After Alice Fell(72)

But still Lionel drags me. He is rage red, the muscles on his jaw like sinew. He kicks the door wide open. It smacks the wall and snaps back hard against my cheek and shoulder. He jerks me fully into the room and throws me to the floor.

I hear the grind of bone before I feel it. Before my vision bleeds red and white. The splint is cockeyed, the cotton padding peeking out. I pull my arm to my stomach and curl tight, shuffling away from him until I am tucked between my bed and desk.

Cathy pushes past him and drops next to me. “Give me the cards.” Her hands tremble at her chin. When she tries to reach for me, I kick her away. She grapples and digs into my hand, pulling my fingers back until the cards I’ve kept hold of are free.

The desk leg screeches against the wood, sliding, then pummels my shoulder. There’s a flutter of papers as the desk totters. The ink stand slides to the floor, upending the bottle and spraying black ink everywhere.

My stomach wrenches then. The velvet pouch and brooch are upended too. I push myself to my knees, scramble to grab it. But Cathy’s faster. It’s in her grip. Her expression twists, her mouth ugly and tight. She shakes her head, a snap of judgment in her eyes.

It comes to me, absurdly then. The clasp on the rose gold resoldered in silver. “It’s Lydia’s. Why do you have—”

“It’s mine.”

My eyes cut to the wall between this room and Lionel’s office. As if I can see through the plaster and lath to the one picture of Lydia hidden on Lionel’s shelf. There. It’s there on her left breast.

The braided cord that holds my keys is stretched from my wrist, the fabric cutting into my skin before it breaks and the whole of it drops away.

“You go out when I say you will.” Lionel’s entire body shakes. He bends over me, pointing his finger at my face, then tensing his hand to a fist. “No more.”

I shrink back against the wall and raise my arm to my head, squeeze my eyes shut for the punch that’s coming.

My wrist throbs and lies dead in my lap. A drop of blood spreads in the folds of a white cotton tie. Then another. It is from my lip, which I’ve bit or split, the skin pulled from the stitch. Not from him.

“No, Lionel. No no no . . .”

The toe of his shoe pushes against my hip. I curl tighter.

But the blow doesn’t come.

Cathy pulls in a breath, one gulp of air, then another. “You can go home now, Saoirse.” Her voice trembles. “We’ll take care of her tonight.”

A slam of the door. The turn of the key.

I scramble across to grab the knob.

But it is to no avail. I can twist and pull as much as I wish, and pound my hand even longer. Peer through the keyhole at the empty hallway. Push my ear to it and hear the choked sobs of a little boy somewhere above and the shush of the woman who is not his mother.

The bones in my arm rasp and grind. I drag in breath that judders out. My vision curls and shoots spikes of black. I can’t pass out now. I can’t.

There’s a thump behind me, next to the window. A ladder. Then the shutters slammed shut.

“What are you doing?” I scrabble across the bed, knocking against the glass. “Lionel. What are you doing?”

I grab the window frame and tug. The frame sticks, and with one good hand it is impossible to dislodge. The sharp thump of a board to the shutters, then the strike and riposte of the hammer sends me reeling back to the bed. He’s nailing me in the room.

“No.”

I twist from the bed, the coverlet sliding off and tangling around my feet, dragging across the floor to the window over the kitchen garden. I press my hand to the glass to peer out. The yard is empty, though the back door is completely ajar. I open my mouth to yell down, but then the ladder knocks against that wall and swings the next shutter closed. The nail is sent home. Darkness swallows the room.

I am jailed.

I’ve stopped yelling. It only makes Toby cry out. His voice—hoarse and edged with exhaustion—comes muffled from his room and has muted and thinned as the time crawls by. He starts pounding his door, little furious fists. They have locked him in too.

I lie on my back. Stare at the ceiling and the shards of light that manage to slip through the shutters. The sun will set the pond aglow with gold and then drop like a stone behind Barrow Rock. Night will approach and the slits of light will be snuffed.

Lionel knew.

My wrist and fingers are swollen, the skin hard and cold. The bone is at a horrible angle. I run my thumb along it, feel the poke of it, wonder if I have the stomach to push it in place. But the lightest of touches makes me dizzy and faint, as if the floor has been lifted along one side. I’ve held the hands of enough men who had proper doctors to fix this. Even a dose of chloroform would not stop my scream. How I regret throwing away the tonic. How I regret trusting Saoirse.

A scraping noise jerks me awake. A tray slides across the floor and bumps the rag rug. Saoirse’s crouched down, one hand to the key in the lock, the other snaking back from the tray. She peers up to the bed, expecting me there and not in the corner behind the desk.

“Saoirse.” My whisper is rough and too loud.

Her head swivels toward me, her gray-blond strands loose, her eyes rheumy and weak in the feeble light. She ticks her tongue to her teeth, then picks up something behind her and slides it across the floor. A white tin chamber pot.

The tray holds four slices of toast, a scrambled egg, and a sliced apple. No silverware. A pewter water jug. Not glass.