Odd Lucy
The door bangs open at a quarter to nine, and I flinch so hard the ladle nearly slips from my fingers. The unsteady thud of his boots on the floorboards tells me everything I need to know.
He’s been drinking again.
“Lucy.” His voice is thick, slurred. He stumbles into the kitchen, the reek of cheap gin rolling off him like a second skin.
“You’re late, Dad.” The words come soft. I don’t turn around. I can’t face what the drink has done to him. The hollow cheeks, the shaking hands, the eyes that once held love and now look straight through me.
“I had business,” he says, sharp as accusation. As if I made him late. As if I’m the reason he drowns himself night after night.
The ladle dips into the pot. I fill two bowls and slip the only carrot slices into his.
He won’t notice. He never notices the raw skin of my fingers from the washboard, the needle-pricks from mending torn linens for village women who bring their ironing because they know I need the coin.
They whisper behind my back. ‘Odd Lucy’, they call me, because I’d rather read than gossip.
Because my questions have no answers in this mud-choked place.
Because my gaze drifts past the lanes toward the horizon, searching for anything beyond.
“Business,” I repeat, “at the tavern?” and I finally turn. The sight of him—God, so old now—twists sharp in my chest.
“Joe Tallow,” he spits.
I flinch. The name lands like a slap. He snatches the bowl and drinks the broth in one long swallow, ignoring the spoon. “We came to an arrangement.”
The bowl clatters down. His hands tremble. Guilty eyes dart sideways, and my stomach curdles.
My father. The man who once lifted me onto his shoulders so I could see the world. The man who taught me to read by candlelight. The man who wept at my mother’s grave until his voice broke. Where did he go?
Through the cracked window, laughter drifts from the village fair.
Girls my age spinning and dancing, carefree and wanted.
I wonder what it feels like to be chosen for love instead of necessity.
The tattered romance novel beneath my mattress calls from upstairs.
A story of escape, of a woman who found someone who understood the restless fire in her blood.
That is not my story. It never will be.
I sit across from him. “Joe Tallow? Rude. Heartless. Disrespectful. The whole village despises him. At this point he’d marry the first unfortunate woman desperate enough to accept him.” A bitter laugh escapes before I can stop it. “I suppose that’s me now.”
“Lucy, I had no choice. The debts…” His cold, trembling hand reaches for mine. “I’ve tried everything. Begged the Order for mercy. But they won’t listen. After tomorrow, the cottage is gone. They’re taking it all.”
My hand pulls back of its own accord. “Then where will we go?”
“I’ll work to pay them back.” His palm presses to his chest, where the cough lives like a permanent tenant. “But you… I can’t leave you alone. You need to be cared for.”
“By Joe Tallow?”
His gaze drops. “He has a house. A business. He promised to treat you well.”
“Promised.” I rise, the chair scraping hard against the floor. “You believe a man like that? You’ve heard the stories. Everyone has.”
“I had no other choice!” His voice cracks. “I’m a dead man, Lucy. The Order owns me. When I’m gone, what happens to you? Alone in the world. If they decide to come after you too, who protects you?”
“You should have thought of that before you borrowed from those people.” I pause. “And I can take care of myself.”
“I borrowed to save your mother.” His eyes find mine, and for one aching moment I glimpse the man he used to be. “Every coin. Every gamble. I thought I could fix it. Thought I could bring her back. And now I’ve lost everything… Including you.”
The anger in my chest falters, softens against my will.
“What about you?” The question comes quiet. “What happens to you?”
“Don’t worry about me.” He waves a trembling hand. “I’ll be fine. I just need to know you’re safe.”
His face crumples. “I’m so sorry. I know this isn’t the life you wanted.”
“It doesn’t matter what I wanted.”
Safe. I think of my books. My dreams. The future I imagined. Someone who might love me for the questions in my head, for the way my gaze always searches past the horizon. Gone. Only Joe Tallow remains.
My foundation collapses. I’m glued together by sheer spite and stubborn breath.
Hot, angry tears carve paths down my cheeks before I can stop them.
“You have until dawn to decide. Tomorrow, I go to tell Joe you’ve agreed.”
I nod. Words won’t come.
He stands, body trembling with the effort. At the door he pauses. “I love you, Lucy.”
“I know.” The whisper escapes me. “I love you too.”
I should feel rage. Grief. The cold knife of betrayal. Instead there is only a strange, hollow peace that I know is the beginning of the end.
I climb to my room. The little altar by the window still holds my mother’s locket, her dried flower, a melted candle stub. I touch the locket, cold against my fingers. She told me to be brave, to be strong, to never to let anyone take my fire.
Is she watching now? Disappointed?
The lumpy bed mattress dips as I sit. My gaze fixes on the water-stained ceiling. Moonlight slips through the curtain’s crack, casting a single silver bar across the floorboards.
In the quiet of my own mind I wonder if I’ll survive this. If I’ll even want to.
The village girls’ laughter fades into the night. My books wait beside the bed. The man who might have loved me exists only in stories, not in this life.
There is no man. No rescue. Only a future of damnation.
A painfully beautiful pink golden dawn creeps across the horizon, and a presence stirs in the corner of my room. The shadows rearrange themselves. Cold curls through the air, unrelated to the open window.
Heart racing, I turn. Nothing there. Just the empty corner, the fading night, the first thin birdsong of morning.
I’m imagining things. I press my fingers to my temples and squeeze my eyes shut. I’m losing my mind before I’ve even left the house. But when I open my eyes, I could swear—just for a moment—that the shadows in the corner are darker than they should be. Dense. Waiting.
And then the knock comes at the door.
“Lucy. It’s time.”
I open it. Dad stands there, older than yesterday. He’s been crying.
“Yes,” I say before he can ask. “Tell Joe Tallow yes.”
A shaky breath escapes him. “Thank you. I know this isn’t—”
“It’s fine. Do what you have to.”
He takes my hand, presses it to his lips, and leaves.
I return to the window. The sun comes up over the village I’ve always hated, and with it comes the reality that I’ll never see anything beyond these woods.
In the corner of my room, the shadows wait. I wonder if they will follow me to my new home.