Chapter Thirteen
When Ava got home, she stood in the hallway for a moment, waiting for the darkness before her to take shape.
She’d told the man who’d come to her door that remembering was peaceful.
Painless. But standing here – watching the slow edges of the side table, the hooks upon the hat stand come into focus – she wondered if she was wrong in that, too.
For who had the past given peace to? Not her father.
Not her brother, either – who she had left to try and mop up the mess she’d made. And certainly not herself.
She scrunched her hands into fists, squeezing and squeezing until her muscles shook with the effort, until she could try and focus her attention there – on the press of her own fingernails against her palms, the sting of it.
‘Ava? That you?’ Oliver called out. The kitchen door swung open then, and a thread of light spilled into the hallway. ‘I made pie.’
‘Coming,’ she said, shucking off her coat.
Oliver’s apron was dusted in flour when she stepped into the kitchen, and a sticky blackberry pie sat cooling atop the high ledge by the window.
‘I saw Lillian today,’ Ava said, slumping into one of the chairs.
‘Oh?’
He turned back to the counter, sweeping the last remnants of flour up with a damp cloth.
‘She knows, Oliver.’
She watched him straighten. Watched him turn to her – placing the cloth down slowly, each movement measured.
‘Knows what?’ he asked, his tone light, though his voice snagged a little in his throat.
‘You know what.’
When his gaze lifted to hers she didn’t see the fear, the worry that’d made her own breath catch in her throat at the Roxy – instead she saw something else.
Resignation.
‘Bertie promised me she would keep it a secret,’ he said softly – wiping his good hand down his apron, streaking it with his flour-covered fingertips.
‘And you believed her?’ Ava’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Oliver, how could you be so foolish as to tell her?’
‘I didn’t tell her,’ Oliver said – his tone tightening. ‘She found out.’
‘How?’
‘It doesn’t matter now,’ he said, not looking at her but down at his hand, freeing sticky crumbs of dough from his palm with one finger. ‘What’s done is done.’
Ava felt something squeeze in her stomach. ‘You know whatever Bertie hears, Lillian hears. You should’ve warned me – should’ve told me.’
‘You should’ve written more,’ Oliver parried.
Ava nodded, feeling each word like a stone, thudding into her stomach. ‘I know.’
But there was another sentence hanging in the flour-dusted air between them, one that neither of them reached for.
You shouldn’t have left, Ava. None of this might have happened if you hadn’t left.
‘Is there anything else?’ she asked. ‘Anything else Lillian can hold over you?’
He kept his gaze upon his hands. ‘No.’
Ava stood, crossing to her brother, placing a hand upon his good arm. ‘If I go back to the theatre, if I ready Miss Fairchild for the stage, then Lillian won’t say a word.’
Oliver’s brow creased. ‘This is my problem to solve, Ava—’
‘This is our problem,’ she corrected. ‘And I shan’t let that woman do anything that could hurt you. Because that’s what family do for one another. We protect one another.’
He looked up at her, his gaze trembling. ‘Is it?’ he asked.
‘Of course.’ She pulled him into a hug, feeling how warm he was in this small, stuffy kitchen. ‘You’re my brother.’
He was rigid for a moment, and then he reached to pat her back with his good hand. ‘Just be careful, Ava,’ he said softly. ‘I’m not convinced I’m the one she’s truly after.’
Ava thought of the way Miss Lillian looked at her then, at the Roxy. And then she thought of what she had said, after.
A lot has changed since you left.