17 #2
She runs her thumb along the corner of my eye, and she says it like it’s a kind fix, something I shouldn’t fret about, because Mother will take care of it.
But I didn’t know there was anything wrong to fix until now.
She steps back—and the moment she does, and her hands leave my face, the dainty form of Amelia Sinclair shoulders past her with surprising urgency, and she latches onto me.
I endure another long embrace.
I return it, but each second that passes is another that Father is waiting.
And his patience won’t hold forever.
Maybe I wasn’t so nervous about seeing Mother after all. Maybe it was the inevitable face off with Father that’s been churning my insides like butter.
I might be nervous to face him.
But I’m not hurt by his snubbing of me. Not now that I know the truth. The truth about him. The truth about me.
A truth that has killed a part of me.
Ever since that night in the garden of Hell House, while Serena recovered from childbirth inside, and she held her baby, and I sat under the moonlight…
Ever since, I have been different. Changed.
And so Father doesn’t hurt me anymore. Because I understand.
My smile is watery and pained as Amelia releases me and, taking a step back, she stands with Mother, whose inky gaze hangs on my waist, as though the whole time Amelia held me, she was just standing there, considering my shape, my curves, my outline, and judging every inch of it.
Mother’s mouth thins.
And, like their minds are synchronised, Amelia looks down at my body, too.
It’s not a small amount I gained.
I’ve gone up a couple of sizes.
So I imagine I’ll be living off of peanuts and water for the next few months.
“It’s…” Amelia’s silken voice halts, it hesitates, and she touches her fingertips to her lips. “It’s fixable.”
Out the corner of my eye, Dray drops his head—and I almost think he’s hiding a smile, but as I lock onto him, I see that a muscle feathers in his jaw.
He doesn’t look pleased.
I almost scoff.
Like he of all people can be judging how others speak to me.
Mother’s face tightens the longer she inspects me.
I don’t know what offends her most. The jeans or the canvas shoes, the sagged ponytail, or that I’m a few centimetres wider.
She loosens her breath, fingernails clacking in that annoyed way of hers, and it warms me just to hear it.
Amelia murmurs quietly to Mother, as though I’m not right here in front of them, “Aerobic exercise, calorie deficit, and walking. A lot of walking.”
She turns her smile on me, and her pale inhuman eyes are still glittering with tears.
She adds, “The grounds are lovely in summer.”
Father has been a statue by the steps this whole time. But Amelia’s suggestion cracks his patience.
His retort is sharp, “Out of the question.”
I flick my stare in his direction.
Father cuts his sharp, outraged glare between Mother and Amelia.
The strength of his commanding voice leaves no space for argument. “Olivia will not be permitted to leave her chambers.”
Mother’s complexion should keep a warm hue to it, a lovely rich tone.
But all the warmth has been washed out, and there’s a deep ashy undertone to her cheek as she turns her dark, inky stare on Father.
She starts, “Hamish—”
His eyes flash.
“I will not be argued with,” he snaps, and even though it’s directed at Mother, I flinch. “Olivia will be confined to her bedchamber for as long as I command it, and if that is the rest of her natural life, so be it.”
There was a time I would have wept.
There was a time I would have cried and pleaded and blubbered.
Now, I just huff something tired.
Mother turns a sharp look on me.
I’m unaffected.
Amelia arches a brow.
I’m unapologetic.
I know now, in this moment, it won’t be easy slipping back into this life.
I have distracted myself with thoughts of how time has changed those around me. How it changed Oliver, Dray, my father, my mother—
But I didn’t give enough thought to how time has changed me.
Mother turns to face Father—to face off with him. “My daughter has been away from home for too long. She is finally returned, and I will be having dinner with her.”
Father’s jaw tenses so tight that his teeth should be creaking in his mouth. His lips curl, parting, ready to retort, and I don’t think his words will be kind.
Before he can utter a word, the clack of a cane strikes the stone steps, and it’s a sound that whips through me.
I know that sound.
I fear that sound.
I slide a stiff, scared look to the willowy figure standing in the doorway.
Grandmother Ethel.
The breath pushes out of me at the sight of her.
I hear her glove creak as she flexes her grip on the golden lion-headed knob of the cane—a new cane with a new adornment.
Her gaze is steady on me through the dim light of the courtyard, but she speaks to the group as a whole—
“A late dinner has been prepared for the party. The entire party,” she adds, with a side-look at my father—a look that has his jaw rolling. “Now let us fuss over the return of the black sheep like civilised people… over a meal in the dining hall.”
That settles it.
That ends the spat between Mother and Father.
But Mother still stabs him with a sharp look, one that is filled with a hatred, an unspoken loathing that chills my insides.
That…
That isn’t a look often shared between them.
That isn’t their relationship.
Even when they quarrel, it isn’t like this.
Father makes no move to go inside.
He waits.
Oliver and Dray, too.
As though they have no faith that I won’t go running down the driveway in another escape attempt, and so they must follow behind.
Like I didn’t return home willingly…
I could roll my eyes.
But Amelia moves for me with a smile on her lovely face. She slides her arm around mine, hooking us together, and starts for the doors.
“You are just in time for the summer season. It is my own favourite of the year,” she says, and Mother agrees with a hum as she comes to my other side and takes my arm in hers. “Oh, the weddings are just delightful, and of course graduations, and the trips—”
The second I notice the other silhouette in the doorway, I tune Amelia out.
I bristle.
Next to Grandmother Ethel, a smaller woman appears. Her wandering steps to the doorway are nervous, cautious, and she peers out into the courtyard.
Smaller than grandmother in height, but that round belly looks rather odd next to grandmother’s stretched willowy figure.
Asta is with child, like Dray said.
And the years have been fair to her.
There is no change in that perfect, sharp face of hers. No change in the icy pale hair that’s coiled up and held in place with a gold clip. Her cheeks and lips might be a little fuller, but since that pregnant belly of hers looks about ready to pop, I dismiss that as baby weight.
Serena gained a bit, and never lost it, not in her hips.
I don’t know if it’s the memory of that pregnancy or the sight of Asta Strom that sours me, but either way, I know my mood is darkening as I climb the steps.
Suppose it’s Sinclair now, not Strom.
Amelia must have brought her over from Thornbury Park when she got the message that I’m returning home.
Their estate isn’t far from here.
And I guess that means Asta is my neighbour.
I’m not thrilled about it.
I look at her, and I see her face twisted with rage and tears, it’s blotchy and feral.
But it isn’t.
That’s just how I remember her from when she beat me senseless in the phone booth corridor at Bluestone.
Now, she is utterly calm.
Put together in a way I’ve never been.
Her sharp chin is lifted, her glacier eyes switch between me, Mother and Amelia, and there’s something calculating about her gaze, like she’s figuring out her next move, or the new dynamics.
But she has a tell.
It’s the way she digs the nail of her middle finger into the pad of her thumb. Almost unnoticeable.
But Grandmother Ethel has a sensor built into her brain—and she turns a quiet, simmering glare on Asta.
Asta immediately stops.
She flexes her hand, then with a sharp look over at the men who are unmoving beside the stairs, she goes back inside.
Grandmother Ethel waits in the doorway.
Amelia and Mother only release me once we reach her.
And for a long moment, grandmother considers me, stopped on the step below her.
Grandmother Ethel does not give false smiles and reassuring words.
“You look pitiful, girl.” Her gloved grip creaks on the cane again. “That life has roughened your edges.”
I agree.
So I nod. Faint. Small.
But she notices.
And her sharp, hollow gaze burrows to mine.
“Well, girl? Was it worth all the trouble?”
Grandmother essentially points to the giant elephant in the room with the tip of her cane and calls it what it is, while everyone else ignores it.
She oversteps.
This is Father’s area.
But grandmother is who she is, and she will always be that.
My lips part—but I have no answer for her.
She knocks me off the shin with her cane. “We open our mouths to eat and speak, not to think.”
I clamp my mouth shut and, slightly, dip my head.
Grandmother’s presence in the doorway blocks all the traffic. Father, Oliver and Dray wait at the bottom of the three stone steps, silent and patient.
In the foyer, brushed over with the orange firelight and the glow from the iron chandelier above, Amelia and Mother wait.
Asta sticks to them like she’s glued to their shadows and doesn’t know what to do with herself.
But Grandmother has no immediate desire to move, not for anyone.
“Well,” she says, coldly, “you were missed by some.”
I smile, soft, and the words just whisper out of me before I can even accept them as some form of truth, “I missed you, too, Grandmother.”
And it’s the truth.
Never thought of all the people in my life that it would be Grandmother Ethel I missed.
I guess I missed home so much that I started feeling wistful about everyone.
I can’t explain it. I just know it to be true as I withstand her hollow bottle-green stare.
Her mouth purses and she looks me over. Then she just hums a curt response.
“Inside, girl, before the soup gets cold.”