“When we were eleven. The doctor lost his temper after she tried to stop him from burning the bottoms of our feet. She took the branding iron and threw it at his back. He—” Sophia’s gentle voice cracks. It’s still fresh. “He pinned her down and burned her face off and broke her nose with the iron.”
I pull my lips and look away.
She was eleven.
“I wish she died on the spot, but she didn’t. My sister survived for a short while, a few days, screaming from the melted skin on her face. She couldn’t even cry tears because her eyes were burned shut.”
An ache rises in my throat. This was my great-aunt. Story was my father’s aunt he never got to meet.
“Oh, Sophia…”
She wipes her runny nose with the back of her hand. “Anyway, she ended up passing away from an infection from her injuries. I remember asking if someone could bury her with my parents in the mountains. You see, when the Doctor discovered sets of twins, he abducted them and had their families murdered.”
“I—I didn’t know that.”
There’s never really been much conversation about my father’s lineage at all actually.
“The Doctor’s wife was there when I asked. She desecrated Story’s body with holy water. Said that bad little girls didn’t get proper burials. That her body would be tossed in the cremation pit with the other dead inmates,” Sophia continues, now sobbing into the back of her hand.
“Absinthe,” I say between my teeth.
“You’ve heard of her.”
“Yes.”
“She was wrong. My sister was strong. She’d take punishments for me. She’d distract me with fairytale stories when the terrible doctor was torturing us. Story was the best, most brave little girl. And with her death, I lost my whole family.”
Jack comes in and out of sleep, giving her arm a soft pat.
“Except for Jack, of course.” Sophia smiles sadly. “We’ll always be family.”
“How long have you two known each other again?” I ask, hoping the subject change will dry her pretty brown eyes.
“Since we were children. His village was close to mine in the mountains. We’d play together because we thought we were so special, the four of us being twins and all.” She chuckles, wiping her face. “I used to call him Mr. Leather Man because he’d always wear this leather jacket Jeb made him. Even in the summer.”
“And Jeb was Jack’s twin brother?” I ask.
Sophia lowers her eyes sadly.
“Similar fate as Story?”
“Very similar.”
Tears swell in my eyes.
I wonder if my mother knew any of this.
“You’ll see them in heaven one day, Sophia. You both will. I know they’re up there waiting and watching,” I say.
“Jack and I always say Story and Jeb are probably the most stubborn guardian angels.”
A lingering silence passes between us as sleep lowers my eyelids. Niklaus is like a warm weighted blanket that makes sleeping in a cold, eerie cage not so bad.
“Sophia?”
“Hmm?”
“I don’t know how much time with you I have left, so I want to tell you this now…I can’t say I know, but I hope you’ll remember it for the rest of your life.”
