CHAPTER TWELVE

“Let me go! Let me go, you bastard!”

That shout is followed by a thump, then a scream. I rush downstairs and see my father struggling to hold my mother still. She's flailing and shouting something unintelligible as she fights him. I see a flash of silver, then hear my father cry out. He releases Mother, and she pulls away from him. She stumbles and falls, then gets to her feet and faces him.

In her hand, she holds a letter opener, the glint of silver I see. Blood wells up from a wound on my father’s arm. She stares at him, eyes wide and bloodshot. “Back off, or I’ll kill you too!”

I hear a whimper and assume it's coming from me. Surely, I'm terrified enough to be crying. But then I feel a hand slip into mine and realize that Annie's woken as well.

The cry attracts my mother’s attention. Her eyes snap toward us, and I flinch. Her lips pull back in a snarl. “You. You little cunts! You’ve taken everything from me! My whole life! How dare you!”

She rushed toward the stairs with snakelike speed. Annie screams and tries to run, but I remain rooted to the spot, frozen in fear.

She’s going to kill me , I think. She’s going to kill me and Annie. She’s finally going to do it.

She reaches the foot of the stairs, but before she can climb, Father grabs her around her waist and throws her across the room. The sight of my father lifting her bodily off of the ground and throwing her through the air is just as shocking and disturbing as my mother’s threat to kill us.

She lands with a cry of pain. The letter opener skids across the floor and clatters against the far wall. Mother curls into a ball, weeping and muttering epithets.

“Mommy?” Annie asks tentatively.

My father looks at us, and in his eyes, I see the same hate that blazed in our mother’s eyes a moment earlier. “Go to bed!” he roars.

That finally snaps me out of my funk. I rush to my room, Annie at my side. We close and lock my door, then bury ourselves under the covers and cling tightly to each other until the morning. We didn’t sleep alone for years after that. Not until Annie finally…

***

I gasp and sit up in my bed. This time, the symptoms of my night terrors are in full force. I am dripping sweat, trembling and hyper ventilating. I look around wildly, and it takes me a moment to remember where I am and to realize that I’ve woken.

I sigh and run my hands through my hair, then check my phone. It’s just before midnight. I’ve slept for less than two hours.

I get out of bed and head to the shower. It’s doubtful I’ll get any more sleep tonight, but if I do, it won’t come for a while. I take my time in the shower, allowing the warm, soothing water to slow my heartbeat and calm my trembling muscles.

When I am finished and dressed in fresh nightclothes, I leave my room. I check on Celeste, carefully opening the door and peering inside. She sleeps on the floor, surrounded by drawings pencils, and other implements. Crumpled papers lay scattered everywhere, rejected drawings, I suppose. I can't see what she's drawn without turning on the light, and I don't want to risk waking her right now.

I close the door and head downstairs. Celeste spent the entirety of yesterday after our conversation in her room, refusing to come down for lunch or dinner. I called Sean at one point, but only received a brief text in response. Still working, will call when I have news.

I wanted to do some investigation of my own, but I still don’t feel comfortable leaving Celest alone with Evelyn, so instead I help complete chores. When Evelyn leaves, I call Sean again, but once more, he only texts me, this time a somewhat irritable. I haven’t called, so that means no news. Be patient.

I consider calling Detective Reyes. The studio is still taped off, and there’s been no word from the police department. I think it would be helpful to Celeste if we could tidy up, but I don’t want to do that if the police still need the scene. I can’t imagine why they would leave it as it is for over a day if they still needed it, but I don’t want to risk putting myself on their radar.

So I head to bed frustrated. Apparently, I'm also troubled by Evelyn's comment about mental illness because I dream of my mother's own episode shortly after we moved to America.

But now I am awake, Celeste is asleep, and Evelyn isn’t here. I won’t sleep again for hours, so I return to the art closet to continue to look for anything that might help me understand what might have happened to Victor now and what might have happened between her and Annie thirty years ago.

I spend the first hour looking through the paintings, but I don’t find anything there. They’re all portraits of people I don’t recognize or landscapes of various local scenery. The box of newspaper clippings I’ve already examined. There’s nothing there that I don’t already know.

Besides the painting and the box, there is a small desk with file cabinets. The smaller ones on top are filled with old bills of sale for art sold many years ago. There might be something useful in there, but I don’t find it especially likely.

The next one, however, reveals a faded, leatherbound journal. I pick that up and open it to see it signed by Victor underneath the title, MY LIFE followed by dates that begin thirty-two years ago and end twenty-eight years ago, a few weeks before Elias’s death.

This could be a gold mine.

I start at the beginning and skim the entries. The thoughts are those of a much younger man and full of hope and optimism. How often the young squander such gifts.

The first entries are all about Elias. Victor’s admiration for him borders on obsession. Elias’s criticisms cut deeply, and his praise lifts him to exultant heights. It seems Lisa wasn’t wrong about their relationship.

Speaking of Lisa, she is mentioned in a few entries, but never treated with any importance. Victor talks of Elias’s agent as a pretty enough girl but too sensible for my taste. I smile drily at that. It seems Lisa wasn’t wrong about Victor’s opinion of her either. Perhaps I’ve thought too harshly of her.

Others float through from time to time. An art dealer named Sampson is reported to have enraged Elias enough that the man physically threw him out of his house. Lovers come and go—all Elias’s, I notice—and once, Victor’s sister visits him. He speaks with vitriol of her attempts to “separate him from his idol.”

I wish I could have met Elias. Perhaps if I knew him personally, I might have a more intimate understanding of Victor and maybe know where he might have gone, assuming he left of his own accord and wasn’t taken by another.

I reach the entries near the middle of the journal, around the time my sister would have arrived. I actually hesitate before reading further. A part of me, I suppose, is still frightened of what I might find.

You feel guilty for what you did to Annie.

I flinch at the memory of that uncalled-for and utterly untrue accusation. Dr. Strauss never even told me what it was I was supposed to have done to her.

That’s because you slapped her immediately after she said that.

I turn the page fiercely, determined to forget that hateful woman.

Annie isn’t mentioned directly at first. It’s not until around a month after her disappearance that Victor mentions the arrival of a truly beautiful woman, perhaps even a goddess, who instantly captures Elias’s fancy.

That sounds like my sister. She had a gift. Men would indeed fall for her on sight, as though by her very presence she cast a spell on them.

I read further. Victor’s mentions of Annie grow longer and more involved. It’s clear that Elias isn’t the only one captivated by her. A few weeks after the first entry, he leaves a long love letter to her, praising her as something that transcends reality, a fairy princess in whose presence I am lucky to bask, whose favor I am lucky to enjoy, though such favors are never as much as I wish for, never what I long for. Oh that just once she might look on me with the same love with which she gazes on him!

Poor Victor. I feel sorry for him. Annie was not an unkind woman, and I am sure she never teased Victor or led him on. She always preferred older men as well, so it’s not a surprise to me that she fancied Elias, especially if Elias was the dominant partner in his pseudo-romance with Victor.

But I feel for Victor. I know what it’s like to live in the shadow of such light, to hate it as much as you love it, to wish that you could possess it, that you could drive it away, that you could belong wholly to it, that you could erase it from existence if only to breathe without suffocating.

I gasp and sit bolt upright. I stare ahead, disoriented for a moment. My thoughts have run completely away from me. What have I been on about?

I sigh and turn the page again. Annie remains in the entries for about three months before a final entry. I do find it odd that she’s never mentioned by name. Perhaps Victor simply preferred to use his pet name for her.

The Fairy is departing today. She told me this morning over breakfast. She hasn’t told Elias yet. She doesn’t want to see him when he finds out. I can’t blame her. He’s grown steadily more cruel to her. The love he felt for her in the beginning has twisted into something rotten. He would never hurt her, and when I tell her this, she assures me that she knows, but she can’t stay here anymore. It’s not good for her or for him.

I feel a touch of sympathy at that. Poor Annie. To have fought so hard to find a place where she could feel safe and loved only to learn that love doesn’t always last, nor does it always guarantee safety.

Behind that sympathy, I feel a touch of cruel satisfaction. I hate myself for it, but I am beginning to resent Annie for leaving the way she did. All these years I had to live with the fact that she might be dead, and now I find that she was alive, that she took a lover and had friends, that she built an existence without even doing me the courtesy of sharing why she was shattering mine. Knowing that the life she tried to build without me failed is a pleasantly bitter pill.

Would you rather she had been kidnapped or murdered?

That thought is enough to banish my cruel thoughts and replace them with guilt. I won’t allow myself to feel that way again. I won’t let resentment motivate my actions. I keep reading.

She joined me in the cove today, not the large one but the hidden one that only I know of. She could not give me all I asked for, but she let me gaze upon her beauty unhidden. I tried to put this beauty to canvas, but I could not. I lack the talent to capture the true essence of what she is. So I wept on her breast, and she held me while we said our tender goodbyes.

I would blush at the reference to my sister’s nakedness, but I am more interested in the first sentence of that paragraph. There’s another cove! One only Victor knows about!

Hope springs within me. Perhaps Victor is alive after all.

It is late, and the world is black as pitch, but I cannot rest. I must find this cove!