Looking for Jane (100)

It is dreadful enough that I was separated from her, but now I cannot even find comfort in the knowledge that she would be the deeply loved child of some barren woman. She is dead, and this is the end for me, too.

To be honest with you, it feels empowering. We are all here because we were never given any choices. We were never in control. And this is something I can do to be in control. I can choose how and when I die. I have no fear for the fate of my soul. I only know that it will be free and at peace, reunited with my poor Leo and our beautiful baby girl.

If the only way I can be with them is in death, then so be it.

Now, I must ask a favour of you before I go.

I have left two other letters with you—one pre-addressed for my parents, and one for the police, enclosed with yours. Keep them hidden and safe beneath your mattress or anywhere else you can hide them, and take them with you when you leave. Please post them as soon as you can. I have said my final goodbye to my parents and brother, and in my account to the police I have explained in detail the atrocities of this place, of the Watchdog’s assaults and the sale of the children. I hope it may be enough to ruin the home, at the very least. It would be too much to ask that the Watchdog get her comeuppance, but perhaps I will be able to haunt her. Because who knows, my dear, what awaits us on the other side?

This may sound incredibly odd, but for the first time in a long while, I have hope.

And I love you, Maggie. You have been like a sister to me since we arrived at this horrible place, and your presence has been a balm for my heart. I am so terribly sorry to leave you, but I know you will leave here yourself, very soon, and go on to do great things. I implore you to live your life fully, for the both of us. And never, never stop looking for Jane. I know you will find her.

With love, I will remain,

Evelyn Taylor



Maggie’s hands are shaking.

Thud.

She jumps at the sound from downstairs, disoriented and afraid. She throws her legs over the side of the bed, clutches the letters in her hand, and pads quietly toward the bedroom door. She glances down the length of the hall, but no one else is stirring. The blue glow of dawn tints the walls and wooden floorboards. The house is silent.

She turns and heads toward the stairs and the sound that has her insides locked in an iron grip, pinching off the air in her lungs.

Creeping down the stairs, Maggie is careful to avoid the creaky step at the midpoint, and lands at the bottom of the staircase. She turns to face the parlour and nearly collapses at the sight.

Evelyn is hanging from the beam above the doorway, her head in a makeshift noose of bedsheets tied end-to-end. Her legs hang limply below the hem of her grey nightgown. Her eyes are mercifully closed, but her lips stand out in a face the colour of cement. Her blond hair falls loosely over her shoulders. Beneath her dangling feet, a dining chair is resting on its side.

Maggie doesn’t notice her body sink to the floor, but she finds herself there a moment later. She clutches the letters in her hand and tries to catch a staggering breath. She wants to look anywhere else but can’t. She can’t ever un-see this. She’ll see it every time she closes her eyes.

After a minute that might be an hour, Maggie manages to stand up with help from the banister. She hauls herself to her feet and stumbles over to Evelyn, her lip trembling beneath beads of cold sweat and tears, then feels a sharp pain in her foot.

She gasps and winces at the shard of glass poking out of the skin. Looking down, she sees the floor is dusted with a shimmering coat of the stained glass that once graced the transom above the doorway. Evelyn must have broken it to throw the sheets over the beam. Maggie plucks the shard from her foot, then hops over to the front door and pulls on a pair of the communal Wellington boots. The glass crunches like gravel under her as she steps back over to the body.

“Oh, Evelyn,” she whispers, reaching out for her friend’s hand. She grasps it briefly, and finds it isn’t even cold yet. Evelyn’s soul has only just flitted away. She’s only minutes too late. The thought cuts into her like barbed wire. She runs her hand gently along Evelyn’s arm. But it’s not Evelyn, she tells herself. Evelyn is gone.

She lets go.

Maggie stares up at her friend for several long moments, thinking over the contents of the letter that’s still clutched in her hand, remembering Evelyn’s smile close to her face while they whispered late at night and kept each other warm in the early mornings. Maggie commits this scene to memory, absorbing every detail of Evelyn’s broken body, how it came to be at St. Agnes’s in the first place, and all the reasons why it ended up hanging from the parlour transom in the cold light of dawn on this May morning.

Because the anger has started now. No, not the anger. The rage. A white-hot, savage rage is coursing through Maggie’s veins like poison.

Evelyn is dead. Maggie’s own baby, Jane, is long gone. She thinks about her father’s friend Joe. She thinks about the Watchdog, about the parents and priests of the girls who’ve been sent away, urging them to “do the right thing.” Maggie has a far different sense of what’s right and wrong than she did before she came to St. Agnes’s. And she needs to make this right.

As the first red-breasted robins start to twitter their sweetness to each other in the hedge outside the parlour window, Maggie comes to a decision.

“Goodbye, sweet friend,” she whispers, gliding her fingers along the sleeve of Evelyn’s nightgown one last time.