But no matter how loudly I berate him or how viciously I prod and poke him, he won’t move. He’s too soundly asleep. Maybe it has something to do with the way his body has to process all that raw flesh.
My stomach lurches and I run to the sink, holding my hair back while I vomit. I wash the bile down the drain and rinse mymouth. As I’m turning off the water, I hear a distant, determined knocking at the front door of the mansion.
The sound ceases, and I wait, holding my breath and hoping whoever it is will go away. But the knocking begins again, more insistent than ever.
No doubt there are servants already up and about, tending to the stables and the gardens. If they see someone hammering at the front door, they might come to investigate. Or the visitor might go to the servants’ house and start asking questions, and then I’ll be in deeper shit. I need to take care of this now.
“Fuck!” I hiss, nearly stumbling over my husband’s giant body as I race toward the entry hall. I unbolt the doors and pull one of them open just a crack.
My mother is standing on the front step, wrapped in a shawl, looking cold, tousled, and determined.
“Mama! What the fuck are you doing here?” I exclaim.
“You weren’t home yesterday,” she says tightly. “Neither was your new husband. The servants gave us some bullshit excuse, but they didn’t seem to know where you’d gone. I was so worried I couldn’t sleep last night. We barely know this man, Sybil. I kept thinking, what if he hurt you? What if he killed you? I had to see you with my own eyes and talk to you—”
“Hush, please, hush.” I open the door wider and pull her inside. “Get in here. You’ll wake the entire estate.”
“I was right!” my mother says triumphantly, her eyes blazing. “Somethingiswrong. Do you need me to kill him? I’ll do it, you know. It’s not as difficult as you might think. I would do anything for my girls.”
Something in her tone stops me cold. She’s absolutely sincere in her offer to kill my husband for me. And the way she phrased it makes me think it wouldn’t be her first time.
“Mama.” I take her shoulders and look her straight in the eyes. “Have you killed someone before?”
She scoffs. “Don’t try to change the subject.”
“I’m not. This is relevant to what’s happening with me. I need to know if you’ve ever disposed of a body.”
“You killed him yourself?” she exclaims. “That’s my brave girl!”
“Mama!” I shake her a little. “Tell me this, or I won’t tell you what’s going on with my marriage. Honesty first, then trust. Who did you kill?”
Her lips pucker and she makes a frustrated sound, averting her gaze. “It doesn’t matter who it was.”
“It matters,” I whisper. “Please tell me.”
She closes her eyes for a second, and when she opens them, they’re steady, cold, and unrepentant. “I think you already know the answer to that question. There’s really only one person it could have been.”
It all makes sense suddenly. The abrupt way my father ran off with the tinsmith he’d been fucking. The way he left everything behind, all his things, all his savings. The way he vanished completely—no more mentions in the local newspapers about his performances in Gresoul or at court.
My mother killed him and his mistress. And because of who he was, a known philanderer and an impulsive wanderer, no one questioned it. No one cared enough to investigate his departure. They assumed he had gone west with the tinsmith to begin a new life.
Mama is searching my gaze, a defensive anxiety in her expression. She wants to know how I’ll react, if I’ll judge her.
I’m getting a little tired of dealing with dramatic confessions from people I thought I knew.
“Where is he?” My voice sounds hollow and strange, even to me.
“In a bog near Grandmother Riquet’s cottage.”
“And the tinsmith? Did you kill her as well?”
“No! Gods, Sybil.” She stares at me reproachfully. “I went to meet her later, after… after it was done. I offered her money toleave the area, and I told her I wanted to make the marriage work for the sake of my girls. As it turns out, she was a decent woman who didn’t realize he was married.”
I raise an eyebrow. “You called her an impoverished little fool.”
“And she was, for thinking that your father meant any of the promises he made her. She left that night, and our neighbors figured he went with her. He had bragged about leaving to a couple of men at the pub in Loisay. That’s how I found out about his plan. One of the men’s wives told me.”
She pauses and wipes her trembling hands on her shawl. “I convinced your father to go for a walk with me in Wormsloe, and when I confronted him, he admitted that he was leaving with her. He planned to take all our savings with him, and he said once he was settled in a new city, he would send some men to pack up the piano and the rest of his furniture and belongings—as if none of it was mine. He told me he was going to sell the house, too.”
