Good Girls Lie(84)

My fury is burning hard and fast inside me. I want to run. I want to hide. I want to scream. Tears burst forth.

“Now, now. There’s no need to cry. There’s plenty of money to go round, and you’re no longer alone in the world. Ash, think. You have a sister, someone you can build a relationship with.”

I have to stop crying but I can’t. The dean finally takes me by the hand and leads me to the bathroom off her office.

“Get it out, darling. You’ll feel better. Splash some cold water on your face. We’ll be here.”

I sit on the toilet in this magnificent marble and chrome room and sob into my hands. For my lost mother. For my lost father. For my dead roommate, my lack of dignity, my ruined relationship with the one person who’s shown me real kindness since I came to America. For the fucked-up mess my life has become.

Sister. Sister. Sister.

Inherits half. Half.

If I’d only waited. If I hadn’t been so rash. The sorrow of it all is overwhelming.

It takes me twenty minutes to pull myself together. Nickerson and Westhaven are communing quietly when I finally return to the office. He turns with a hopeful look in his leprechaun eyes.

The very last thing in the world I want to do is swirl the tiny brush in my cheek, making the smooth skin raw with the force of its nasty, harsh bristles.

But I do.

What choice do I have?

We have to find my sister.



62

THE PRODIGAL

The fight was so intense, so incredibly off-the-charts intense, I can hardly believe I forgot it. It happened in April and resulted in a broken wrist for Sylvia. It was a knock-down, drag-out mess that spilled from their bedroom to the kitchens, out to the stables, where Sylvia shouted and screamed and threatened, then she came inside crying, saying she’d fallen on some loose straw, and had Cook drive her to hospital for a plaster cast.

Damien had stormed off on his horse, galloping away, dust rising in the distance, and came back well after dark. She’d locked the door and wouldn’t let him in. Which wasn’t good. Without Sylvia as a buffer, he directed his ire at me.

The black eye was visible for days.

This must have been when news of the sister arrived.

It all makes such perfect sense.

We spend our lives revisiting our very worst moments. Poking the sore tooth, the bruise, to see if it still hurts. Draining our current happiness because we don’t deserve it, because feeling good, feeling happy, means we’ve done something wrong, stepped on someone else’s shoulders, hurt or cheated or lied. We live to pick off the scab and taste the blood, fight and hate and fuck and love, and for what?

What is this life supposed to be?

I wanted happiness. I wanted freedom. I wanted to be free of them. The abuse. The hate. The pain. I know all of this, and more, now.

If I had any chance of escape, it meant getting my parents out of the way.

I thought on this long and hard as I wandered the fields attached to the estate. Murder is extreme. It is harsh. It is so very freeing.

Murdering Daddy is just so symbolic. So oedipal. And yes, a bit childish.

But he hurt me, over and over. Kept me hidden away so the world wouldn’t see what he did to me. You’ve seen what he could do. If you had any real idea of how bad it got, you wouldn’t be judging me so harshly right now.

And Sylvia, what a fucking waste. If she had ever stood up to him, maybe things would be different. If she had confronted him about his whore sooner, maybe none of this would have happened. We could have lived as one big, happy family.

I could have had a soul mate.

But this... It’s his last laugh from the grave. One more arrow into my already shredded heart.

I never in a million years thought he’d have the balls to acknowledge an illegitimate child. To throw such a slight in the face of his long-suffering wife. To throw me, his flesh and blood, under the proverbial bus.

And half?

She gets half?

No. Absolutely not. This will not stand.

That is my money. My suffering. My horror. She doesn’t get to waltz in and take half of my future without paying the ultimate price.

What a shock. Such a shock.

Poor dear. Poor duck.

This is a mess.

I think it’s time for the two of us to have a conversation.



63

THE HEADLINE

I hurry out of the Dean’s office and slink toward the library, fighting the urge to run and hide myself in a carrel and never come out.

Sister. Sister. Sister.

And then, nightmare.

Becca steps out of the trolley that attaches Main to Old East Hall and blocks my path. She is carrying a green file folder in two hands and oozing menace. What is she doing? Why is she following me? What sort of humiliation does she have waiting for me? The Mistress is cunning and sadistic. But now is not the time for games.

“What are you doing, Swallow?”

“Going to study, Mistress.”

“In the middle of the day?”

“I’m getting behind on my work, Mistress.”

Please, please let me go. I need to scream, I need to cry. I need to plan.

“Ash. Part of my duties to this school as head girl is to see to the well-being of our younger students. I’ve become worried about you.”

Someone is watching. There’s no way she’d talk to me like this, so stilted and foreign, so bloody affected, if we were actually alone. Must be an Honor Court thing. She wants witnesses. I do feel eyes on me, but I don’t want to turn around.