And after all she has said to him, what will he do to her? Her hands shake at the thought. She opens her mouth to fake an apology, to askfor forgiveness before her punishments increase tenfold, but her voice catches in her throat.
James is there, behind Father, peeking into her bedroom from the hallway.
She allows herself half a heartbeat to feel hope.
Father digs a pocketknife from his khakis and drops the blade. It clatters on the floor.
“Cut.”
She picks up the blade, levels it over her palm, and slices shallowly. Fire dashes across her skin, but she is used to the pain. Some masochistic part of her finds it comforting. Father lowers himself to one knee, dips two fingers into her bloody palm, and writes on the white rug:Nellie follows Daddy.
Nelle’s bones unclench, her brain a mindless soldier.
She takes Father’s cold hand as he leads them into his study. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases cover the walls, ringing a massive desk, the shelves packed with leather-bound journals and novels and magazines and old newspapers. The heavy velvet curtains are shut, transforming the room into a silo.
Father locks the door behind them.
He writes in a journal before he retrieves two items from the desk: a box of matches and a bottle of whiskey. He twists off the bottle cap, flicks it aside, and swigs, throat bobbing, bottle sloshing. Gasping like he drank fire, he wipes his mouth and holds the bottle out.
“Want some?”
Nelle tries to move her arms, but he must have written for her to remain frozen in place.Ugh.
“No?” The side of his mouth droops. “Fine.”
He circles the room, emptying the bottle across the bookshelves. When the bottle runs dry, he opens a hutch, clinks past crystal trinkets, and retrieves another, splashing it across more books and journals. The shelves are soaked.
As my final punishment, he’s going to destroy me.
He takes a final swig before dropping the bottle, which shatters against the floor.
“Do you realize, my little Nellie, what happens if I burn all these journals. All ofyou?”
There has to be an exit strategy she hasn’t thought of yet.
But there isn’t. Because she can’t move. Frustrated tears sear her cheeks.
“What happens?” she asks, playing the clueless child. Masquerading, hopefully for the last time, as naive, obedientNellie.
“Poof.” He bares his white teeth, maniacal. “You disappear.”
James pulls away from the study door and weighs his odds of breaking it down. Quill wouldn’t really destroy Nelle, would he? After all these years, all the work he put into her, all the effort to keep her hidden away, would he erase her like a typo? He doesn’t want to find out. Panic builds in his chest. He tries the knob, but it’s locked. The door is thick oak. He’ll never kick it down. Feeling useless, he listens through the wood.
“You see, my sweet Nellie, I love you more than the world,” Quill says.
Liar,James wants to say.You lovecontrollingher.
“More than I love myself,” Quill goes on. “More than I loved Eleanor. I am so, so proud of the woman you’ve grown up to be.”
Nelle’s words shake. “Go. Fuck. Yourself.”
“You chose a stranger, aboy, over me, your father. You would leave me if you had the chance, wouldn’t you? You would abandon your dad?”
Nelle doesn’t respond. James’s chest tightens, his heart pounding wildly. Time is running out, he knows that. Soon the fuse on Quill’s anger will burn, and then he will explode.
I have to do something.
“If I gave you the chance, right now, to walk out the door, would you take it? Would you leave? Don’t you want to see the world, Nellie?”Quill’s voice is manic. “Don’t you want to experience life, huh? Love, happiness, heartbreak, anger, loneliness, death, depression?Don’t you!”
