Chapter 21

Before

There are moments in life that are so seismically altering they divide everything, cutting a clear rift in time between Before and After. I experienced this powerfully the day my gran died. But that was not the first time in my life I felt it.

The first time was the day I saw what Mr. Grimthorpe did to Gran in the parlor at the mansion. Though I did not understand it entirely until much later, witnessing that moment turned me from a child to an adult in an instant.

I suppose I should have known all along that Mr. Grimthorpe was a monster. My instincts told me so even before I met him. But as with many things, I couldn’t quite believe what was right there in front of my face. I couldn’t piece together the clues the way I can in retrospect.

Now I know why some days were so hard for Gran, why she’d open my curtains but forget to say “Rise and shine.” How she’d prepare breakfast in silence rather than humming her cheery little tune because she dreaded going to work and was so fearful that Mr. Grimthorpe would force himself upon her. I recall how some nights at dinner she’d sit across from me, her eyes dull, moving her food around her plate but barely eating anything, her mind clearly elsewhere.

She rallied—my gran always rallied—searching for the bright side, focusing on the positive, convincing herself that Grimthorpe was a changed man, that once he was sober, he would never attack her again. That was my gran. She had an infinite capacity to light hope in the dark. And for the most part, she was successful. She certainly convinced me that all was well in our cloistered little world, that our future was impossibly bright. Everything she did was so I would not just survive but thrive. Only now do I know just how much she suffered in the dark, how she carried her burden alone.

In my mind’s eye, I’m a child again. Gran and I are sitting at our old kitchen table having breakfast the day after Mr. Grimthorpe transformed from a man into a ravenous wolf right before my eyes. I’m swinging my legs back and forth under my country-kitchen chair as I always do, but nothing will ever be the same again. At least that much I understand. Usually, in the mornings, I hurl a barrage of childlike questions at Gran, my existential quandaries and would-you-rather quizzes. But not that day.

I push my oatmeal down my throat, but when Gran tells me it’s time to go to the Grimthorpe mansion, I don’t move. I can’t.

“It’s not right,” I say. It’s the first mention I’ve made of what I saw in that parlor. I pause. “Gran, you can’t go back there.” I don’t know how to say what I want to say, because I don’t have words for what I saw.

“Molly, today is a brand-new day.” Gran jumps up from her chair so quickly it screeches against the floor. “The sun is shining. The birds are chirping.” She takes our barely touched bowls to the sink, turning away from me. Her hands clutch the edge of the counter. “Let’s go now,” she announces. “It’s time.”

When she turns to face me, she’s smiling, and I swear to you that smile is genuine. She has willed it from some wellspring deep within, and now she offers it like a bouquet of fresh roses. She dons her bravest face because what other choice does she have?

That rhetorical question had kept me up the night before. I lay awake in bed with Gran’s lone-star quilt pulled up to my neck. I stared into the darkness and contemplated our options. A plan emerged in my mind. Suddenly, I saw it clearly. I knew what I had to do.

Gran once told me that sometimes in this life, you have to do something wrong to make something right. I’ve never forgotten that. It has become a motto to live by.

As I swing my legs under the table, I’ve already decided.

It is a brand-new day. The sun is shining. The birds are chirping. I have a plan, and there’s nothing that will stop me from seeing it through. Nothing.

---

—We arrive at the mansion right on time. The invisible gatekeeper has buzzed us through the gate. Now, Gran and I are standing on the path. Suddenly, I’m filled with doubt. What if I can’t do it? What if it’s the wrong thing to do? What if I’m making a terrible mistake? No. I won’t listen to doubt. We must escape the monster. We must run from the wolf.

I haven’t mentioned a thing to Gran, and I won’t, but my feet are tethered to the ground before we’ve even reached the front door. Gran puts a warm hand on my arm. My feet loosen and release. Together, we walk up the rest of the path toward the Grimthorpe mansion.

The roses flanking us are all expired now, every last one, their blooms spent, their heads bowed and withered. Jenkins is up the path, sweeping crispy fallen petals into a pile that he rakes into his wheelbarrow. There’s a new smell in the air, the sweet scent of expiration.

“Good morning, Flora,” Jenkins says as we pass. “How are you and the little mite on this fine day?”

“Well enough, Jenkins, I suppose,” Gran replies.

“Rose season is over,” he replies, “but there’s always next year.”

“Something to look forward to,” Gran replies.

“We all need that, don’t we?”

Gran nods. “Indeed we do.”

We continue up the path until we reach the front door. I grab the lion’s brass mandible and knock three times. The massive door swings open, and Mrs. Grimthorpe lets us in. Gran and I take off our shoes, wiping them down as usual and slipping them into the space at the back of the vestibule, in the dark corner reserved for the help.

Mrs. Grimthorpe starts in without delay. “Today is wash-and-dry day. Flora, go upstairs and collect all the laundry. Be quick about it. Lots to do.”

Gran flinches ever so slightly. It’s something I wouldn’t have noticed before, but on that day I do.

“Once you’ve got all the dirty laundry, bring it downstairs to the cellar. Stay down there and monitor the machines. The washer has been acting up again. And do be careful with the bleach. Last time, you used so much on the whites, you burnt a hole into one of Mr. Grimthorpe’s shirts.”

“There was a stain, madam,” Gran says. “I was trying to remove the blot.”

“Is burning it to oblivion the only way?” Mrs. Grimthorpe asks. “Surely any half-decent maid knows better.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Gran replies.

“Child, you may read upstairs in the library,” Mrs. Grimthorpe says. “You can polish silver in the afternoon.”

“Would it be all right if I read in the parlor?” I ask. “Just for today?”

Mrs. Grimthorpe’s forehead scrunches up, then she says, “I suppose, provided you sit in one chair only and touch a grand total of nothing. Do not clean or polish anything, you understand? Keep your paws off Mr. Grimthorpe’s treasures.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say.

“Off you go, then.”

Gran gives my arm a squeeze, then follows Mrs. Grimthorpe through the main corridor toward the back of the mansion. I hold on to the banister for a moment, steadying myself before I head up the main staircase to retrieve my book.

The creaks and groans of the floorboards sound different today, like a warning. Don’t do it. Don’t go upstairs. I make my way to the first landing and look out the window. There she is, Mr. Grimthorpe’s personal secretary, wearing her blue kerchief and blue gloves, entering through the side door of the mansion as usual. It makes me wonder: has she had to fend off the monster, too?

I start up the next flight of stairs, then turn down the damask corridor, forcing my feet forward to the library. I pause at the threshold, looking in. Light is shining through the crack under the hidden bookcase door. It’s spilling onto the floor. I hear the shuffle of Mr. Grimthorpe’s slippers on the other side.

I tiptoe into the library, grab Great Expectations, and leave as quietly as I came.

I head down the main stairs and through the French doors of the parlor, taking a seat on a royal-blue high-back chair, where I begin to read quietly.

Rat-a-tat-tat-tat.

The sound starts up just as I finish a chapter, the familiar rhythm, the background drone of Mr. Grimthorpe’s secretary typing in her secret lair somewhere deep inside the mansion’s walls.

I wait, pretending to read my book until I see Gran walk by the open French doors. She smiles at me, then continues on her way. I listen as she climbs the creaky main staircase. A few minutes later, she comes back down with two large bags of laundry on her back. She stops for a moment in the doorway.

“All’s well?” she asks.

“All’s well,” I reply. “And you?”

“Perfectly fine,” she answers. “Today’s a brand-new day.”

She lugs her heavy burden down the hallway toward the kitchen. I listen as Mrs. Grimthorpe barks out orders at Gran, cutting her down with her razor-sharp tongue.

I hear the cellar door open, and the thump, thump, thump as Gran pushes the heavy laundry bags down the stairs.

“For the love of God, can you not do a single thing the proper way?” Mrs. Grimthorpe scolds. “Why wouldn’t you carry the bags down?” Her rebuke reverberates through the entire house. Gran’s response is the same as always: “Yes, ma’am. Yes, ma’am.”

A few moments later, Mrs. Grimthorpe clicks down the corridor toward the parlor. She appears between the open French doors, eyeing me with her familiar look of disdain.

“I’m going out front to instruct Jenkins on the proper disposal of dead roses. When they have blight and you mix them into the compost, the disease infects the entire garden, not that he’d know that. The help these days don’t seem to know anything at all.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say.

“I won’t be gone long. And remember,” she says, pointing a bony finger at me, “you are not to touch a thing.”

I nod. She turns on her kitten heels and makes her way to the front door.

I stay put until I hear the front door close behind her. Then I snap my book shut and place it on the side table.

It’s time.

I walk to the mantel and stand in front of it, taking in the glowing Fabergé. It’s just as beautiful as the first day I laid eyes on it, delicate and enchanting, encrusted with rows of precious, sparkling jewels and resting on an ornate pedestal of the finest, purest gold.

I know that after I do this, there will be a new rift in time, a new Before and After. But that doesn’t stop me. Nothing will.

I reach out and grab the Fabergé. The weight of it is satisfying and substantive in my hands. I rush back to my seat and open Great Expectations, concealing the treasure on my lap behind my book just as I hear Mrs. Grimthorpe coming back through the front door.

---

—“Flora!” Mrs. Grimthorpe shrieks in that ear-piercing way of hers.

It’s now been hours since I executed the first step of the plan. I’m in the cellar of the Grimthorpe mansion. I have gone downstairs to use the washroom because for once Gran is there, and I don’t have to brave the spiders alone.

“Flora!” Mrs. Grimthorpe shrieks again, more shrilly the second time.

This can mean only one thing: she found it.

I dry my hands quickly, then exit the scary washroom.

Gran is folding one of Mr. Grimthorpe’s crisp white shirts. She freezes the moment she hears the second shriek from the banshee upstairs.

“Flora Gray! Do you hear me? Come up to the kitchen this minute! And bring that wretched grandchild of yours as well!”

Gran looks at me and shrugs.

I shrug back, not saying a word.

Gran leads the way up the damp cellar stairs. I follow behind her, exiting into the kitchen, where Mrs. Grimthorpe stands, huffing and puffing, her face raging red, her pupils two pinholes of fury.

“Come,” she says, not an invitation but an order as she marches us to the silver pantry. We follow her in.

I’ve left all the polished wares from the day before neatly organized on the table. It’s filled with silver, ready for an elegant banquet that will never happen. I’ve worked days and days now so that every shelf behind Mrs. Grimthorpe glimmers and shines, each silver platter, cutlery set, and tray polished to a high sheen. There’s only one shelf of tarnished silver left for me to clean. It’s a pity I won’t be able to see the job through to completion. But so be it. It doesn’t matter. Not anymore.

“Flora,” Mrs. Grimthorpe says. “I was in the parlor just now checking that this little varmint of yours didn’t touch anything. Everything looked just fine, until I noticed a bare spot on the mantel. That’s when I realized the Fabergé egg was gone. I searched for it everywhere. Then it occurred to me to check the silver pantry. And guess what I found.”

Mrs. Grimthorpe lurches forward and opens the cupboard where I store my rubber gloves, my cleaning basin, my tattered apron, and the jug of lye solution.

“Look!” Mrs. Grimthorpe says. “Just look at what’s wrapped up in her apron.”

Gran picks up my apron and pulls the Fabergé egg out of the threadbare front pocket. She turns to me, her eyes wide, her mouth open, puzzlement and shock writ large in every line on her face.

“She was going to steal it, Flora! She was about to sneak it out of the mansion, the greedy little devil,” says Mrs. Grimthorpe. “You can’t trust anyone in your home these days. No loyalty. No boundaries. No morals.”

“But, ma’am, she’s just a child,” Gran says. “I’m sure there’s an explanation.”

“She’s just a thief is what she is. You should be instructing her, showing her right from wrong. If I’ve learned anything in my years, it’s that the apple never falls far from the tree. If she’s a thief, guess what that tells me about you.”

“No. You’re wrong about that last part,” I say, facing Mrs. Grimthorpe squarely. “But you’re right about the rest. I meant to steal the Fabergé. I took it and was going to bring it home with me. But it was all my idea. Gran had nothing to do with it. She would never do such a thing.”

“Molly, how could you?” Gran says. “You know better.”

“I do know better,” I say. “But I did it anyway.”

“You see?” Mrs. Grimthorpe says, the words spitting from her mouth. “No moral compass. No understanding of right and wrong. It’s bred in the bone with you lot. If you’re not thieves, you’re liars, like all those others before you. Get out, both of you. Now!”

“Please, don’t do this,” Gran says. “You know how hard it is to find reliable help these days.”

“Out!” Mrs. Grimthorpe shrieks, a sound that makes Gran flinch. She grabs my hand and rushes us out of the room.

Mrs. Grimthorpe follows us through the kitchen, down the corridor past the bourgeois blobs and the “gold de toilette,” until we reach the front entrance. Mrs. Grimthorpe opens the vestibule and watches, fuming, as Gran fumbles to find her shoes and I do the same.

Once our shoes are on, Mrs. Grimthorpe opens the door wide, then grabs me by the collar and tosses me out, with Gran following close behind. “You’re a disgrace. You’re never to come back here—never—do you understand?”

She turns her back on us and goes inside, slamming the heavy door behind her.

Gran and I stand outside for a moment, too stunned to move. Jenkins is just up the path, frozen beside his wheelbarrow, watching helplessly.

Gran takes me by the arm and we leave together, walking for what I think is the last time down the path of roses toward the Grimthorpe gates.

“I can’t believe it,” Gran says when we’re halfway up the path. “Molly, why on earth would you do such a thing? Why would you want to steal the Fabergé?”

I don’t answer because it doesn’t matter now.

All that matters is that Mr. Grimthorpe will never lay a hand on my gran ever again.