Crossed Lines

by Lana Sky

  “Ellie,” I parrot. “So, not Mommy?”

  “What?” Elaine’s pretty smile collapses around the edges.

  Already through the archway, Thorny sighs.

  “I’m just kidding,” I say loudly enough for him to catch.

  “Oh!” Elaine regains her flawless grin and all is well. “It’s nice to see that someone around here has a sense of humor.” She sneaks a glance over her shoulder as if to ensure that her husband is far out of earshot. “Anyway, has your uncle given you the full tour yet? The view from the Bluffs is unlike anything you’ve ever seen. Did you two go walking together?” She eyes my damp skirt again.

  “Of course,” I lie while running my fingers through my hair. The rain pounded it into a frizzy mess, and it’s already straining against the confines of my headband. “In fact, I was just about to head back out and get some more fresh air.”

  The rain has let up, it looks like. The sun is sneaking through gaps in the white drapes, taunting me. It’s like Thorny in a way: there in theory but gone the moment I open the door and step out to meet it. Poof. The clouds return, having one last laugh at my expense.

  “Are you sure?” Elaine wonders as I descend the front steps. “It looks like it might rain again…”

  “Don’t worry,” I call back. “James told me that the only true way to experience Thornfield is right in the middle of a big-ass brewing storm.”

  I can’t resist glancing back to see her reaction. Faint-pink colors her cheeks, tainting the thick layer of makeup rendering her skin pore-less.

  She chuckles in that halting, unsure way most adults tend to: helplessly. “Well… Just try to get back soon. I’m going to make dinner in your honor, okay?”

  I turn, rolling my eyes. “Wonderful!”

  For all of my bravado, it does look like it’s going to rain again. Thunder rumbles ominously, growling above the faint hiss of crashing waves like nature’s game of cat and mouse. Dark-purple clouds swell overhead, resembling the fat blueberries that grew on Grandmama’s property. I used to pop them between my fingers, watching them explode and coat my hands in purplish guts. The scraggly, overgrown trees on the edge of Thornfield look sharp enough to puncture one of these storm clouds.

  Plop.

  I can already feel the cool drops splattering my forehead again. Flash. Lightning sparkles in the distance like gaudy glitter and my steps falter. Looking back, I can see Elaine still standing on the porch, watching.

  Oh, Elaine. She always was the worrywart of the two. The one who pretended to care and nurture while heeding her husband’s every word. If Thorny told her to jump, she’d skip to the edge of the balcony and sheepishly inquire as to how high.

  Then he’d scoff and tell her to forget it. His only goal was to test the strength of his leash anyway.

  For all of her gift bags and smiling bullshit, I know who really is responsible for my coming here. Thorny must be playing a mind game at my expense. Oh, I know: Elaine probably bugged him for children. She is thirty-five, after all, and her baby clock is ticking. “Sure,” Thorny probably said, “Have your children. As many as you want. Just deal with this one first.”

  I’m the pressure subtly applied to make Elaine cry “uncle.” Then he’ll get his way, like always. It’s what I would do.

  Old Thorny may not be related to me by blood, but we think the same way. A lack of empathy, as one of my therapists put it. We’re cruel and callous, and we don’t give a fuck about anyone but ourselves.

  It’s the money that makes us this way. So damn much of it and all the freedom it implies, but with no way to touch a cent. We’re shackled to the whims of Grandmama, even from the grave.

  I’m tolerated by a family too proud to make me a ward of the state, and Thorny is too stubborn to relinquish his grip on this crumbling estate. He’d rather watch it rot. Like how the overgrown underbrush nibbles at the cracked roads, creeping over faded picket fences. The cloud cover paints everything in shades of silver and gray. The earth is withering just like Thorny’s hairline. He may drive through this place in his fancy sports car, but the garage is just a few years from collapsing altogether.

  I think my therapist would name his mind state denial. A house, you see, is a lot like an unwanted child under one’s guardianship. Fancy legal documents may say it’s yours, but at the end of the day, that level of power just gives you license to watch it collapse underneath its own weight and call it mercy.

  It should be grateful. You kept it in the family at least.

  One thing about Thornfield stands out from my hazy old memories. With only a vague sense of direction, I creep along the field until I find a path between two bowed trees, marked with a few stones hammered into the ground.

  Once upon a time, my uncle Thorny took me this way, his big hand in mine. I can see him as clearly now as I did back then: so tall that he blotted out the sky peeking through a canopy of green. His hair had been blonder, his posture bolder. “This way,” he told me. “You can’t get into trouble in this place. Stay here.”

  In the real world, my fingers brush the ragged surface of tree bark and I’m back in the present, standing before the same destination Thorny brought me to all those years ago. The old oak is still standing, with a misshapen tree house tucked within its branches. Square and cramped, it looked old back then and appears even older now.

  I lift my foot and test the bottom rung of the wooden planks nailed to the base of the trunk in a makeshift ladder. The first one still holds, and I strain on tiptoe to grab the highest point I can reach. Gradually, I make it all the way to the top, and only one plank feels loose enough to skip entirely.

  Entering the tree house proper is a little trickier. I have to balance myself against a thick branch and shimmy through the crude opening, blocked by a stained piece of plastic sheeting.

  Lord only knows who built this thing in the first place. Thorny? For all of those boys he’d never have. A secret place they could conspire away from Elaine—before he turned it into a prison for a bratty girl during her father’s funeral.

  It feels just as cramped and confined now as it did back then. The wood is stained and warped in places, and the floor is covered in leaves that rustle ominously the farther I crawl inside. Only snippets of light reach in through gaps in the planks, painting stripes over the shadows.

  Thorny took me here, guiding me up those planks, and told me to stay put. So I did, like a good little girl.

  Until I couldn’t.

  When I picture him, it’s always how he was that day. In that moment when I stormed into Thornfield Manor’s gilded drawing room, trailing dirt and mud. That cold, heartless expression when he realized I’d disobeyed. The way his eyebrows knit together when I did what I did next.

  I made a scene.

  He sent me away.

  So, now, we’re even Stevens.

  Was it really the Whorton’s incident that made him cave after so long? I mull over the prospect while clearing a space on the floor with my foot and curling up in that tiny corner. Maybe that scandal was one too many?

  Even I can admit that it got a little out of hand.

  But Thorny is Thorny. There has to be more to it than that. He brought me home after so damn long. Maybe it’s to punish me…

  Like a real daddy.

  I laugh, but it rings hollow. Annoyed, I say out loud, “Fuck Thorny.” He doesn’t scare me. Oh, no siree.

  In fact, he doesn’t even deserve the same reprieve I extended to Caroline, Marcia, and Lily. I gave them a week of good, sweet Mary. That fun creation crafted from giggles and lies, who shits sparkles.

  Thorny would see right through her anyway. No, sitting here, in a shitty excuse for a house, I’m convinced that it’s better to just cut to the chase. I’ll give him a day before putting my plan into action.

  Thorny will cry “uncle”—figuratively, anyway. That is if he doesn’t ship me off first thing tomorrow. I shouldn’t care if he does. A house is just a house, after all. It doesn’t matter if
it’s the house. The place where everything started like a series of falling dominoes.

  I never wanted to live at Thornfield.

  Not really.

  I never wanted him to keep me.

  Not really.

  It never hurt that he didn’t want either of those things.

  It really didn’t.

  Elaine’s fretting in the entryway when I step through the front door just as a new smattering of raindrops lashes at the eaves of the old house. Rickety Thornfield Manor sways in the wind, caught helplessly in the tempest. One good gust and the whole thing might blow away.

  It’s like the entire two-story structure is a literal metaphor for Elaine. Weak and pale, with patchy paint partially covering the glaring flaws. Skinny structures, draped in white and left to wait for Thorny to enter and exit as he pleases.

  “Oh my God!” Her eyes widen, and she sinks to her knees, grabbing my arm. It’s a patchwork of browns and purplish hues. “What happened? Did you fall? James!” She calls for him until he appears in the doorway, a wine glass in hand. “Look!” she exclaims. “Should we take her to the emergency room?”

  Thorny takes one look at me and scoffs. “She’s fine.” He dips a finger into his wine and comes close enough to swipe the liquid over the deepest, darkest of my “bruises.”

  Like magic, they wash off, revealing pale, unblemished skin underneath.

  I snatch my arm back, foiled again. “It’s just a little dirt,” I tell Elaine with a smile.

  “Oh…” She frowns when I tap my muddied shoes against the polished floor but musters up a smile of her own once she catches me staring. “Well, I put your suitcase in your room. We can toss your things in the dryer if you need to.” Her lips twitch. Guilt, I guess.

  Difficulty with emotions is one of the many flaws my therapist lumped into a long, complicated diagnosis to explain my behavior: Maryanne displays some symptoms of borderline personality disorder. She has difficulty recognizing and processing emotions. Up is down and down is up to a freak like me. I struggle to interpret…oh how did he put it?

  Compassion and love in a healthy way.

  My broken brain is dangerously suspicious of both. Like how Elaine must be when Thorny takes that fancy new car of his out for a spin. Just who is he trying to impress?

  Not her. Elaine is a rock, easy to please, with a few accessories glued onto her lifeless frame for funsies. You can pet her. Maybe love her. But it doesn’t really matter in the end, does it?

  It’s not like she’ll leave. The poor thing has no legs.

  “I made dinner,” Elaine says, clearing her throat as the storm picks up. “We can wait for you to wash up and change. Oh, and a friend of mine—James’s—might stop by. I hope you don’t mind?”

  “Of course not.” What’s a good homecoming party if it’s not hijacked by old acquaintances? Faking a smile, I take the stairs two at a time and then enter the room designated as mine. For now. I can almost see the inevitable expiration date stamped on the damn door as I pull it open.

  Elaine left my suitcase by the bed. How sweet. She even folded her hideous sweater and left it there, too: my costume in their twisted family charade.

  I should wear it. Make myself smile pretty while she and Thorny play happy families before I ruin everything and prove him right. I’m a broken screw-up. He’s banking on that outcome.

  That’s why I don’t even bother to unpack. Instead, I kick my suitcase open and snatch a dress from the haphazard mess thrown inside. The only thing I bother to treat with any care is my file containing its oh-so-precious documents. I scan the room for a good hiding place, eyeing the white dresser in the corner. No, too obvious. I cross over to the bed and shove the file beneath the mattress.

  Across the hall from my room, I find a bathroom, where I shower. And shower. And shower.

  Through the spray, I can hear angry footsteps stomping up the stairs. Heavy. Impatient. They march in my direction with purpose. Thwack! The bathroom door jumps as someone knocks just once.

  “Maryanne.”

  The water is scalding. It makes my cheeks catch fire and ignites an inferno beneath my skin—not him. Even still… I’m hidden behind inches of wood and a plastic shower curtain, but I do that thing only he can make me do: bite my lower lip and think, just for a second.

  I’m not used to hesitating—another quirk the therapists like to point out. Hesitation is normal to help with impulse control, Maryanne. You should think through your actions.

  “It’s been two hours,” Thorny says. Like always, a sigh laces his words and he speaks to me in two languages. One is English. The other is nonverbal James Thorne: Elaine made me check on you, he grouses. You’re pushing it. “Are you planning on joining us for dinner?”

  I don’t answer, still thinking. Two hours—has it really been that long? I inspect my pruned fingers and my shriveled toes. Then I pick up a damp washrag and scrub some more. La-dee-da. I pretend not to hear him sigh again.

  “Ten minutes,” he warns before stomping away.

  The moment his footsteps fade, I switch the water off and climb out. Through a cloud of steam, I eye myself in the mirror, inspecting blurred, obscured limbs and a pale, blobby face.

  I’m pretty, they say. Pretty like my mother before she got her nose job. Pretty like those boring girls placed beside the starlet in movies. Oh, so pretty.

  Not beautiful like Elaine. Or any of Thorny’s three sisters.

  Poor self-esteem is why I overcompensate with sparkling clothing and outrageous headbands. My style is calculated to draw the max amount of attention and drama. I’m incapable of confining to social norms; therefore, red sequins and six-inch heels make for the perfect dinnertime outfit, in my opinion.

  Or something like that. I read it in a book.

  I’m in the middle of brushing my hair when I hear the front door open downstairs and a man’s voice call out.

  “Elaine, you look stunning! And come here, you son of a bitch.”

  “Oh, Jeremy,” Elaine simpers.

  I groan out loud. Jeremy Weston. Thorny’s literary agent once upon a time. Now, he’s a famous author in his own right. He bragged as much at my father’s funeral—and even Grandmama’s.

  I hate him.

  But the more the merrier. I leave my room noisily, balanced on my impossibly high heels, and follow the sound of meaningless chitchat to the back of the house.

  “Maryanne.” Elaine humors my outfit with a forced grin when I finally make my way into the elegant dining room just off the main entryway.

  Thorny scowls. He’s holding a glass of wine, keeping the bottle closer to his place setting than Elaine is. At least three chairs separate them on the same side of the table.

  Like a good daughter, I claim the one directly between them.

  “Look who showed up,” Jeremy says, giving me a wink. “It’s a movie star.”

  Where Thorny aged with a stubborn grip on his good looks, Jeremy threw attractiveness to the wind. He’s gained at least ten pounds. His dark hair has a glaring bald spot right over the center of his head, and a layer of cologne can’t disguise the stench of old cigars.

  “Long time, no see, Mary,” he says. “You’ve certainly grown up.”

  He stares at my chest.

  “That’s an…interesting outfit, Maryanne,” Elaine says politely.

  I finger the neckline of my dress and shrug. “What? This old thing?”

  Thorny says nothing. Out loud, anyway. His gaze gives me a slow, scathing perusal I feel down to my goddamn toes. My sparkly, scarlet evening gown doesn’t draw his ire, or my wet, damp curls—he knows the truth. Caught, a part of me whispers as my stomach clenches in that naughty-girl way.

  Gritting my teeth, I ignore it and reach for a glass of water Elaine already had waiting for me because she’s fucking perfect. I down it. Then I smile.

  “What’s to eat?” I say it solely to prompt Elaine’s prideful glance at the food steaming before us on three porcelain platters. I wonder
if she had to reheat it while waiting for me. The corner of my mouth quirks. Of course she did.

  “It’s just a little something I whipped up to celebrate,” she says, preening in her simple blouse and skirt. “Um, there’s spaghetti with fresh basil. A tossed salad. And some cut fruit for dessert.”

  She worked so hard. I can practically taste her blood, sweat, and tears in the humid night air. With the rain having stopped, she and Thorny left the windows open, allowing in the breeze blowing off the ocean. How quaint.

  “It all looks so lovely,” I gush. “But…”

  Thorny braces his hands on the table, inhaling sharply.

  “I’m allergic to tomato sauce,” I say, pointing to the spaghetti. “And fruit.” My finger darts to the glass bowl of fresh strawberries and watermelon. “And I’m allergic to salad.”

  “Maryanne.” Thorny didn’t even put effort into huffing my name that time. He shoves his plate toward the center of the table and stands. “I’ll be in the study.”

  “But it’s dinner.” Elaine struggles to hold on to her perfect smile. It quivers at the edges, clinging to her pink lipstick with all it’s worth. When Thorny meets her gaze, her lips fall flat. “I-I could make something else?” She looks to me, her eyes wide, pleading for me to laugh. To confirm I was joking, haha. With one little gesture, I could salvage her charming meal.

  “I have a long list of allergies,” I say, but I don’t look at her as I do.

  Thorny’s eyeing his wristwatch, shaking his head. Tsk, tsk. What a waste of time I am. Of space.

  “And you know what?” I tell her. “I’m not really hungry, either.”

  “W-wait!” Poor Elaine stares on in horror as I skip past Thorny.

  My work here is done. So pleased with myself am I that I don’t see him move until it’s too late.

  “Oh no you don’t.”

  My arm is in his grip. Like a leash, he uses the limb to drag me from the room, out of Elaine and Jeremy’s line of sight.