I won’t let you go again.
Cal got up and sat on the edge of his bed, wrapping one of his hands around the post. It would have been easy to go to him, to stand between his powerful thighs and give herself over to him as they both fell backwards, even if it wasn’t quite the wildflowers he’d promised her.
But maybe she wanted ruin.
She could feel the floor falling out from beneath her feet. Because, in spite of his careless words, he had touched upon her greatest fear: that to open up to anyone meant pain and betrayal. That wanting to be held was constantly matched by the fear of being shoved away.
With Cal, she knew, that pain would come on an unfathomable and incomparable scale.
And yet, she wanted it anyway.
Whatever was happening on her face right now made his eyes narrow. “Go,” he said, but his weight shifted forward onto the balls of his feet.
Like he might just chase her if she didn’t.
She left his room without looking back, afraid that if she did she’d betray herself. There was a girl in her high school class who had been shamed for fucking a boy she liked for a necklace. A few stolen moments strung like glass beads on cheap wire. That’s what he was offering, she thought, kicking off her pants and pulling on her sweats. She decided the shower could wait.
Nadine moved to the window seat and lifted her legs with a slight wince, resting on the padded cushions as she tilted her head back against the wall. This was lovely. If only the rest of the house was like this. Sighing, she trailed her fingers through the voile curtains, looking up as she did, which was where she noticed the small off-white square that had been tucked into its dotted folds.
It was the same gilt-edged vellum that she had found tucked behind the painting. But this piece was larger—large enough to fold into quarters, which the person who had hidden it had.
I have been ruminating on my offspring, whom I fear may have diluted blood coursing through their veins, weakened as they are by the folly of their forebears. Alas, such lukewarm humours flow quite languidly, leaving any progeny foppishly milktoothed as life races swiftly past them, red in both tooth and claw.
It was with this in mind that I made my way to Argentum, so that I might establish a name for myself and endow a future for my descendants. Thus, may the name Cullraven resound with such thunderous force that all who hear it shall be struck with awe by its deafening knell, frozen wiltingly in their footsteps by the splendour of my family’s legacy and prowess, and this, for generations upon generations to come.
I shall create a festival that shall invigorate and fortify my children and their children’s children, imparting in them the art of casting off the tawdry vestments which society would foist upon them and call breeding and honour, thus enabling them to soar unencumbered to heaven’s great heights. And if perchance they should fail in their endeavour, they shall fall like stones cast from paradise, and all of its golden, godly riches.
And then, on the back, written in a different hand:
I am terrified of my husband. When he comes to me, he is like an animal. And afterwards, he will not touch or speak to me. But he shakes in his sleep so violently that it scares me.
Hescares me.
And when he is not here, I have strange dreams. They scare me, too.
I am so fucking scared all the time. And they know it. They watch me.
I think I have made a terrible mistake.
C H A P T E R
E L E V E N
? depends on who’s chasing ?
I think I have made a terrible mistake.
The fear and sheer desolation in the note tore at Nadine’s heart. Her sister’s handwriting was barely recognizable, no longer the cheerful bubble letters Nadine associated with her, but desperate scratchings inked out with a bleeding pen.
How long had Noelle been feeling this way, and what had she witnessed to make her hide something like this in the curtains?
The journal entry on the back appeared to have been ripped from the same tome as before. Nadine recognized the thick paper, the gilt edges, the pompous tone of the author. The green book, she assumed. Hidden by Noelle herself, with small crumbs scattered about as insurance in case the book was never found.Or found by the wrong person.
Remembering what had happened to the note in the mine, Nadine took care to photograph both sides of the torn-out page, this time. Then she tucked it into the pocket of her nightshirt, along with Noelle’s broken necklace and the scrap she had found behind the painting. It felt a little like she was gathering together the forensic evidence of a crime.
Soon I’ll have enough to go to the police, she told herself.They won’t be able to dismiss me this time, or tell me I’m in the way.There was some bitter satisfaction in that.
In the meantime, she would pretend that nothing was wrong. Until she found the green book, she couldn’t let the family know what she suspected. That was easy enough, since she wasn’t sure whatshesuspected, either. All she knew was that Noelle appeared to have been very afraid of Ben right before she disappeared, and that the pages from this journal seemingly tied into that fear.
