Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen

Elaine

Of all the people in my life I could have told my secrets to, I would’ve never believed for a second it would be one of the Morellis. If you’d have asked me to put money on the least likely person I would’ve ever told my secrets to, Lucian Morelli would have been pretty high on the list.

He was my enemy. He was a monster. My monster.

I should never have been standing there in his gleaming kitchen contemplating telling him my story, not even one tiny little part of it. I hated myself for even thinking about it.

My mind was spinning through the memories, and my stomach was in knots, physically painful without the haze of drink and drugs to blot them out. I didn’t want to relive them. I’d spent almost every waking moment of my life trying to run away, trying to bury it all underneath my bullshit world of escaping. I wanted to escape, at any cost—even if that meant losing my life.

So why the fuck was I about to spill my soul to my nemesis and live those memories all over again?

Holy hell, those memories came roaring when they called as I began to tell my story.

I’d long lost track of exactly when my hellhole of an existence sprang from the picture perfect life I had been living. I had everything that a child should love. Toys and games and clothes, green fields and palomino ponies and brothers and sisters bickering all around me.

Dad was way too busy with Halcyon to give me all that much of his time. He’d see us at dinnertime, but it was barely more than a snippet of family life. And I had to share it with my brothers and sisters. I spent much more time around nannies and teachers than him.

Mom was rigid with her expectations. She told me I could never behave.

I guess it was natural for her to agree with Uncle Lionel when he first suggested I have tutoring. Religious tutoring, he said. There’s no one better than Reverend Lynch, he said.

Uncle Lionel dropped me off outside the manor church in the rain one day, leaving me staring up at the towers on the driveway. It was Margaret, his maid, who came outside to collect me. She was as stern as the rest of the people I’d come to know—taking hold of my hand and rushing me inside like I was already due a punishment.

The hallways were filled with huge sprawling paintings of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I felt tiny and inferior as she marched me upstairs to my dorm room at the end of the corridor. The door was huge and made of oak, it made a deep, dark creak as she opened it.

“This is where you’ll be staying,” she said, her voice shrill.

My bed was a tiny single with a wrought iron headboard and footboard. There was a bedside table with a plain white lamp, and a tapestry on the wall over it. The Lord’s purpose will prevail. I found myself wondering what the Lord’s purpose would be for me in this place.

They left me alone until dinnertime.

Margaret came for me. She led the way downstairs to the dining hall, and I expected there to be many other girls like me there, but there were only two.

Neither of them looked at me.

I sat in the seat Margaret pointed me to, feeling edgy and scared. The other girls leaped to their feet and bowed their heads as a man joined us at the head of the table. I jumped up to join them, not quite sure what I was doing.

“You may be seated,” he said.

His voice was so firm it gave me shivers. He was an older man—much older than my father. He had gray hair and a beard and small eyes, and had a religious collar on, in a deep, dark burgundy.

He looked strict. Really strict.

I was given soup and ate it slowly, watching the way the other girls were so neat with theirs. I patted my mouth with a napkin and sat up straight in my chair when I was done, and tried to be like them, even though they looked nothing like me. Neither of them looked anything like me, they were both so quiet. So ladylike, as my mother would say.

I guess that’s what they wanted me to be like—ladylike.

But I wasn’t ladylike. I was Elaine.

The other two girls were dismissed and scuttled away after dinner was done, but I was still sitting in my seat. The man at the head of the table cleared his throat and stared at me, and then he spoke. “Hello, Elaine. I’m Reverend Lynch. I’m here to be your teacher and mentor. But most of all, I’m your connection to our Lord.”

I found myself nodding, but I was too scared to smile, even a polite smile the way my mother would have wanted. And definitely too scared to speak.

He seemed satisfied by my silence. “You’ll most certainly learn to be a good girl here.”

I didn’t want to spend another minute in that place. The very last thing I wanted was to be like the other two girls.

Reverend Lynch held out his hand to me, and he had a big golden ring on one of his fingers. “Kiss me,” he said, and I felt weird doing it. I didn’t usually kiss people’s hands.

His fingers were thick and warm. I didn’t like the way they felt against my lips, so I pulled away as quickly as I could. I felt strangely icky as he kept his eyes on me, like he was soaking into me somehow. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

“You’re excused now,” he told me, and I mumbled thanks.

He called Margaret in, and she led me back upstairs. I tried to ask her questions, like who the other girls were and who else would be staying with us, and where I could go in the building outside of my room.

“You’ll go wherever you’re told,” she said, and I didn’t ask her again, just headed back to my room and sat on the edge of my bed.

She clasped her hands behind her back as she spoke.

“There are rules,” she told me. “You only speak when you are spoken to, and you do whatever you are told. And you must always try your very best in your lessons.”

I nodded, but I didn’t take it seriously. Grown ups always said stuff like that.

“Good night, Elaine,” she said, and I heard the key click in the lock as she left.

I was locked in.

I tried the door handle, but it didn’t open. I banged on the door, but nobody came.

I’d never been locked in anywhere, and I was already scared of a night alone with no way out.

There was a nightgown in the wardrobe, but I didn’t want to wear it. There was a glass of water on the bedside table, but I didn’t want to drink it. I wanted to go home, to my own bed in my own room. I thought it was a nightmare as I stared up at the ceiling that night and tried to sleep in that bed. I was nearly crying like a little baby as I thought about more nights in here, and how Uncle Lionel had promised that I would learn so much. I didn’t want to learn. I wanted to go home.

I fell into an uneasy sleep. I was still exhausted when Margaret came through the door the next morning and swore at me for not putting on the nightgown.

I ate oatmeal for breakfast and tried to tell myself it was only one night, and I’m sure it would get a bit easier—meeting some other girls and not being so locked up when they knew I could behave enough not to run away.

I thought the first night was a nightmare. I thought it couldn’t get worse.

I was wrong.