Page 126 of Twisting Beauty

Then he said something that made my blood curdle in my veins. “You’ll have to keep quiet so your brother doesn’t get jealous.”

The chair under my feet felt like it tipped out from under me. Bile climbed the back of my throat.

All this time, he’d been doing this to Rua.

And I had not seen it.

I’d been so jealous of her. Daddy’s girl who never disappointed him. Who’d never known the end of his rage and his cane.

Christ. The shame and the rage came up together so fast I couldn’t tell them apart.

Her gaze moved to the vent.

To me.

Help. Her whole face begged me, and her left hand shifted on the blanket in a gesture I recognized the moment I saw it, the universal signal for help.

I did not move.

I could not move. My body had locked itself the way it locked itself the moment the cane came down, the trained stillness Alistair had built into me bone by bone.

Move. Move, you fucking coward.

But still I could not move.

Alistair leaned forward. His hand moved to her knee. His fingers slid up, the hem of her nightgown rising with them.

Something coiled and restless inside me snapped.

I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t fucking stand it.

I couldn’t do nothing.

I jumped down off the chair, crossed to the bedside in three strides, and flipped the catches on my ma’s violin case.

I crossed back to stand under the vent and lifted the bow. I lifted the violin and pressed the instrument to my shoulder.

I knew what this would cost me before the first note left the strings. I did it anyway.

I did not decide to play “The Parting Glass.” It was simply the song that came. My ma’s favorite. The song Alistair had banned from this house the day she died.

The first note was raw. The strings bit at my fingers. The bow trembled on the second draw and steadied on the third. Loud enough to carry. Deliberate enough to be unmistakable.

Through the vent I heard the bedsprings shift.

I kept playing.

I heard her bedroom door open and close. Then his heavy footsteps in the corridor. Coming closer. Coming for me.

I did not stop playing even as my fingers trembled and my lungs seized because stopping would send Alistair back to her.

My door hit the wall hard enough to crack the plaster.

Alistair filled the frame.

I looked at my father across the dark room with the violin still at my shoulder. I made him wait for the final note, forcing him to stand there and listen to the memory of the woman he had tried to erase.

Only when I finished did I lower the bow.