Crash & Burn (Tessa Leoni, #3)(85)

“Vero wanted to be brave,” I whisper. “But the isolation . . . It became harder and harder to remember who she was. And easier and easier to be whatever Madame wanted her to be. Especially once she turned twelve and the first man arrived. When it was over, she didn’t cry. Vero simply locked it all up, something that happened to someone else, and stuck it way back in her mind. None of that could’ve been done to the real Vero, because the real Vero was a princess from a secret realm, whose mother was a magical queen who’d vowed to keep her safe from the evil witch.”

I stare at Marlene. “Vero made up stories. Or maybe she did her best to remember her story. It is very hard to be yourself in the dollhouse.”

Marlene can’t look at me anymore. I’m not sure that I blame her.

“I returned to Ronnie,” she continues now, for this is as much her confession as mine, and thirty years later, there’s much to get out. “Second they released me, of course I came back. I didn’t know how to live alone. I’d been a young, stupid girl, already pregnant when we met. I couldn’t support myself, had never managed to hold down a job. Ronnie took care of me. And if he had a temper, sometimes drank too much, hit too hard, well, at least he put a roof over my head.

“But after you were gone, things got worse. Six trips to the emergency room later, the responding officer, Hank, said he’d had enough. I was coming home with him. He’d take the sofa. I got the bed. But in return, no more boozing, no more crying, no more dying. It was hard enough, one year later, to know he’d failed some little girl he’d never met. He’d be damned before he failed her mother, too.”

“Girls grow up. Even a beautiful princess . . .” I grimace, feel a spiderweb of memory brush across my mind. He doesn’t want you anymore; now what good are you? Madame Sade was angry. You didn’t want her anger. You couldn’t afford for her to be angry.

I shiver, struggling to shrug off the recollection. When I speak again, the image is gone, safely locked back up, and my voice is matter-of-fact. “Vero moved downstairs. She gained a roommate, a girl several years older than her, Chelsea. Chelsea also had dark hair, blue eyes, because that’s what Madame’s best customer preferred. Vero was happy to have a roommate, thinking that finally, she wouldn’t be alone. But Chelsea hated her on sight. No one had ever loved her the way Vero had been loved. Chelsea’s own mother had sold her to Madame Sade for a quick fix. At least at the dollhouse she had been the favorite, living in the pretty tower bedroom. Until, of course, Vero came along. Now Chelsea ripped Vero’s clothes, ruined her makeup.

“She made Vero sleep on a rug on the floor. She told Vero she was nothing more than Madame Sade’s pet. Except Madame Sade never kept her pets for long. Soon enough, she told Vero, they’d come for her. The only way out of the dollhouse was death, and Vero’s time was up.”

“The nights were always the worst,” Marlene says. “Watching the sun set, knowing another day was gone and I still didn’t know where my baby was. I wanted to drink. All the time. Instead, I dreamed of you. I’d sit on Hank’s sofa and I’d remember your first birthday, your second birthday, your third. Then, after a bit, I imagined your seventh birthday, your eighth, your ninth. But for your tenth birthday, I made a vanilla cake with blue frosting because you were older now, and I had to believe you were growing up. I had to believe you were okay.”

“Vero slept on the rug. She did her best not to make Chelsea angry. And every night, she whispered her stories to herself. Of the secret realm and the magical queen and the evil witch. Except one night, she discovered Chelsea listening. So Vero told another story, of a closet that was a portal between the worlds, and if she could just find the right door, she could escape again. Chelsea kept listening.” I close my eyes, and for a moment, I see it clearly. Two girls, both with dark hair, heads bent close as they huddled together. A happy memory, like freshly mowed grass. A moment when the dollhouse almost felt like home. I hear myself whisper: “Vero didn’t sleep on the rug anymore. She moved to the bed, right next to Chelsea, and they began to talk and trade secrets and exchange dreams. They became sisters. And Vero wasn’t alone anymore.”

I’m crying, slow, silent tears. Why am I crying? Then I see Vero again, twirling across that terrible blue rug, needle in her hand, track marks on her arm. An unbearable pressure grows in my chest.

Marlene takes my hand. I feel her fingers trembling within mine. Giving me strength. Drawing strength. We are in this together.

She goes first: “One day, I fell off the wagon. Just like that. I was out taking a walk and I passed a liquor store and I . . . I went inside. I bought a fifth of whiskey. Then I took it back to Hank’s place and downed the whole thing. When I finally came to in the emergency room, Hank was a wreck. He made me swear to never do that again. He . . . He told me he loved me. He asked me to become his wife. But there was a condition: I had to make it sober for an entire year. I had to want to live, he told me, because otherwise, I would only break his heart.”

“Things in the dollhouse started to change,” I say. I’m back in my head, walking down the shadowy corridor, steadily closer to Keep Out, Keep Out, KEEP OUT!!! “No more younger, fresher models entered the home. Instead the entertaining became less frequent, Madame Sade more desperate. She needed money. ‘Do you think a house like this supports itself?’ she’d say. And the food we ate and all the clothes we demanded. We were nothing but ungrateful girls; no wonder no one wanted to play with us anymore. She drugged us. The first time, she simply strolled into the room and jabbed us with the needle. I thought this was it; she’d sedated us again, only this time our bodies would be taken into the woods and left there to rot. Only way out of the dollhouse, right?