by Brown, Tara
The next video stopped my heart. It was me at fourteen, tied to the cold metal table in Dr. Horkel’s torture chamber he called an examination room. I twitched my head back and forth as Mother stepped right in front of a camera she didn’t know about, and whispered, “I want you to test her virginity. I think she’s whoring herself out. Be very thorough.”
“Of course.” Dr. Horkel grinned in the most disturbing way and nodded. They walked out of the range of the video.
My eyes widened and tears leaked from them, streaming my face.
Dr. Horkel came back into view but strode to the far side of the examination table, so the camera would get a clean shot of his foul deeds.
“What are you doing?” fourteen-year-old me screamed. “Stop this! Mother, I’ll be good! I swear. I’ll be good. Please don’t do this!”
I closed my eyes and the sound of my screaming cut off. Laertes had spared the world the actual footage of what had happened but the impact and damage were done. The implications and assumptions could piece together my harrowing experience quite easily.
My fingers bit so hard into my palms that my hands were full of blood by the time I released them. I missed a part of the video, catching only the tail end of my mother smiling wide at a camera, posing as the footage showed me in the background being put in a straitjacket by four men as I fought as hard as a malnourished and sleep-deprived little girl could. I assumed she hadn’t known about this camera either. It was all part of Dr. Horkel’s stash my father found.
The next video must have been taken only weeks ago and the recording had to have come from inside my house. I was limp, drugged, and carried out of the house by a man, one of the guards. As they placed me in a van, Mother handed one of the men a wad of cash. Dr. Horkel shook her hand. They drove off. She didn’t go with them. They had me for two days and she wasn’t there.
I gagged, assuming the worst and trying to remember how I felt when I woke. Was my body different, injured? Had I been abused? Or was it part of her plan to make me go crazy with worry over what had happened in the two days? What I needed to focus on was who had taken the video.
Did my brother do this?
Had he been planning it all along?
Or was it my father trying to build his case? Did he let her send me away so he could record it?
The next video began to play, showing a still surveillance shot of Elsinore, the butler’s pantry to be exact. I didn’t realize the video was running until Mother walked in, glancing about casually, more like she was searching for something or someone. The timestamp was the day my father died. She had a heavy black leather purse. A strange bag for a summer day when she was wearing a cute tan sundress and gold sandals. She opened the hidden staircase and slipped inside.
A moment later a server girl carrying coffee walked past the camera.
The image changed to the courtyard at the back of the house, facing the staff parking. A woman in a black dress walked away from the house quickly. She glanced back, wearing sunglasses. The image zoomed in so I could see it was her, my mother. She hurried into a small white car I didn’t recognize and drove away.
She was at Elsinore the moment my father was shot and fired the gun we all heard, the noise that brought Lucas to the balcony where he found the gun on the floor.
It ended with a video of my mother in a hallway at our house. She was in the black dress, but she was different, disheveled. She walked down the hall with a terrified expression. Her eyes were wide, and her makeup smeared everywhere, as if she’d cried it down her face. The image must have been taken right before she found me. She paused in the hallway, closing her eyes and taking deep breaths. I almost believed she was scared until something triggered her. She jerked to the left and the most foul, evil look crept across her face. She clung to the gun in her hand, sneering and tiptoeing forward, keeping to the shadows. The camera lost her there. And the video ended.
It was me.
That spot in the hallway was right before we met. I had brought that look to her face and invoked those emotions in her. Me.
I curled in a ball and tried not to think about that.
It was hard.
Fortunately, the phone rang. I answered with a yawn. “Hello?”
“O, thank God. I was scared they’d bugged my office. How are you?” My brother sounded normal again.
“I saw the video,” I answered.
“I just wanted you to know everything I can tell you right now. And that I’m working on things.”
“Working on what? You never explained why you killed Lucas,” I snapped.
“Can you give me time? A little time to bring this all to a head. Stay in England and let me finish this.” He was pleading.
“Fine. But I will never forgive you for what you did.”
“I hope that’s not true,” he said softly. “Because it’s all for you.”
“I’ll talk to you later.” I hung up the phone and stayed there. Lights on, curled in a ball, eyes dry, heart broken.
Chapter 27
Tuesday, August 6
The estate came into view finally after we had driven the tree-lined driveway for what felt like forever. As we got closer, I cringed. It was not similar to home at all. It was sizeable for an average person’s family, maybe a five or six-bedroom house. At most. With some outbuildings I hoped would belong to the staff. The red brick facade was quite British.
The driver glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “First time in Oxfordshire?”
“Yes.”
“Welcome. I hope you like it here. It’s quite the estate. Saw it once a few years back when it was being gutted as you Yanks say. I watch those home and garden programs. Love the Property Brothers.” He chuckled.
“Is it haunted?” I asked hopefully.
“Naw. Heard once when I was a lad of a gray lady up the top floor. A governess watching out the attic windows. Died while she was taking care of the wee ones and can’t seem to move on. But haven’t heard that story in at least two decades, I’d wager.”
“Oh.” I sighed. Lucas, Paige, and Horatio and my father had all moved on. I’d hoped a haunted house might convince them to come back.
Summer in England wasn’t what I expected. When we stepped out of the car, it was warm. It had to be in the eighties. I was still wearing my clothes from yesterday, minus the single pair of underwear my brother stuffed in the backpack. Underwear. I expected more from a gay man, and perhaps I was stereotyping my brother, but I did.
“Welcome to Hampton Park.” The driver seemed excited to be there. He jumped out and stared at the small lake next to the house. “Good fishing in there.” He pointed.
I gulped and turned back to the house. It was a Georgian-style mansion, but I wouldn’t have given it the title “mansion.” It was a large house. There were three levels, the top floor had six dormers and the second and main floor matched perfectly with nine identical windows spread across the face of the house. All of the windows were tall and thin and Tudor style with the weird grid in them.
I stared up into the dormers, hoping for a face or creepy eyes, maybe a shadow moving past. But there was nothing.
The double front doors were regular-sized with shiny brass handles. Every window had the same sheer drapes hung perfectly.
One of the front doors opened and a face I couldn’t have expected if my life depended on it stared back at me. “My darling girl, are you all right?” Deborah rushed me. Her embrace threatened to undo me, but the cabbie and a man, who I didn’t recognize lingering in the doorway, stared at us.
I closed my eyes and gripped the older woman I’d known my whole life, taking in deep inhales of her. Her fingers stabbed into me, holding me tightly.
“Let me look at you,” she exclaimed as she pulled me back and inspected. “You don’t look so bad. Laertes warned me you might be a mess.”
“Oh, I’m fine.” I smiled politely, darting my gaze at the cabbie and the stranger.
“Well, we’ll see about that.”
She pinched my cheek and turned to the man in the doorway. “This is Michael, he will be head of the house. He is ex-MI6 and highly trained.” She spoke as if he was aware of my situation.
Michael offered a subtle nod that resembled a bow. I offered my hand as my father would have.
“I’m Ophelia.”
“But everyone calls you Lila.” He winked, drawing a blush to my cheeks.
“Of course.” I smiled. “Something to get accustomed to.”
“And this is Branford. He is your new driver.” She grinned at the cabbie, making me feel awful.
“I’m so sorry,” I blurted and held out my hand for him as well. “I assumed—”
“That’s all right, miss. Was a black cab driver in London for twenty years, also MI6. Cabbies hear a lot more than you’d expect.”
“Particularly when they bug the cab,” Michael made one of those dry English jokes. The three of them laughed. I smiled.
“Come on inside, then. We’ll get you settled. I only arrived yesterday myself.” Deborah took my hand and led me to the doors. Michael made room for us to enter and I gasped, not expecting what I saw.
The front entryway had white and gray marble flooring with pale cream-colored walls. The wainscoting was pure white and there was recessed lighting and crisp modern decor. A giant double staircase greeted me, leading to the open second-floor balcony.
Several doors led off this room. To the right was a stunning office with twenty-foot ceilings and white shelves lined with books. A silvery-white French writing desk sat in the corner of two of the narrow, tall windows, overlooking the lake. The sheers were the exact touch the room needed to add some chic to the comfort and class of the other pieces.
“I didn’t expect this.”
“I’ll admit I saw the red brick and hoped for a more traditional home. But this one was redone in a modern style,” Deborah complained.
My sandals made no noise on the marble slab flooring as we walked straight ahead to the open great room. A family room on the right, breakfast dining in the middle, and a massive open kitchen on the left. The white trim and wainscoting continued in here, but the floors were a pale beachy driftwood color and the walls a soft gray. It contrasted nicely with the crisp white fireplace and white shaker kitchen with counters that matched the marble in the foyer.
The back garden had a pool, a spacious terrace, and stretched out as far as I could see in gardens and fields.
“Let me fix you a smoothie,” Deborah murmured and walked to the kitchen. I followed and sat at the counter in the comfiest barstool I’d ever been on. It was white and looked more like an office chair on stool legs.
“They have butt warmers,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Button on the front.”
“What?” I reached down and touched the front of the armrest, feeling a small switch. It clicked when I pressed it and after a moment the seat began to heat. “Oh, that’s nice.”
“Laertes never told you I was coming too?” Deborah asked as she grabbed spinach, frozen berries, and the protein powder I liked and placed them on the counter.
“No. Laertes made it sound like I would be alone. He even sent me this crazy list of emails on how to survive as a regular person would. I was terrified of all the details I’d screw up. Seeing you is a relief. I mean honestly, I don’t know how to chop kindling. Or what kind of wood you use.”
“Let’s be very frank with one another,” Deborah tilted her head to the side, and I realized I wasn’t getting off easy with this one. “I am here to get you settled. I am going to teach you the things you should have learned. How to cook. How to clean your house. How to manage your yard. How to run a home. You get this semester off of school and then you start again. Your admittance into Oxford has been arranged and that was not easily done. I believe Laertes bought half the campus a renovation.”
“Oh God,” I moaned but knew it would be the only way I would get into a school like that.
“You are going to be the self-sufficient lady you should have been raised to be. When I leave in January, you will know how to do everything.” She lifted her nose. “And first things first, you’re going to learn to make this ghastly blender food for coma patients.”
I laughed but agreed. “All right.”
She grabbed a massive handful of spinach and put it into the blender but paused. “I love you, Ophelia. I think I need you to hear that because I don’t recall anyone ever saying it.”
Her words broke me. The tiny strings snapped. I came undone, covering my face and sobbing into my hands, stinging the places I’d carved with my nails.
“And today is the first day of the rest of your life.” She came around the counter and hugged me again. “Your new life.”
I sobbed into her shirt and apron, losing myself in the sadness that had overwhelmed me for weeks. I’d let small pieces of it trickle out. At the time I’d believed they were my flood gates opening and unleashing all my emotions. But they were nothing. The sounds that left my lips, the painful wailing that ensued, was deafening.
It wasn’t heartbreak and ruin from the last month. It was a lifetime of agonizing hate and disregard and being manipulated. It was pretending to be okay when I wasn’t. It was the loneliness of sitting in the window seat and watching the world outside and wondering if everyone’s life looked the way mine did. It was loss every day.
But the woman holding me, letting me unload on her, was proof not all of it had been bad. And if a single person ever asked me how I survived such a life, I would say, “The tiny strings holding me together.” The little strength I had, came from the love given by others. As Paige would call them, my chosen family.
Chapter 28
Thursday, September 13
The city of Oxford was more than a university town. It was the university town. The ancient cobbled streets and modern college kids everywhere breathed a different kind of life into education. History and the present day met and danced together.
And it was busy. So busy that I didn’t mind finding myself alone a lot. I was surrounded and alone. It was bliss and the time was well spent. I searched the library and the grounds of the Faculty of Philosophy for ghosts. One ghost. But he never showed.
The smell of lilacs made me smile when I walked past gardens, something Oxford had tons of. But they were real, leaving a fresh and airy scent on the warm summer breeze. No dead people attached. No Paige.
She was gone, which meant my delayed mourning hit in weird places, public ones. I wore sunglasses everywhere I went, covering my puffy eyes and tear-stained cheeks.
“You ready to go home?” Michael asked, interrupting my staring at nothing again. He didn’t see what I did. He didn't imagine Lucas and Laertes here, alive and running about as free young men.
“Yes,” I nodded.
“Fall semester starts in a couple of weeks,” he mentioned as we started the walk back to the car where Branford would be waiting, smoking his cigarette and people watching. “You think the city seems full now, you wait. It gets out of control around here. Every pub on a Friday night is the most fun you’ve ever had.”
“We’ll have to go for a drink sometime.” I smiled, keeping the chatter friendly and small. He wasn’t the type of person who offered opinions or asked for yours. He liked to concentrate, reminding me of Alice a lot. I thought about her frequently. She and Dr. Graves, but I knew I wouldn’t see them again.
“Yes, there’s not much in this world that’s funnier than Deborah after a couple of pints.” He chuckled.
“Have you known her long?” It was something I suspected.
His eyes twinkled with a secret as he glanced at me. “You could say a while.”
It was hard to say if they were lovers or if by some weird chance Deborah was also a spy or secret agent. Most of my father’s guards were.
There was no way Alice was some run-of-the-mill hired gun.
“You’re looking a little flush, miss,” Branford said as we got close to the car. “Bit too warm today. I’m
feeling it too. Might be the hottest September I’ve experienced here.” He got the door for me as Michael climbed in the front seat.
“I am a little warm,” I agreed and sat down, noticing I was off.
The ride back to the house through the country had become one of my favorites. Everything was still so green and lush, even though we’d hardly had any rain.
When we got home, I wandered into the house to find Deborah watching the news in the family room. The house smelled of bread and soup. The scents picked at me. I was definitely not feeling well.
“You’re dead,” she muttered and glanced in my direction as she turned up the TV for us to all hear.
“Bodies found in the devastating fire at Elsinore, the Jacobi family mansion, have been identified after a lengthy DNA comparison. Ophelia Agard is now confirmed to be one of the many who perished in the August third fire that burned until the early hours of the morning. The remains of the nineteen-year-old socialite and daughter of Polonius Agard will be interned with her father’s ashes at the family tomb without a service.”
Deborah clicked the TV off with the remote and sighed heavily. “You do look a little peaky now that they mention you're dead and all.”
“I feel peaky.” I rested a hand on my forehead. “I think I might go lie down.”
“Trying to get out of helping me knit those mitts you asked me to make?” Deborah lifted her eyebrows doubtfully but softened when she really took a good look. “Actually, you are pale.” She ran a hand over my face. “And clammy. Up to bed!” She pointed at the ceiling.
“Yes, ma’am,” I agreed and walked for the stairs.
“I’ll bring up some soup later,” she called after me, but the idea of soup made me feel worse. Eating was last on my list of things I might want to do in the next couple of hours. Sleep was first.
