CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I stum-bled into the hall-way and to-ward the front door, my limbs clumsy and weak from ter-ror. Like a baby deer run-ning from a hunter’s crosshairs.
Who-ever carved this mark on my face was in the Gallery of the Ex-quis-ite right now. They could kill me at any mo-ment, and I was pow-er-less to stop it. I pic-tured a dis-em-bod-ied hand hov-er-ing a blade over my chest, a frac-tion of a sec-ond from plung-ing.
This one felt dif-fer-ent. It was so brazen, so big. So … fi-nal, some-how. A twisted mur-derer reach-ing their crescendo.
There was a gun to my head, and nowhere to run.
Nowhere to run ex-cept home.
It was time to con-front my mother. Be-cause I was go-ing to the po-lice, with or with-out her ap-proval. I had to get Davina be-hind bars, be-fore she could land the killing blow.
But first I had to know ex-actly what I was con-demn-ing my mother to.
Had she re-ally killed my fa-ther? Could she have ever been that cruel?
Part of me al-ready knew the an-swer.
Grab-bing my car keys, I ran from the flat, down the stairs and into the atrium, and then out-side in my bare feet, not feel-ing the frozen graze of the ground shred my ten-der skin, and I ran to my car and piled my-self into the front seat and I drove.
I hur-tled out of the Do-rian grounds and onto the main road into the city.
I pushed the pedal to the floor, balls of my feet sting-ing, un-til the fear of my speed out-weighed the fear of ev-ery-thing else.
Clas-si-cal mu-sic played on the ra-dio this time.
Vi-valdi. The del-i-cate pi-ano, the swoops and soars.
Tears streamed down my sting-ing face, and I could barely see. The rain-slicked road was mer-ci-fully de-serted; my car clock read 3:14 A.M. I kept driv-ing into the city, still cry-ing un-con-trol-lably, un-til dual car-riage-ways be-came low, sprawl-ing sub-urbs. Leafy neigh-bor-hoods be-came tall Geor-gian town-houses. I half mounted the curb as I hastily slammed on my hand-brake out-side the front door.
It was un-locked. A wall of stal-e-ness hit me as soon as I walked in.
Mum was slumped on the leather sofa in the liv-ing room, all lights off ex-cept the flick-er-ing tele-vi-sion il-lu-mi-nat-ing her face in un-nat-u-ral col-ors. The room smelled acidic, stag-nant. Three empty bot-tles of wine lay dis-carded on the floor like a child’s un-wanted toys, and her hand clutched a wine glass. The thin stem of it had snapped in her grip, like a bro-ken swan’s neck, but she was snor-ing too loudly to no-tice. There was a small, per-fectly round patch of drool on the vel-vet cush-ion.
Emo-tions warred in the bat-tle-ground of my chest. An in-fan-tile sad-ness, a sim-mer-ing anger, a pseudo-parental need to pro-tect her. Some-thing with the same sil-hou-ette as shame. It wasn’t my fault, but it felt like it might be. It had al-ways felt like that—some fail-ing of mine, that I wasn’t enough to keep my mother sober.
I wasn’t enough. No mat-ter how much Catalina made me feel oth-er-wise.
“Mum,” I said into the mis-er-able room, barely rec-og-niz-ing my own voice. It wasn’t choked with tears, as it should be, but rather a clar-ion pitch.
But when she didn’t even stir, ev-ery-thing in me splin-tered.
I bent down and picked up one of the empty wine bot-tles, and for a sec-ond I wor-ried I might never stand up again, but rage pulled me to my feet.
“MUM!” I roared, and then I hurled the bot-tle with all my strength at the wall far-thest from her.
It shat-tered into a thou-sand glit-ter-ing pieces, fall-ing to the ground like icy hail in a car’s stark head-lights. And for a sear-ing mo-ment, I imag-ined what Catalina would think if she saw me now. The shame burned even hot-ter in my chest.
With a dazed jolt, Mum shud-dered awake, peel-ing her eyes open one at a time and look-ing up at me blankly.
“What?” she slurred, a sin-gle un-feel-ing syl-la-ble.
She looked at me like she might look at a bur-glar who’d bro-ken into her house in the night; a bur-glar who held a gun to her head, and she didn’t have the en-ergy to protest. Com-plete and ut-ter ap-a-thy.
And even though I now un-der-stood more than ever why she was like this, it still carved me open.
It was too much to bear.
“My dad,” I hissed. “What hap-pened to my dad?”
She didn’t even have the good grace to look ashamed.
“All my life I begged for scraps of in-for-ma-tion, and you re-fused.” I was trem-bling from the mael-strom of emo-tions. “Then you sold it all to the high-est pub-lish-ing bid-der? I don’t un-der-stand you. I don’t un-der-stand how you can have so lit-tle re-gard for me. Did it even cross your mind, how I might take this? Was I an af-ter-thought? Was I even a thought at all?”
Still she said noth-ing, and the urge to grab her by the nar-row shoul-ders and shake un-til her brain bled out her ears was al-most too strong.
“I hate you!” I screamed, crouch-ing to pick up an-other wine bot-tle. “I fuck-ing hate you!” Hurl, thunk, shat-ter-ing glass. “You’ve ru-ined my life and you don’t even fuck-ing care!” On the last syl-la-ble, the echo of the smashed bot-tle dis-si-pated.
Noth-ing re-sem-bling sad-ness or shame crossed her face—she didn’t even have the de-cency to raise her voice, to show some kind of depth of emo-tion.
“Oh, be-cause I’ve been such a ter-ri-ble mother?” she said flatly, still slumped over the sofa as though all her bones had melted. She hic-cuped, and her eyes drifted in dif-fer-ent di-rec-tions. “I might not shower you with hugs and kisses ev-ery minute of ev-ery day, but I’ve given you things most peo-ple can only ever dream of.”
She buried a hand into the crease of the sofa, pulled out her phone and tapped the screen.
That sin-gle sec-ond of ca-sual phone-check-ing was a heeled boot in my gut.
“You think most peo-ple have a house like this?” she con-tin-ued, once she’d as-cer-tained no-body more im-por-tant had mes-saged. “You think most peo-ple go to the kind of school you went to? You have the best of ev-ery-thing, the de-signer clothes, the nice car, the—”
“Did you kill my fa-ther?” I yelled, not even car-ing who heard me.
She just stared blankly at a spot over my shoul-der, drop-ping her phone back to the floor.
“Tell me, Mum.” My voice was a hot snap, like an elas-tic band pulled taut for a decade and fi-nally re-leased. “Tell me ev-ery-thing, right now. Or I’ll go to the po-lice my-self.”
That got her at-ten-tion. “You wouldn’t. You know what I’ll—”
“I’ll dial nine nine nine right in front of you, if you don’t be-lieve me.” I pulled my phone out of my back pocket.
She held up her hands in de-feat. “Fine. Fine, al-right?”
Ev-ery-thing in me stilled, hardly dar-ing to be-lieve I might fi-nally peel back the cur-tain on my own haunted past.
“It all started with him. With the Masked Painter.” All the ine-bri-a-tion ebbed out of her voice, like this con-ver-sa-tion was a leech drain-ing the al-co-hol from her blood. “He was your fa-ther. And yes, I killed him.”
Some-how the con-fir-ma-tion felt worse than I could ever have imag-ined. My mind was a house on fire, flames lick-ing out of ev-ery win-dow.
“Why?” Such an ab-surdly nar-row word for the mo-ment.
Si-lence.
“MUM!” I yelled. “For fuck’s sake!”
She didn’t flinch, but she did start talk-ing—a dis-tant drone. “We had sex the night he painted my por-trait. I was the only sub-ject he ever in-vited back to his own home—a cabin in the woods—and he paid for that mis-take with his life.”
“You killed him that night?” My chest was tight and heavy, like a corpse lay di-rectly on top of it.
“No. I had no rea-son to. But a few months later, I be-gan to re-al-ize the true toll of the por-trait. The things I usu-ally did to com-bat de-pres-sive episodes no longer worked. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t get out of bed, couldn’t see the point in any-thing. All the im-por-tant friend-ships in my life slowly fell away, be-cause of how mis-er-able I was, how dif-fi-cult to be around. I wanted to die. The veil of dark-ness could not be lifted, and I even-tu-ally re-al-ized it was be-cause the paint-ing pre-served me ex-actly as I was in that mo-ment in time. Just as Or-lagh said.
“So I went back to the Masked Painter’s cabin, and I begged him to undo it, to de-stroy the paint-ing, what-ever it took. No mat-ter how much I wanted to pre-serve my looks, it wasn’t worth the ex-cru-ci-at-ing cost. But he told me there was no re-ver-sal, and that de-stroy-ing the paint-ing would de-stroy me too. Such was the na-ture of the an-chor.” She swal-lowed a dry lump in her throat. “We fought, then, vi-ciously. I screamed at him for not warn-ing me, I screamed and screamed that he was evil, that he was prey-ing on women’s in-se-cu-ri-ties for his own twisted ends, that this was all just some way to wield power over us.”
True. It was all true. The thing I couldn’t quite un-der-stand—what he stood to gain. No money changed hands, and there was no fame or ado-ra-tion to be gar-nered from a gallery deep un-der-ground, far away from the gen-eral pub-lic.
“Did he tell you why he did it?” I asked.
“He said that he’d been born with this im-pos-si-ble gift, and that he wanted to use it to shape the world.” Mum scoffed with dis-dain. “To make gods of mor-tals.”
I waited for her to con-tinue, but her un-even gaze had parted again. Her head swayed slightly, but she didn’t seem to re-al-ize it was do-ing so.
She still hadn’t no-ticed the blighted mark on my face.
A small re-min-der that she did not, in any mean-ing-ful way, see me.
“So you fought with the painter,” I prompted. “Did you know you were preg-nant at the time?”
“No. I was hys-ter-i-cal, and started slap-ping him, and he grabbed my wrists to stop me. I yanked them free and shoved him back-ward, and he lost his bal-ance. He fell. His tem-ple hit the cor-ner of the cof-fee ta-ble, and he was dead be-fore he hit the ground.” A strange phys-i-o-log-i-cal re-sponse clapped through her, and she shud-dered once—a pup-pet-like jolt.
“The body was found a few weeks later,” she went on, voice murky. “Some hik-ers smelled some-thing aw-ful com-ing from the cabin. But as far as I know, there was no real mur-der in-ves-ti-ga-tion. No signs of forced en-try to the house, no ev-i-dence of foul play on the body—my fu-tile slaps hadn’t left a mark. I think the po-lice must have chalked it up to a bad fall.”
Sud-denly notic-ing the snapped wine glass in her hand, she let it fall ab-sently to the ground, splin-ter-ing into more de-spon-dent shards. “I wasn’t even re-lieved to be let off the hook. To be hon-est, I wasn’t re-ally think-ing about the fact I’d killed some-one. I was think-ing about how I was trapped in-side the black cloud of de-pres-sion for the rest of my life, un-able to feel any-thing at all. An-other month later, I re-al-ized I hadn’t had a pe-riod in a while. I thought maybe it was be-cause of the por-trait, some-how, since I wasn’t men-stru-at-ing when I sat for the paint-ing. But then came the pos-i-tive preg-nancy test.”
Which you felt noth-ing for, I thought mis-er-ably. You’ve never felt any-thing for me at all.
“How was it pos-si-ble?” I asked, fo-cus-ing on the lo-gis-tics so I didn’t have to process this very spe-cific pain. “To get preg-nant, I mean. If the paint-ing pre-served you ex-actly as you were—”
“That, I don’t un-der-stand.” She shrugged. “But I know plenty of the Gallery’s alumni have gone on to bear chil-dren. One of them is even in the Guin-ness Book of World Records as the old-est mother in his-tory.”
“So that’s why you re-ally left Do-rian. You were preg-nant.”
“In-deed.” She rubbed her hands over her face. “Yes, there was the de-pres-sion, the model scout-ing lur-ing me away, but the heart of it was the baby in my belly. I hid it for long enough to do a few high-pro-file shoots, then dis-ap-peared to give birth in pri-vate.”
Why had I never done the math be-fore? It should have been so ob-vi-ous that she’d left Do-rian be-cause of me, but I’d never thought to lay down the time-line. To ask her how old she was when she joined Do-rian—and when she’d left.
“You kept me.” My voice was hoarse.
“Par-don?”
“When you found out you were preg-nant. You didn’t get rid of me. Why?”
A long, ag-o-nized si-lence. And then, in a tiny voice, “I thought you might fix me. I thought you might break through the fog of de-pres-sion.”
But I didn’t.
“Of course, it doesn’t work like that.” She gave a bit-ter lit-tle laugh, sharp and acidic. “I couldn’t fix my mother, and you couldn’t fix me. You know, your grand-mother was as beau-ti-ful as us. A farmer’s daugh-ter, a car-pen-ter’s wife, a home-maker. She mea-sured her-self with a pink dress-maker’s tape ev-ery sin-gle morn-ing, and she wrote down the num-bers in a lit-tle red note-book. ‘I’m the same size now as the day I was mar-ried,’ she’d say, so proudly, as though if that were all she ever achieved with her life it would be enough.” A deep swal-low. “Maybe that’s why I made the de-ci-sion I did. Maybe it’s why you did too. The fam-ily curse.”
A lot of the fight or flight had left my limbs, and I crum-pled into a stiff loveseat, bend-ing my-self around the pit of ag-o-niz-ing hunger. My cheek still stung like a hot whip.
“Aren’t you go-ing to ask what hap-pened to my face?” I asked qui-etly, pet-tily.
“What hap-pened to your face?” she mut-tered im-me-di-ately. She didn’t need to look at me to know what I meant—so she had reg-is-tered it ear-lier, but hadn’t cared enough to ask.
I looked down at the last un-smashed wine bot-tle, feel-ing the dim de-sire to hurl it at a wall, but I was too bone-tired to rise to my feet.
“I’m still be-ing carved up. Cuts all over my neck and chest. And now this.” I grit-ted my jaw. “I’m go-ing to the po-lice, Mum. About Davina. I’m go-ing to die oth-er-wise.”
I hated the plead-ing notes un-der-pin-ning my voice. It felt like ask-ing for mercy.
Why wouldn’t my mother do any-thing to pro-tect me, the way moth-ers in sto-ries al-ways did?
“I’ll kill my-self.” The words were so plain, which some-how made them feel even cru-eler.
“Mum,” I pleaded, just a girl, just a lit-tle girl at the heart of my-self. “What other choice do I have?”
She shrugged. “You could take care of this Davina char-ac-ter your-self.”
I stared at her in hor-ror for sev-eral mo-ments—this ghoul of a woman I had mir-rored for so long—be-fore storm-ing out of the house once more.
I was dimly aware that it might be the last time I ever saw her alive.
The drive back to Do-rian was an er-ratic spi-ral of blar-ing head-lights and corkscrew thoughts. Clas-si-cal mu-sic, a starry sky, the feel-ing of be-ing stuck on a merry-go-round I could not get off.