He blinks at my snappy tone. “Okay. Just checking. I guess… I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I barely manage to nod, and he turns away from me, glancing back over his shoulder before he heads down the hall. It feels as though my chest is caving in as I watch him walk away, my snapped words the last thing between us. I nearly call out, nearly call him back.
I catch the words on my tongue. If I do that, then I might break down. And he would fight. He’d get Silas, and Kit, and they would speak to their father, and my mother might follow through on her threat.
I don’t want anything to happen to them because of me.
I swallow, biting back the agony as I head to my room. Silas and Kit both knock on my door in the hours that follow, but I sit silently, my back against the door and my cheeks damp as they call my name in soft, worried voices.
But they leave. And eventually, the house grows quiet.
Slowly, I get dressed, slipping on the green checked dress I wore on my first day here and sliding my feet into black shoes.
When I open the wardrobe, I grab the small holdall I came with.
I don’t have much that I want to take with me. Most of what I had was paid for by William, and it doesn’t feel right. But there’s a few things that I can’t leave behind.
Branches from the orchard, whittled by Rafe into little makeshift animals that look nothing like what they’re supposed to be. Stones from the stream that Kit and I found one day while paddling. And letters, from Silas. Letters that he slips under my door, on the days when we don’t get to talk in the hall.
I grab a few more basics before I creep out, my throat tight as I move down the hall.
Past their bedrooms. Past my mother’s room. I can hear footsteps inside, and I speed up, slipping into the last room at the very end and glancing around as I flick the light on.
I’m not supposed to be in here. It feels wrong, but my mother was very clear.
I glance at the photographs tucked into the mirror on the dressing table. At the smiling, dark-haired woman, soft and pretty and beaming, tucked beneath a grinning William. Two babies are cradled carefully in her arms, William holding a small boy with blue eyes. He’s staring down at his little brothers, his eyes wide.
The image swims, and I look away.
I’m doing it for them, I tell her silently.I’m sorry.
I’m so sorry.
It’s the only thing that could possibly drive me to pull open the delicate drawers of the dressing table. Rows and rows of jewelry greet me, just as my mother said. Slowly, I reach in, grabbing a set of glistening bracelets and dropping them into my bag.
Then the necklaces. The rings.
With each clink, the guilt consumes me, piece by piece. My hands shake violently, and it spreads across my body until I have to sit or I’m going to fall.
I try to breathe, curled over on the carpeted floor of their mother’s dressing room. A sacred space, one that none of them will enter. Only William, sometimes, when he thinks nobody is watching.
And I’m here.Desecratingit.
I blink back tears. Tears of rage, of frustration.
I can’t do this.
I tip out the contents of my bag in a rush, opening the drawers as I try to remember what goes where. I glance up, to the woman in the photo.
She’s not having it,I promise her silently.I won’t let her have a single thing.I’ll find a way.
My mother has more than enough, withoutthis.
I’ll put it all back. And then I’m going straight to Silas. He can help, he’s older, he’ll speak to William—
“Anastasia?”
For a moment, I think I’m imagining it. Then my whole body turns cold.
