I tried to walk past Celine, but she shot out an arm and stopped me. “Good Lord, child. Are youpregnant?”
I tried to wrench myself free, but Celine held me fast.
“Please,” I begged. “I won’t be any trouble to you. I’ll go. You won’t have to see me again.”
“Who did this to you?” Celine’s angry tone was also achingly maternal.
“I need to go.” My eyes brimmed with scorching tears.
“Was it Sam down at the cottage? Or that new man he hired? Tell me! Did one of the workers force himself on you?”
“No, no, it’s nothing like that.”
Please, please just let me go, I cried within.
But Celine’s grip tightened. “Are you saying youletthis happen?” Her eyebrows arched in disgust and disbelief. “Are yousaying you brought someone into this house, into your room, when I specifically told you not to? Are you running off with this man?”
“I need to go!” I cried out. “Please!”
Celine suddenly let go of me. Clarity, like a veil being lifted, seemed to spread across her face. She was fitting the pieces together: the night she’d stayed in Berkeley with a friend, Truman’s unexplainable restlessness of late, my own anxiousness.
“No,” she whispered, even as she was done putting all of this together and realizing it fit. “No, no, no...”
Then the look of clarity morphed into one of rage. Celine swept an open hand hard and fast across my cheek, nearly knocking me to the floor.
“After all I have done for you!” Celine yelled. “How could you do this?” She hit me again and I fell the rest of the way to the tiles, tasting blood in my mouth.
Celine paced away from me, raising a hand to her forehead as if to rub away fire-hot thoughts too painful to consider.
“I’ll go.” I half rose to a sitting position, my face stinging. “I can just go. No one needs to know.”
Celine wheeled on me, eyes blazing. “No one needs to know what? That you’re a slut? A lying whore?”
“I won’t tell anyone. I won’t tell.”
“What? You won’t tell anyonewhat?” Celine screamed, daring me to say the words.
“Please just let me go,” I pleaded.
Celine knelt down, just inches from my face. “Let you go? So you can spread lies about my family to whoever will listen to you?” She spat the words, and saliva speckled my cheeks.
“I won’t tell anyone! I swear!”
“You think I’d be stupid enough to trust you twice?”
“Mrs. Calvert, I—”
“Go to your room.”
“Please just let me leave. I promise I’ll say nothing.”
“Go!” Celine screamed.
I got to my feet unsteadily, took a step, and then reached for my bag.
“Leave it,” Celine commanded.
“But—”
