Wishing Well(29)

The best bet, I told myself, was to avoid Vincent altogether, not just because I wanted to avoid getting in trouble for spying, but because my heart skipped a beat to learn that émilie had been kicked to the curb.





CHAPTER FIFTEEN


Vincent


After leaving the garden, I walked my normal rounds of the hotel, greeting guests as they meandered about, met with the manager to help with any problems that needed to be addressed, and then made my way to the elevators to take the car down to the basement I’d designed to be a practical cage when the hotel was built.

It wasn’t a bleak environment by any stretch of the imagination, but for the occupant that lived within its walls, I wanted to ensure there was no chance of an accidental escape at an inopportune time. Wishing Well was built with the idea of luxury and a sense of peace, opulence and a elegant ambience. And if a certain issue were to find his way out of the basement to run loose through the halls, I was fairly certain I would be made to answer numerous questions I never wanted asked.

It wasn’t that I didn’t love Maurice, in fact, the opposite was true. I loved him too much, which was why I spared no expense to see to his comfort, left no stone unturned when it came to providing him with the best doctors, nurses and counselors the world had to offer, but as I’d known since growing up with a boy of his peculiar problems, there would never be an actual cure.

He’d been normal until age two, except for the temper tantrums that were blamed on age and the inability to communicate. By the time he should have made certain milestones, a problem surfaced that set him apart. The doctors claimed he was slow, at first, some even suggesting he was spoiled. After my mother’s constant phone calls, my father’s rage, and time spent wherein Maurice could be observed, my baby brother was diagnosed with severe autism.

The signs were there, an inability to communicate, the refusal to meet your eye, the desperate need for a constant routine where just one small change could set him into an explosive panic that was far more violent than my dear Maman could endure. My father was often away, his hotels and other businesses keeping him busy, so it was Maman and I who tended to a boy that, while intelligent, was unable to behave as any normal child would.

It wasn’t until he was older that the diagnosis changed.

Slipping a key into the elevator panel and typing in a code that would take me to the basement used only for Maurice, I leaned against the back wall and closed my eyes. My thoughts drifted to my childhood home, to the screaming, the crying, the shattering glass, the whispers of a mother that was losing her own grip on the world. Maman was as delicate as a hollowed eggshell, so easily crushed within the strict grip of panic for her son that not even the nurses and teachers could relieve her pain.

In the end, she’d died of cancer, but I always assumed it was from a broken heart. To say I felt bitter would be an understatement. In all the time she gave to Maurice, she could never spare a moment for me. I would have made her proud had she given me that attention, I would have read to her, behaved for her, showed her that not all young boys were untamed. I could have saved her, I’d believed, as her casket was lowered into the ground, could have provided her sunlight on even her darkest days.

I hated her for dying when I hadn’t given her permission, I resented Maurice for wrestling her from my control. I understood that women were just simple flowers that could be cultivated to bloom, or have their petals pulled.

By the time my father moved both Maurice and me to America, I had no respect for a woman’s strength, because my mother had none of her own.

The elevator slowed to a stop, the doors slid open as quietly as an exhalation of breath, a large entry room stood open to me as dark and elegant as Maurice had preferred. The walls were painted a deep black with borders of pristine white.

Dark wood furnishings complimented the leather seating, crystal vases shimmering beneath light, a wash of blood red color in the roses that filled them. Breathing in the rich scent, I stepped from the car, made a left and casually strolled to a sitting room I knew Maurice often used. It had been designed to resemble the salón from our childhood home, the color palette bright, just how our mother had wanted it.

Lingering in the doorway, I watched Maurice tap away on his computer, his eyes moving quickly as his fractured mind absorbed whatever information he was studying.

“I thought you had a counseling session today.”

This was one of the issues my hotel manager had brought to my attention, a certain counselor racing away, vowing she would never again return to this hotel. Although John knew that something had frightened her, she refused to reveal what, exactly, had occurred.

“The counselor left,” Maurice explained, his fingers moving quickly over his keyboard.

In the twenty-seven years since Maman had died, it was discovered that Maurice’s affliction was not actually autism, but a severe case of schizophrenia. He’d gained the ability to communicate, he could look any person in the eye, but behind that green eyed gaze that was much like mine, sanity was noticeably absent. The medications kept him partially contained, but only when he was compliant.

“Why did she leave?” I asked, struggling to keep my voice patient.

“I told her I wanted to eat her.”

Closing my eyes and opening them again, I remembered telling Penelope the same thing, but in a language that wouldn’t send her running. “And did you attempt to eat her?”