, elaborate scheme?
“Were we really friends?” I whisper. “Or did I make that up?”
“I’m not sure about that,” Baron says. “Obviously, it’s harder to find anything on little kids. No social media, not many school or hospital records. The regular extracurriculars for that age, music and dance and gymnastics and swim. A couple of those pageants that southerners still do.”
“Oh yeah,” I say, smiling at the memory. “Another Delacroix tradition that ended with her.”
Baron takes in this information without the judgment most show for the child pageant scene, his eyes serene behind his glasses. “She moved away, so I didn’t think she was important. But I’m sure we can find out.”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s not a good idea.”
“Why?” Duke asks.
I shrug, avoiding his eyes. “If she wasn’t real, then I could be her. I could use her name because she wasn’t using it.”
“She doesn’t own that name.”
“But she does.”
They both stare at me, and for once, I find myself wanting to talk.
I don’t know if it’s the glass of champagne I drank, or the dim candlelight that makes it seem unreal, like the fairytale in that cave when Baron gave me wine the first time, and we tangled our legs together and he told me his secrets too—that he thought he was a sociopath, and maybe he knew what made him one.
Or maybe it’s the way Duke is looking at me, his dark eyes filled with sympathy, the gold flecks like fireflies on a summer night; sparks spiraling into the black velvet blanket of sky that time we burned Devlin’s house, when I learned what fun felt like for the first time.
Or maybe it’s just the way Baron’s face betrays the slightest shade of skepticism, like he thinks I’m the one making it up to play them.
“She wasn’t like the other women in our families,” I say. “The ones who did what they were supposed to do, who were quiet and obedient and soft. That’s what Darling girls are supposed to be. And Delacroix girls too.”
“I don’t think girls in your family are any of those things,” Duke points out. “Have you met your cousins? Or yourself?”
“It’s what we’re supposed to be,” I say. “What people are supposed to think we are. But Dahlia wasn’t like that. She wasn’t afraid of anything. I remember the adults saying it was because of her mom, some outsider who worked her way in and captured a coveted Delacroix husband.”
“You heard people talk about her, but you thought you made her up?” Duke asks.
“I guess… I thought I made that up too,” I admit. “You don’t know what it was like. You made me question everything. Not just you. Myself. Reality.”
A tear slips down my cheek, and I angrily brush it away.
They don’t deserve to see my tears. Not when they caused them.
Not when they’re probably doing it again right now, telling me what I want to hear like they did at the start, making me believe because I want so desperately for it to be true—for someone to see all those same things that everyone always said made me a freak, and to think they make me special instead.
To not scorn and shun me, or tolerate me for a time before realizing I’m not worth it and leaving me behind. To love me.
And when I’ve let my guard down, when I love them so completely, so stupidly, that I don’t listen to the few people who want to help, then they’ll take it all away.
Their love. Their lies.
My delusions that I could be loved, that I could be part of something, that I could be a normal girl with a family, with a career and a husband and kids and all the things I never knew I wanted because I never thought they were an option.
I will never fall for it again. I know those things are not options for me.
If they were before, they’re not anymore.
The Dolces took that away like they took my sanity. I got that back on my own, and I won’t let them destroy it again. I won’t believe a word that comes out of their mouths, no matter how much I want to. What does it matter if Dahlia is real, anyway?
She’s real to me. Maybe she was a part of me, the part that dared to fight back, to do things that sweet, quiet, bland Mabel Darling was never allowed to do. And when I took her name, I did those things too. For a while, I was Dahlia, and I made men pay.
Not anymore.
The Dolces took that away too.
It was too risky, they said. The FBI might connect it to me, after that man in Maine disappeared.
The FBI might connect it to them, and then they’d discover the Alice in Wonderland operation, and we couldn’t have that.
I risked it all every time I met a man online, but they risk nothing.
They let me risk nothing. They keep me safe, like Baron always says.
They are here to protect me, like Duke always says.
Because sweet, bland, quiet Mabel Darling needs protection. She needs safety. She is a treasure, one who adorns their arms like a jewel, admired by all. She remembers her manners and doesn’t make scenes.
Dahlia made scenes.
Dahlia didn’t walk demurely to the restroom in a fancy French restaurant and let a man defile her because that’s what he wants and it’s his anniversary too. Dahlia didn’t tolerate it without complaint, then walk back to the table like nothing happened.
They didn’t want Dahlia, though, so that’s not who I am anymore. I’m Mabel Darling. Just like they wanted.
They are men, after all, and Mabel Darling was always good at being exactly what men wanted her to be.
So why, after they took Dahlia away from me, are they trying to give her back?