Chapter 8 #2
“Maybe Moby-Dick wasn’t the most inspirational choice for an infant,” James says.
Quill’s eyes darken into inkwells. “Our house caught fire when I was twenty-six, and they both died.”
The gun tilts toward James now, but not precisely at him. If he can dart out of the line of fire, he might be able to escape.
“Before I made Nellie, I had stopped writing novels. I had enough money to last a lifetime, and I’d never been so miserable. I’d lost what I loved the most in this world. So . . . I crafted a fictional daughter. On paper.”
A mahogany grandfather clock stands in the corner of the room, ticking toward twelve o’clock.
“But for twenty-one years, she’s taught me more about myself than I thought possible. Nellie is my little miracle. My baby. Don’t you get it?”
“Get what?” James’s anger slips out—only a hiss, not the whole boiling pot—through his gritted teeth.
“That she’s mine.” Quill stands and stretches to his full height. A tall, harrowing man.
James can’t combat the instinct to shrink into his chair.
“And as long as you’re around, you’re a threat to her.” Quill cocks the glinting pistol.
The grandfather clock in the corner of the room strikes midnight, clanging out a harsh tune. It shakes the floor, the walls, James’s very bones.
Quill recoils at the sudden sound, and while he’s distracted, James bounds toward the door.
He swings it open and warm air hits him, treetops waving like fingers.
But a hand from behind snags his shirt collar, yanking him back like a fishing rod.
James doesn’t hesitate. He balls his fist up and swings around, as hard as he can, and his knuckles explode as they collide with Quill’s face.
The older man staggers, stunned.
James cradles his forearm, pain shooting from his elbow to his fingers.
“You little shit.” Quill’s pistol hand goes limp as he sleeve-swipes his bloody nose.
James darts past him, praying that any bullets miss their mark. He blurs through the living room, into the kitchen, to the front door, dodging the dining table.
Crack! The gun goes off like a cannon, and the window above the kitchen sink shatters.
James reaches the front door, cold knob in his grasp, and pauses. Now is the perfect chance to escape—to run away and never return—but he can’t. Not without Nelle.
He spins around. The kitchen is empty.
Quill isn’t following him.
Nelle glues the side of her face to her bedroom door. Feet scuffle, and a man yells out, but is it Father or James? A gun goes off and she winces. James, as far as she knows, doesn’t own a firearm. Running footsteps, closer, closer . . .
The door opens into her chest, and she stumbles back into the bed’s iron footboard.
Father barges in like a storm cloud, more animal than man now.
“You ungrateful little bitch.”
Nelle jumps into his face. “He’ll come back. He’ll save me, and he’ll kill you—”
Father’s nostrils flare, and he strikes like a viper, his hand cracking her cheek.
Nelle drops to her knees, shaky fingers fumbling for the stinging hive on her face.
Bile fills her throat, hot and sour, but she forces herself to stand.
To shove aside the fear that makes her shrink, and to meet him eye to eye.
His uncombed hair, his beard, his sallow cheeks—they all trigger her gag reflex.
“I hate you,” she spits.
His face is impassive, fracturing her. Does he truly not care that she despises him? He has never shown her parental love like James described growing up with, but she always thought, somewhere in the caverns of his soul, that he cared about her.
It doesn’t matter, because she still can’t leave.
And after all she has said to him, what will he do to her? Her hands shake at the thought. She opens her mouth to fake an apology, to ask for forgiveness before her punishments increase tenfold, but her voice catches in her throat.
James is there, behind Father, peeking into her bedroom from the hallway.
She allows herself half a heartbeat to feel hope.
Father digs a pocketknife from his khakis and drops the blade. It clatters on the floor.
“Cut.”
She picks up the blade, levels it over her palm, and slices shallowly.
Fire dashes across her skin, but she is used to the pain.
Some masochistic part of her finds it comforting.
Father lowers himself to one knee, dips two fingers into her bloody palm, and writes on the white rug: Nellie follows Daddy.
Nelle’s bones unclench, her brain a mindless soldier.
She takes Father’s cold hand as he leads them into his study. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases cover the walls, ringing a massive desk, the shelves packed with leather-bound journals and novels and magazines and old newspapers. The heavy velvet curtains are shut, transforming the room into a silo.
Father locks the door behind them.
He writes in a journal before he retrieves two items from the desk: a box of matches and a bottle of whiskey. He twists off the bottle cap, flicks it aside, and swigs, throat bobbing, bottle sloshing. Gasping like he drank fire, he wipes his mouth and holds the bottle out.
“Want some?”
Nelle tries to move her arms, but he must have written for her to remain frozen in place. Ugh.
“No?” The side of his mouth droops. “Fine.”
He circles the room, emptying the bottle across the bookshelves. When the bottle runs dry, he opens a hutch, clinks past crystal trinkets, and retrieves another, splashing it across more books and journals. The shelves are soaked.
As my final punishment, he’s going to destroy me.
He takes a final swig before dropping the bottle, which shatters against the floor.
“Do you realize, my little Nellie, what happens if I burn all these journals. All of you?”
There has to be an exit strategy she hasn’t thought of yet.
But there isn’t. Because she can’t move. Frustrated tears sear her cheeks.
“What happens?” she asks, playing the clueless child. Masquerading, hopefully for the last time, as naive, obedient Nellie.
“Poof.” He bares his white teeth, maniacal. “You disappear.”
James pulls away from the study door and weighs his odds of breaking it down.
Quill wouldn’t really destroy Nelle, would he?
After all these years, all the work he put into her, all the effort to keep her hidden away, would he erase her like a typo?
He doesn’t want to find out. Panic builds in his chest. He tries the knob, but it’s locked.
The door is thick oak. He’ll never kick it down.
Feeling useless, he listens through the wood.
“You see, my sweet Nellie, I love you more than the world,” Quill says.
Liar, James wants to say. You love controlling her.
“More than I love myself,” Quill goes on. “More than I loved Eleanor. I am so, so proud of the woman you’ve grown up to be.”
Nelle’s words shake. “Go. Fuck. Yourself.”
“You chose a stranger, a boy, over me, your father. You would leave me if you had the chance, wouldn’t you? You would abandon your dad?”
Nelle doesn’t respond. James’s chest tightens, his heart pounding wildly. Time is running out, he knows that. Soon the fuse on Quill’s anger will burn, and then he will explode.
I have to do something.
“If I gave you the chance, right now, to walk out the door, would you take it? Would you leave? Don’t you want to see the world, Nellie?” Quill’s voice is manic. “Don’t you want to experience life, huh? Love, happiness, heartbreak, anger, loneliness, death, depression? Don’t you!”
Nelle chokes on tears. “Please. Just let me go.”
“You could’ve waited for me to show you, but no. It has to be him, doesn’t it? You know he will leave you.”
Something crashes inside the room, and Nelle cries. An animalistic surge rises in James, and he slams his shoulder against the door, but that only shoots tooth-gritting pain through his collarbone.
“Don’t do this,” she pleads.
Quill’s voice is thunderous. “Don’t do this? I have no choice!”
James jerks the knob side to side and shoves with his shoulder again, but the door stands firm.
Maybe he should’ve listened to Jessie when she told him to stay out of Nelle’s life, but all summer, he has stood at a crossroads.
Now it is time to take the road less traveled.
To bury the old James and introduce the world to someone even he hasn’t met yet.
Someone who fights for what he wants.
He finds the vial of ink tied to his neck.
Trembling, he empties it on the floor. It forms a small black mirror that reflects his hardened face. He drags his finger through the ink, harnessing the writer in his soul. On his arm, he writes a command in Nelle’s ink, Nelle’s blood. The black letters shimmer over his veins.
James waits and prays that it works.
The match between Father’s fingers teases its final wink when Nelle feels his control lift from her body. Her bones release like unlocked manacles. Like a tucked-in-blanket stripped off a mattress. There one second, gone the next.
In its place, there is a burning need to fight.
James, she thinks. If he has written for her, then every ounce of her that fills the pages of this room can be destroyed, and she will still be here. She will live.
If he has written for her, and it is working, then she is free.
“Burn it all,” Nelle says quietly.
She wants to laugh, to fly. For twenty-one years, she was unable to defy Father. Twenty-one grueling years of pressure swelling. She was a star, working up to a supernova.
“I would rather die than live in this house with you.” The words leave her lips drenched in fire. “Burn it all.”
“I . . .” The match burns out. Father drops it. “You want me to . . .”
“Burn it!” Nelle screams. His dumbfounded expression gives her immense satisfaction. She chuckles lowly and glares at him. “Burn it, you miserable little man.”
A quiet calm falls over him. He strikes another match, and it spits, catching fire. Without hesitation, he flicks it toward the circular wall of books, which ignites in a stinging blast. Nelle covers her face as white fire races around her, suffocatingly hot.
After the initial explosion, the fire calms and crackles along the shelves. It snakes across all of her journals until every wall in the room is up in flames. Her skin sizzles, hair floating with the billowing heat and smoke.
Seeing the pages that have made up her life flutter to ash should feel disheartening, devastating. Instead it’s freeing. Nothing tethers her to Lincoln, to this house, to Quill anymore.
Father’s heaving chest slows as he watches her, his coal eyes softening. He opens a drawer and slaps a manila folder on the desk.
“This is yours.” He slides it to her. “I never intended to keep you here forever.”
Nelle’s immediate reaction is to reject it, but after a moment of consideration, she picks the folder up and holds it close to her stomach.
“Why don’t I believe you?” she asks.
Then her mind, her body, her bones, feel an overwhelming need to leave. She walks backward, hits the door, and unlocks the knob. Facing Father, never turning away.
His gaunt face is splashed with shadows and firelight, a droopiness to his shoulders, a crack of defeat in his stature.
Nelle steps into the hall, hesitating before she shuts the study door. Father watches her go, and despite the fire wreathing him, no warmth touches his face. For a heartbeat, she considers saying goodbye. Then, on second thought, she slams the door shut.
James is already by her side, holding a chair.
He wedges it underneath the handle, as if that will stop Father.
Though he may not try to escape. Without her, what does he have to live for?
She feels no remorse for leaving him to burn, instead relishing the idea of him melting while the pages of his precious Nellie crumble to ash.
A new Nelle walks through the house, chin held high, James beside her, strange folder held tight against her chest. She walks out into the sticky night, tears dry on her cheeks, fireflies blinking between the trees, and watches flames lurch off the tin roof, an artist stepping back to survey her canvas after brushing on the final stroke.
James starts his truck. Nelle climbs into the cab and feels along the cracks in the leather seat. He gingerly hovers his finger over the still-fresh cut in her palm.
“Is this okay?” he asks.
“Yes.” She braces herself for the burn as his fingertips touch her open wound.
On the dashboard, he writes: Nelle rides with James.
A tight ball of yarn unspools inside her. As her cut stitches back together, Nelle watches the road and listens to her life crackle away over the sound of gravel under the tires.