Chapter Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Seven
I still feel furious when I burst into the cottage. Furious and duped and guilty for not caring more about what happened to Elise. I mean, I do. I’m not a monster. That poor, poor girl. I can’t blame Violet and the others one bit for attempting to get justice.
What I do have a problem with is how they tried to do it at my expense, by using my personal history, my private pain. It makes me want to scream.
Which I almost do.
I stop myself because I’m certain it will wake Ronan.
Something I don’t want. Just because I’m not inclined to take part in this revenge scheme doesn’t mean I don’t think the bastard has it coming.
Including Elise, he seduced and filmed six women.
That we know of, Susie was quick to point out. Which means there’s likely more.
And that, had I joined him in his room tonight, I could have become one of them.
I think about how nonchalantly he stood in the hallway in his boxers. Like he wasn’t my boss. Like there was nothing weird about it all. And even after he tried to grab my ass and stuff his tongue down my throat, I was the one who apologized.
Because that’s what women have been trained to do.
Since the beginning of fucking time.
It doesn’t matter that, in this situation, Ronan has all the power.
He’s a famous director. I’m just an actress plucked from obscurity to star in his next movie for reasons that were once unclear to me.
Now, though, I have a good idea why Ronan picked me.
And I fear it’s for the exact reason I overheard Susie mention days ago.
Ronan thought I would sleep with him.
The realization adds a heaping of foolishness to my shame. Ronan didn’t hire me because I was the best choice. Or because of what I revealed during my audition. It was because he took one look at me and decided I’d be easy pickings.
And Loretta went along with it because she saw an unstable girl with a dead sister who could potentially fall for their ridiculous plan full of fake séances and fake hauntings and fake disappearances.
Both were traps, and I walked right into them. I feel so angrily stupid that I kick the wall, hitting the baseboard directly where Daisy had carved her eponymous wheel a century ago. The action produces a crunch-crack against the toe of my shoe that satisfies in a primal way.
It feels good to damage something.
It feels better to destroy.
So I kick it again.
Harder this time.
And keep kicking until the baseboard splinters and pain shoots through my foot.
I drop to the floor, overcome with emotion, tears sprouting from my eyes.
I cry not because of what happened to Elise or because Ronan isn’t the man I thought he was.
I’m weeping uncontrollably because, as I was kicking, I thought about Molly.
And how, thanks to the strange events occurring on New Avalon, I’d concluded that her visits when I was five were real.
That the biggest mystery in my life had finally been solved.
That I’d be able to move forward, without doubt.
Now I have nothing but doubts. I know just as much as I did when I was five, back to wondering if Molly really had been haunting me or if I was just crazy with grief and guilt.
And I suspect I’ll never know, which brings on more tears and, incidentally, more destructive anger.
I reach for the splintered baseboard and rip it from the wall, the wood bending and nails popping.
The violence exposes two inches of wall colored differently from the rest, unblemished by decades of wear and tear.
And where Daisy’s wheel used to be, something pokes from the crack between the floor and the wall.
A corner of yellowed paper.
I crawl closer, pinch it between my thumb and forefinger, and tug. Shoved under the wall and then pushed up inside it, the paper budges an inch. Enough for me to realize it’s not one piece but several. I run my thumbnail along their edges, counting five in total.
I freeze.
It can’t be.
The odds are a million to one.
Yet crazier things have happened on this island, so I continue to pull on the pages. Slowly. Careful not to tear them as they emerge inch by inch. Eventually they’re freed. A brittle, mangled mess.
I flatten the ragged pages against the floor and give the first a quick, anxious scan. It’s covered in a faded scrawl, the script large and frantic.
Oh. My. God.
Somehow, whether through fate, destiny, or just dumb luck, I’ve found the missing last pages of Daisy Rue’s diary.