Chapter 4 #2
“And you would rot,” he says. “You would emaciate and rot until you were so weak you wouldn’t be able to open your fucking mouth. I need you, my sweet girl, but you need me more. Without me, what would you be?”
Without him, she would be happy.
“I’m sorry.” She uses the floor to hide her lying eyes. All she sees is his black crocodile loafers as he paces, back and forth, creak after creak. “I won’t talk to him again.”
His shoes stop—creak—pointed at her.
“Oh, Nellie, look at me.” He touches the delicate skin under her chin, a hint of emotion in how he cradles her jaw. So rare for him. Maybe it is compassion. Or sympathy. Or maybe just a trick of the light. “I’m not trying to scare you, Nellie. I just want to keep you safe. That’s all.”
“I know.” She waits for him to leave. When he doesn’t, she decides to ask a question that has been trapped inside her for years. Best to test Father’s limits right after he has thrown a tantrum, when he still feels sorry.
“Do you think I could try writing?” At his quick alarm, she adds, “Not with my ink—I know the consequences—but with a normal pen. I’ve been rereading Little Women, and Jo is . . . and I thought maybe . . . I want to write my own stories.”
Father drops her chin, wordless. His silence scares her most.
“I don’t need much. Just pen and paper.” She twists a stray thread in the quilt. Even as a grown woman, he can make her shrink into a child.
“You know I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Nellie.” He is gentler then she has ever heard him, swaddling her with his voice. “I can get you more paint if you’re running low.”
Empty canvases sit stacked against the wall, covered in dust. She hasn’t painted in years.
Father always kept strict rules on the subject matter of her art.
She could only paint a bowl of fruit or the willow in the front yard so many times before she spiraled into insanity.
When she was thirteen, she dared to paint without a reference, and Father retaliated by rampaging and shredding the canvas.
She had painted a giant, naked woman squished into a tiny cage, legs and nose poking through the iron bars.
He fed each scrap of canvas to the fire. Made her watch it burn.
She forces a smile. “I’ve got paint.”
A knock echoes from the front door. Father swears as he storms out of the bedroom.
Nelle breathes through the spike in her pulse. If James has returned, she doesn’t know what Father will do to him, or what he will do to her. She stares at the blank canvas and imagines it splashed with her blood and James’s, black and red swirling together.
Nelle strains to catch every sound as the front door squeaks on rusty hinges.
“Hello, Officer.”
Officer. Nelle freezes. If James called the fucking police, I’ll strangle him.
“How’s your evening, Mr. Quill?” asks an unfamiliar woman. Under her polite tone, Nelle hears suspicion, which means Father hears it, too.
“Oh, it’s all right. Hasn’t been the same since . . . well, you know.”
“I’m sorry, I’m unfamiliar with what you’re referring to.”
His accent flares up, a sign he is either trying to confuse or charm. “My wife died a few years back. In a house fire.”
Twenty-two years is more than a few.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” the officer says. “Do you mind if we talk inside?”
Nelle hears a hard noise and imagines his arm lurching out across the doorway, blocking the officer’s entry.
“Do you have a warrant?” Surprisingly, Father’s voice sounds level. A general question, no hint of nervousness. But the question itself gives the impression he has something to hide.
“No, sir, I don’t,” says the officer.
Please, Nelle thinks, biting her tongue. Come search. Find me.
Though what would she do if they detained him? Only he can write her commands.
He is quiet for a moment, and Nelle can almost see his spiderweb smile curl from one dimpled cheek to the other. His charisma is his secret weapon. With a few words, a second to warm up, and a laugh, he can snare anyone.
“Come on in,” he says at last. Two sets of footsteps move into the kitchen. “Would you like a cup of coffee? Fresh pot.”
“No, thank you.”
Nelle moves to lurch off the bed, to hide in her closet, but her legs are locked in place. He must have written for her to stay put. Her heart races. How will she explain to the police if they try to move her and she won’t budge?
“I’m already on my third cup,” he says. “Mind if I pop in the toilet?”
“Go ahead,” the officer says.
The floor whimpers under his feet, closer and closer, until he slips into the bathroom across the hall from Nelle’s room. A second later, she eases off her iron bed, springs groaning, and smooths down the quilt before situating the pillows. Making it appear unused.
She goes hazy with anger at her lack of autonomy, her body moving on its own, following the orders he has written for her.
Her arms tremble as she pries the window free.
She pulls hard, but it is glued shut from years of neglect.
The toilet across the hall flushes, and she uses the sound to hide the pop as the glass pane jumps free.
She hangs one leg out, then the other, and drops to the dandelions outside.
Her feet ring at the impact, nausea filling her stomach.
Then she tugs the window nearly shut, leaving a small gap so she can hear inside.
She flattens herself against the house, struggling to breathe in the wet-blanket heat.
A fly darts around her head and lands on her nose, tickling.
She moves to swat it, but her arm is immobile now.
“What room is this?” the officer asks.
They’re in my bedroom.
“This was my daughter Eleanor’s,” Father says. “After the fire, she moved to Scotland with her grandparents.”
Lies, lies, all lies. Nelle can imagine him wistfully stroking the roses papered to the walls, the sparkle of a tear running down his nose. Eleanor died alongside Bianca in the house fire. Nelle knows it to be true. She has watched Quill mourn her daily for twenty-one years.
The officer says, “She liked to paint?”
Nelle snorts and the fly speeds off. The dust-coated canvases and brushes will only serve to back up his story.
“‘Liked’ is an understatement,” he says. “I keep everything she made from age two in the basement.”
That much is true. For as long as Nelle has painted, she has given her finished pieces to Father to store for safekeeping. He never once hung one of them for display.
“My daughter loves art, too,” the officer says. “You seem fine here. I got a distressed call from a young man earlier today. He was worried about a friend of his, Nelle Quill, but we have no record of you having a second daughter.”
“It was probably a prank,” he says. “The kids here think me the Boo Radley of Lincoln. My house gets TP’d about twice a year.”
“I’m sorry to bother you, then.”
Their footsteps fade.
Nelle releases an imprisoned breath as feeling returns to her face and fingertips. But it’s not until minutes after the police car crackles away up the gravel driveway that she feels her body’s tight hold unravel. A far-off command guides her around the house and to the front door.
Father stands in the kitchen, his back to her. The lights are off, so the room is shape and shadow.
“That boy is responsible for this,” he says, his voice low and cold. Nothing like the poor, lonely man who spoke to the police officer moments ago. “You are responsible for this.”
“I’m sorry,” Nelle says. The apology leaves her lips like bubbling acid. She wants to spit it out, to sear his face with her words. Instead, she chokes. She tries to take a step forward, her thigh flexing with the force, but her legs are frozen in place.
A journal hangs limp in Father’s hand. She can sense the switch in his aura, a cat going from cuddly to demonic in the span of seconds. He flips on the stovetop, and a blue flame appears. The smell of gas hits Nelle as he scratches in his journal.
Her feet carry her to the stove, and she holds her hand over the flame. She no longer begs for mercy, not since she endured his hundredth form of torture—three hours with her head held underwater—and realized that he will never change.
Her hand inches closer to the gas flame.
It starts hot and itchy, like her skin is peeling back.
Her palm opens like a rose, but she doesn’t dare look.
Whimpers rip into sobs, and she relents to the fire.
She scream-cries from the bellows of her gut.
Years ago she gave up any hope that the neighbors were close enough to overhear her.
The flame burns, but she heals fast, an endless loop of passing out and waking up over the stove to more indescribable torture.
Burn and heal. Over and over.
Again and again.