What if, somehow, Father is stronger than Harry? What if he surprises him, coming out with a broken bottle, and kills Harry? I would end up back in the room again with my feet all bandaged up this way.
I wriggle in the seat, nervous.
“You alright?” Harry asks, placing his other hand on my hip. “I can take you back if you would rather not see this.”
But I need to. I know I need to witness whatever will happen here. And Harry’s safe. He’s young and strong, and he has his gun, which he knows how to use.
I swallow and shake my head. “I’m fine.”
Harry doesn’t pry more as we descend deeper into the woods along the road that I remember once led to our house. I ran that road as a child, and I’ve forgotten what it looks like in the light of day.
The house, too, is foreign to me as we approach it. Harry bids me to stay on the horse and dismounts, removing his musket from its scabbard. I want to go with him, to make sure nothing happens to him, but I know I need to stay. So I watch as Harry knocks on the door, but no one answers. He knocks again, then waits, then tries the knob. The door opens, and I tense on top of Sadie as Harry steps into the darkness of the house.
Then he’s gone. I shiver, even though I’m wearing his coat on top of my clothes, because that image of Father killing Harry with the broken bottle is lodged in my mind.
Some minutes pass, and I hear the clomping of boots. When he steps out of the house, Harry’s eyes home in on me, and he takes off his hat.
“Selene, I’m sorry.”
Sorry? What would he be sorry for?
“What did you find?”
He lowers his head. “Your father is dead.”
At first, I don’t think I heard him right. Surely Father can’t be dead. He was invincible, wasn’t he? He had been my keeper, after all. I only remained in that room because of him.
Except now he’s dead.
“Do you need to see?” asks Harry, approaching the horse. “He died in the kitchen. No blood. Must have been natural causes, perhaps a bad heart?—”
I’m lost, adrift, confused as he talks about my father. My father, who is now dead.
“Yes,” I say, interrupting. “I think… I should see him.”
It will break my heart, but it might be what I need to believe that it’s true.
With a nod of understanding, Harry helps me down from the horse, then carries me inside the dark house. I cling to him as we go down the hall, by the room with the broken door. Harry doesn’t pause or linger there, going past it to the kitchen. There, he stops at the threshold so I can see with my own eyes.
There’s my father lying on the floor, his eyes half-open and vacant, his arms askew. He looks soold. I never really saw his face when he slipped me my food, but now…
I don’t recognize him anymore. Looking at his body is like looking at someone else, someone who didn’t raise me from birth. This old dead man is a stranger to me.
When I tug on the lapel of Harry’s jacket, he turns around and leaves the house the way we came in. Then he puts me on the horse again, climbs up behind me, and directs us back toward town.
I’m in a daze the entire way, wondering what becomes of me now that I no longer have a family. There was no one else, none that I know of, besides Father. I was his only child, and now it’s just me. Alone in the world.
The constable is interested in what Harry has to say. Once the constable has asked me a number of questions, he goes out to check the house, too, and finds only a man who fell over dead one day in his kitchen. A man who kept his daughter locked in a room, where the door was broken from the inside.
The evidence is right in front of him: me, filthy and skinny, with a tangle of untended hair.
While the constable is occupied, we’re off to thedoctor’s. We don’t have an appointment, so we have to wait for some time before we’re attended.
The nurse compliments Harry’s work performing emergency care on my feet, and I’m strangely proud. I’m not surprised that he knew what he was doing as well as he could with the tools available to him.
Soon, it’s evening. Back home, Harry hurriedly helps me draw a bath, because all I want is to finally rid myself of the dirt of that room. To be truly free of it. While I’m cleaning the layers and layers of filth off myself, he rushes to make something to eat before he has to head off to work. He virtuously avoids the washroom until I’m finished, then he offers me some of his own clothes—which are far, far too large—before he’s off to work.
Then I’m alone. Alone with my thoughts. Alone with that memory of Father on the floor, his strange face looking off into the distance.
