The door swings inward with a groan.
The room is slightly larger than I imagined, but that only makes its contents more obscene. The walls are the same grey stone, but they are adorned with implements I can barely comprehend; gleaming metal, polished leather. Things with chains, straps, and sinister curves. They hang like perverse artwork. In the centre of the room is a large bed. It’s made up with crisp, white linens, a grotesque parody of normalcy amidst the tools of torment.
And then I see her.
She’s by the far wall with her back to us, her posture slumped as if carrying an impossible weight. She wears a dark blue piece of lingerie. Something expensive, something obviously meant to shame her more. Her hair, once a vibrant golden blonde like mine is a dull, lifeless grey, lank and unwashed.
At the sound of the door, her entire body flinches. It’s a violent, involuntary spasm of pure terror. She turns slowly, reluctantly, and I see her face.
The world tilts on its axis. The air leaves my lungs in a painful rush.
It is my mother, and it is not.
The face I have clung to in my memory for years, the warm, smiling face that whispered stories to me at night, is gone. In its place is a gaunt mask of suffering. Her eyes have sunken into deep, bruised hollows. They are wide with a familiar, animal fear as they land on Antonio. Her hands, thin and trembling, come up in a feeble, instinctive gesture of defence.
Then her gaze shifts. It slides from him to me.
The fear in her eyes doesn’t vanish; it transforms. It melts into a confusion so profound it seems to physically pain her. Her brow furrows. Her lips, chapped and pale, part. She stares at me as if I am a ghost, a hallucination summoned from the deepest recesses of her tortured mind.
She stumbles back a step, her hand flying out to brace herself against the cold wall. A small, broken sound escapes her, a whimper of disbelief.
“Elaine,” Antonio’s voice cuts through the thick silence, cold and authoritative. “You have a visitor.”
My mother’s name on his lips is a desecration. She doesn’t look at him. She can only stare at me, her eyes tracing the lines of my face, the sweep of my hair, the expensive silk of the emerald-green dress Antonio had made for me as her eyes catch on the diamond collar at my throat.
I find my voice. It is raw, stripped bare. “Please can I have a moment. Alone.”
He turns his head slowly to look at me, his dark eyes unreadable. “That is not advisable, Grace.”
“Please,” I beg, forcing myself to meet his gaze, to pour every ounce of false submission I can muster into my eyes. “Please, just five minutes.”
He studies me for a long, agonizing moment, his jaw tight. He is calculating the risk, the threat, the value of this concession. Finally, he gives a curt nod. “Five minutes, and I will be right outside.”
The warning in his tone is unmistakable. He steps back, pulling the heavy door shut. The click of the lock engaging feels like a death sentence.
We are alone. Mother and daughter. Prisoner and prisoner.
For a moment, we just stare at each other. The silence is a living thing, choked with twelve years of absence and a universe of pain.
“Grace?” Her voice is a raspy whisper, eroded by disuse and tears. It is the most beautiful and the most terrible sound I have ever heard. “God, is it really you?”
I can only nod, my throat sealed shut by a sob I am desperately trying to contain. I take a tentative step forward, then another, until I am close enough to touch her. I can smell the faint scent of soap on her, and underneath it, the sour tang of despair.
Her trembling hand reaches out, her fingers brushing the silk of my sleeve. She touches it as if it is something magical, otherworldly. Her eyes drink me in, and I see the calculations happening behind the pain. The diamonds. The dress. My presence here, withhim.
Understanding dawns in her sunken eyes, followed by a wave of such profound grief that she sways on her feet. “Oh, my baby girl. I’m so sorry. So sorry.” She takes my hands in hers. Her skin is papery thin, her bones fragile as a bird’s. “You have to be strong, Grace. Stronger than you think you are. You have to do whatever it takes, whatever he asks. Do you understand me? Whatever it takes to survive, to stay out of this place.”
At her words, the dam inside me breaks. The composure I have fought so hard to maintain, the icy control I wrapped around myself to get through the door, shatters into a million pieces. The tears come in a hot, uncontrollable flood.
“I’m not strong,” I weep, my body shaking violently. “I can’t do it anymore, momma. I can’t. He, I thought he loved me. He made me believe it. He was kind, he was charming, and I was so alone and so scared. I let myself believe it, but he’s a monster and I can’t, I can’t live like this.”
I am collapsing inward, my knees buckling, but she is there. She catches me, her arms wrapping around me with a strength I didn’t believe her frail body still possessed. She holds me as I sob into her thin shoulder, her own tears wet against my temple.
“I know, my love. I know,” she murmurs into my hair, her voice cracking. “I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry that I can’t save you. I can’t do anything.”
It is this that steels me. Her apology, her helplessness. Her love, still intact after all these years in this hell. It gives me the strength to do what I came here to do.
I pull back, wiping desperately at my tears. I have to be quick. Our time is slipping away, and I’ve already wasted too much with my own self-pity. “You can’t save me,” I whisper, my voice suddenly steady, hollow. “But I can save you.”
